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Two dogs died, fat loss paused
One of the dogs belonged to her daughter, so she was also dealing with her daughter's grief as she came home from university. Her coach pulled her out of the fat loss phase. Grief and stress add load to the body and change where a person's head is, and nobody can focus on eating less and hitting every target in the middle of that.
A body takes in far more than food and exercise as input. Arguments with family, stress at work, over-exercising, too few steps, and skipped meals all count. A plan built only around the goal runs into the season someone is in, so the plan gets adjusted to the circumstances, and the work becomes learning to get through such stretches without losing ground.
How does stress reach the body?
Stress sets off the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, a chain of signals that ends with the adrenal glands releasing cortisol. Cortisol mobilizes glucose and influences appetite, sleep, and immune activity. Endocrinologist Hans Selye described this response in 1936 as part of what he called the general adaptation syndrome.
Why do different stressors add together?
Neuroscientist Bruce McEwen and Eliot Stellar introduced the term allostatic load in 1993 for the cumulative wear that comes from repeated or prolonged stress responses. The idea covers stress from any source, physical or emotional. The Holmes and Rahe stress scale of 1967 ranked the death of a close family member among its highest-rated life events.
Why can losing a pet feel so heavy?
Pets often act as attachment figures, with daily routines built around them. Grief researchers have documented responses to the death of a pet that resemble grief after the death of a person, including sadness, yearning, and disrupted sleep. Psychologist Kenneth Doka coined the term disenfranchised grief in 1989 for losses that society does not openly acknowledge, a category that often includes pets.
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