It’s a new year and almost everyone has decided to lose weight or at least get fit. Although high-intensity workouts and a proper diet are the keys to weight loss, there are certain studies that show that crying can actually help you to lose weight rather shed off some extra calories.
Crying is not a bad habit anymore, especially in this fast-paced stressed-out lifestyle. Be it a breakup with your partner, physical pain, taking too much stress or even disappointment, everyone cries. But, here’s the thing, some people tend to cry more than others and some people cry way too faster compared to others when hit by positive or negative emotions.
In a sentence, crying can be defined as the dropping of tears when hit by a positive or negative feeling. Sometimes, crying can also be an effect of physical pain.
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What are the types of tears?
There are generally three types of tears.
- Basal tears – are the tears that are continuously present in your eyes and help in nourishing, lubricating and protecting your cornea.
- Reflex tears – are the tears that are formed when your eyes come in contact with an irritant. These tears act as an antibody that helps in the removal of the irritant as soon as possible.
- Emotional tears – are the tears caused due to strong positive or negative emotions. It can be caused due to a sudden breakup, compassion, attachments and empathy. These types of tears are also known as “psychic tears”.
As proved by several studies, emotional or psychic tears are the only type of tears that can make you lose weight.
How crying can help you lose weight?
According to a study, emotional crying can help one lose body weight because of the associated hormones that raise the cortisol level when you have bottled up emotions. According to the study, the only way to get the benefits is to cry due to genuine feelings.
Another research shows that stress-induced tears eliminate many poisonous compounds from the body, leading to the belief that weeping is an excretory process that removes such substances that can accumulate during emotional stress.
As a result, because you’ve already expelled stress hormones by crying, our bodies can’t possibly retain any more fat.
How much weight can you lose by crying?
Crying can contribute to your weight loss goals as it helps in losing calories just like laughing. For an estimation, crying for a minute helps you burn 1.3 calories. This might seem very low but yes, whatever helps. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that you will go on sobbing for like an hour or so without any workouts to lose extra calories. It doesn’t work like that. According to researchers burning down 500 calories a day can help you lose 1 pound per week. So depending only on crying to burn calories (1.3 calories per minute) won’t ever contribute too much to your weight loss journey. It might assist you but relying only on crying to lose weight can never help you even if you go crying for 10 hours a day.
What are the other benefits of crying?
Although the impact of crying on weight loss is very minimal, there are other psychological benefits that you get from crying.
- Shedding emotional tears can not only enhance your mood to a certain level but certain researches also prove that it relieves your pain for the time being. This is because emotional tears release oxytocin and endorphins which helps you to enhance your mood temporarily.
- Crying also helps you calm down your mind. It relieves you from overthinking issues and helps fight depression for the time being.
- Crying also helps you get emotional support from your close ones. Yes, obviously you need to open up to your close ones and this will help you get sympathy and help you develop a better social life.
- Certain studies also prove that crying helps in getting better sleep. Since crying calms down your mind and gives you a sense of relief, both additionally help in achieving a good night’s sleep.
- Crying can also help you get back your emotional balance. Sometimes, we as people tend to become too strong emotionally after we go through severe emotional pain. We become so strong that we do not cry anymore. This is somewhat bad as without emotions a person becomes feelingless. Under such conditions, crying and shedding tears will definitely help you to get back your emotional balance.
- Basal tears and reflex tears help in keeping your eye health better.
Conclusion
So as we can see crying is not at all bad. It not only makes you feel relaxed and uplifts your mood but also helps you in weight loss by shedding minimal calories. But the calories lost while sobbing are very less and shouldn’t be even considered as an important daily routine for weight loss. Only following a proper diet and doing workouts on a regular basis will help you in your weight loss journey. But yes, simultaneously if you are hurt about something or someone, crying will help you to ease the pain temporarily. If you go into depression and cry way too often, it is recommended to consult a mental health provider who can help you to overcome the problems.