Sticks and stones can break your bones but words will stress you the heck out.

You can’t avoid it. Words impact your brain. Your brain impacts your stress levels, and your stress levels again effect your brain.

The cycle continues.

Particularly, the word “no” has been shown to have very real impacts on your brain. Specifically in the Orbitofrontal cortex (the OFC).

Both hearing and saying words has an impact on your brain, and body.

In addition, seeing negative emotions on other’s faces has an effect on its own and can amplify the power of the words that are being said or heard. Specifically the word “no”.

So, a simple “no” would have an effect on you.

A “NO!” shouted, would have a stronger effect.

And a “NO!” shouted, with the addition of a frown and negative body language would be very strong.

As a parent of a 2 year old, how many times do you hear the word “no” not only said, but SCREAMED, and FLAILED, and STOMPED, and SLAMMED, and CRIED?

Too many. So many it’s hard to even write this. I’m having meltdown flashbacks.

Sure there’s ways to mitigate the use of the word “no” in your kid’s vocabulary, and in your own. But even under the best situation, as parents of young kids, life is saturated with the word NO!

And that saturates your brain and body with involuntary stress reactions.

As we know, stress is a double edged sword. Some stress is good. You need it.

Stress is needed for weight loss (exercise is stress, and eating less is stress.) And stress is needed for excitement, and fun in many cases. Stress is important for health.

But too much, is corrosive. Chronic stress is horrible for your health.

And with so many “NO!” meltdowns and outbursts, combined with countless other factors that parents deal with that increase stress… It’s safe to say that parents are super stressed. Especially parents with little kids. I know I’m often super stressed even when I’m doing my best to chill out. Especially now with a 2.5 year old and a 7 month old. And I think our kids are pretty good, I can’t even fathom the stress of some parents who don’t have it as easy.

And while some stress is necessary for weight loss, too much stress can lead to weight gain through various mechanisms. And and unbridled stress can lead to long term weight loss problems as well, such as insulin resistance.

So often when parents are expecting a child, they are stressed out as well.

The mom is stressed out for obvious reasons, both physical stress from growing a new life inside of her, and the psychological stress of worrying if she’s eating right, taking care of all the doctor’s visits, the anticipation of having to go through labor, and much more. The dad is often stressed from the anticipation of being a new parent, feelings of helplessness, trying to get everything ready, and more.

This pregnancy period leads to weight gain in the mom, due to pregnancy, and stress. And this period also often leads to weigh gain in the dad as well due to an abundance of stress.

And once the baby is actually in the world, stress can even go higher due to a reduction in sleep, dealing with the newborn, and all the challenges there. The stress does not seem to diminish much as the situation is always changing as your baby develops and new challenges result with that process.

So parents who want to lose that baby weight and and be full time parents with other obligations to add to the pile are asking for trouble if they push that weight loss too hard. Because if you’re already stressed, and then you add more stress through weight loss…

You may be successful initially. But that onslaught of stress can leave your body damaged, and make it much easier to gain back the weight.

Unless you do things slow, and intelligently, you’re asking for problems in the future.

Parents need to give themselves some leeway and understand that they’re under a great deal of stress from their environment, even if at some point it starts to feel “normal” to be so stressed. Just because you don’t notice it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

That “NO NO NO NO NO” is beating stress hormones right out of parent’s bodies like an angry techno DJ whacking them with a stress hormone laced baseball bat to a beat of, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!”

Early parenthood, is not the time to push fat loss to its limit.