You're Probably Breathing Wrong (And It's Keeping You Stressed)

TL;DR: Chest breathing activates your stress response (fight-or-flight). Belly breathing activates your relaxation response (rest-and-digest). Most people chest-breathe all day without realizing it, which keeps stress hormones elevated and can make it harder to lose weight.

Breathing TypeNervous SystemStateEffectChest breathingSympatheticFight-or-flightStress, tension, fat retentionBelly breathingParasympatheticRest-and-digestRelaxation, recovery

Today we're gonna be talking about breathing, specifically diaphragmatic breathing, and some of the benefits it can provide. Those include relieving stress, helping you lose weight, and improving your mobility.

How is breathing able to accomplish all those things?

What is the difference between chest breathing and belly breathing?

There's two types of breathing. One is breathing into your chest, which is typically a very stressful type of breathing. The other is diaphragmatic breathing, the way we breathe into our diaphragm, which is breathing into our belly.

When you take that big, deep breath, instead of breathing into your chest and giving all that stress into your shoulders and neck, you're breathing down into your diaphragm and really expanding into your belly.

What that does is help you get more in touch with your parasympathetic nervous system.

Our body has two types of nervous systems: sympathetic and parasympathetic. You've probably heard of fight or flight. That's a very stressful state where our body wants to combat adversity.

That can be everyday life for the typical person. Your boss is getting on you for a project. You're stuck in traffic and somebody cuts you off. You're running late, the kids are acting up. Anything that causes stress activates that sympathetic nervous system.

We want to get you in touch with your parasympathetic nervous system, where rest and digest happens. We're bringing those stress levels way down and helping you relax, something we just don't do enough as human beings on a day to day.

Does breathing affect weight loss?

Yes. When we're carrying a lot of stress in our body, our body releases hormones that encourage it to hold on to more body fat. (Research on cortisol and abdominal fat supports this connection.)

You can be killing your workouts, killing your nutrition, but if you're carrying all this stress and your body is thinking it needs to hold on to body fat, it's gonna make life even harder. That's why managing stress through proper breathing matters for your overall goals.

How do I practice diaphragmatic breathing?

To simplify:

Chest breathing = sympathetic nervous system = fight or flight. Really stressed. If you're someone who already carries a lot of stress throughout the day, this makes it worse.

Belly breathing = parasympathetic nervous system = destress, relaxing. Think meditation, yoga, anything that helps get you more in your parasympathetic nervous system, bringing stress levels down.

This can go a long way in helping you calm down. And it has other benefits beyond just stress relief.

Further reading:

• Harvard Health: Relaxation techniques