According to Dr Dean Ornish, chronic stress can cause people to put on weight in several different ways¹:

Therefore, if you are feeling overweight, or you just want to reduce your waistline, you may want to take a look at your life and see if there are any opportunities to reduce the amount of stress that you are under. Meditation oriented techniques such as yoga may help relieve some areas of stress. 

Other sources of stress are much deeper and therefore take more effort to reduce. These can be sources of stress within your personal life, with your family or due to factors such as where you live. If you are overweight, that in itself may be a significant cause of stress. Your work may be causing you a lot of stress too. In these cases, you can work to try to reduce the causes of the stress that you feel. 

You may feel that there are lots of things causing you stress. Try to tackle them one by one and start by selecting ones that are more readily achievable so that you can celebrate your successes. Remember: don’t hesitate to contact a professional to help through any issues that you feel are significant.

A Zen lifestyle certainly is one where stress is reduced as much as possible. The more that you look for sources of stress in your life and try to reduce them, the better you’ll feel!

¹http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/a-high-protein-diet-wont_b_492203.html

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philliecasablanca/2579234490 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/matt512/2765857170/

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