For instance, many people with abdominal fat retention benefit from limiting foods that aggravate the hormonal imbalances present, things like highly processed carbohydrates, including pastries, cookies, white breads, chips and snack foods, candies and sweetened beverages.

Also, by ensuring that the body's nutritional needs are met in small meals throughout the day, very quick progress can often be made in reducing abdominal fat, and with it, blood sugars, cholesterol, and disease risk.

That can be a real challenge for people entrenched in common habits of the high-stress lifestyle, like skipping meals all day and eating late in the evening. People with rushed, on-the-go schedules are often resistant to this simple, apparently common-sense change. Their usual routine may seem necessary, or even desirable, to the efficiency minded go-getter.

But the big picture has to be taken into consideration; a short-term payoff in minutes is no bargain when compared to the long-term cost in health. And these people do find that when they make the necessary adjustments, the stress-gain cycle can usually be broken in fairly short order.

But if dietary and lifestyle intervention are not sufficient, behavioral therapy and medications may be necessary. Often people develop a high-stress lifestyle that feeds on itself, as the anxiety of one stressful obligation provides the energy to get through the strain of the next.

Sometimes a more focused behavioral approach is necessary to help people see how they are unconsciously stimulating their own unhealthy stress responses, but usually, once a person understands the distinct physical dangers of those habits, they're willing to make conscious choices to change them.

That's a win all the way around. Learning simple coping mechanisms can reduce the lifestyle stress quotient, which in turn supports the initial weight loss necessary to cut back the stress-induced weight gains.

That doesn't mean it's easy. But for people with the greatest risk factors and the highest propensity for stress and weight gain, the choices are to commit to that sort of comprehensive improvement, or else get back to ancestral basics, and take up running from tigers.

Through Thick & Thin: Abdominal Fat and the Hormone Cortisol
If you're prone to abdominal fat retention, think about reducing stress in your life, and make a point to eat a more scheduled diet, with small intakes of protein throughout the day. While these are good ideas for just about anyone, people prone to cortisol-induced fat production need to be more vigilant than most in guarding against the dangers of both stress and weight gain.