How to lose a stone and tone up during lockdown.
Stress and anxiety can affect your hormone levels and exacerbate belly fat. “Being stressed influences appetite hormones that make us want to eat more quick-fix foods that contain a lot of calories, but the stress hormone cortisol also suppresses our insulin sensitivity, which can mean that glucose in the blood is more likely to be converted into body fat,” the nutritionist Dominique Ludwig says. “The belly is a convenient place for the body to store this fat, and since fat there is able to manufacture the hormone oestrogen, our hormone levels can be further disrupted by flooding the body with more oestrogen than it needs.”
Ludwig says that as well as cutting out sugar and avoiding white bread, pasta, rice and processed breakfast cereals, try to eat half a plate of vegetables with each meal. “You need 200-250g, or two fistfuls, per meal, as vegetables nourish the body with nutrients and provide fibre,” she says.
