Turn Off the News. Put Down the Phone.

How Stress, Doomscrolling, and Attention Can Affect Weight Loss

When I originally wrote my 12 Weight Loss Tips, Tip #7 was simple: Turn Off the News. Today, I would expand that advice to include social media and the endless stream of information available on our phones. Staying informed is one thing. Spending hours consuming bad news, arguments, alarming headlines, etc. is something else entirely—and it may affect your health in ways you don't immediately recognize.

When the brain perceives stress, it activates the body's stress-response systems, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis which then releases cortisol. Cortisol is essential to normal physiology, but repeated or chronic stress leads to overproduction of cortisol that will affect sleep, appetite, food choices, glucose regulation, and other factors involved in maintaining a healthy weight. This doesn't mean that watching the news causes weight gain or that cortisol is the explanation for everyone's difficulty losing weight. It does mean that our overall stress environment is one part of metabolic health that shouldn't be ignored.

From Watching the News to Doomscrolling

When I first wrote this tip, “turn off the news” usually meant turning off the television. Today, the news follows us everywhere. Many people check their phones shortly after waking, receive alerts throughout the day, scroll through social media whenever they have a spare moment, and then spend more time on their phones before going to sleep.

The term doomscrolling describes the tendency to continue consuming negative or disturbing online content even though doing so often leaves us feeling worse. One story leads to another, one video becomes ten, and a quick check of the phone can easily turn into 30 or 45 minutes of scrolling. The result may be more anxiety, anger, distraction, or mental fatigue—not exactly the state of mind that makes healthy choices easier.

Stress can also influence the way we eat. People under stress may be more drawn to highly palatable foods, particularly foods high in sugar and fat. Poor sleep and fatigue can compound the problem. Add distracted eating to the equation—dinner in one hand and the phone in the other—and it becomes very easy to eat quickly and pay little attention to hunger, fullness, or how much you've actually eaten.

Becoming a Better Gatekeeper

In my original article, I encouraged people to become better “gatekeepers” of what they allow into their minds. I think that advice is even more relevant today. We pay considerable attention to nutritional quality but often very little attention to the quality and quantity of information we consume.

Think of it as mental nutrition. You don't have to ignore current events or abandon social media. The goal is to consume information deliberately rather than compulsively. Checking the news once or twice a day is very different from allowing alerts, headlines, posts, videos, and arguments to interrupt you from morning until bedtime.

This brings up something even larger than stress: attention. Your phone doesn't merely consume time; it consumes attention. Every notification, headline, text, reel, and post competes for a limited resource. Improving your health also requires that resource. Planning meals, exercising, shopping intentionally, noticing hunger and fullness, getting adequate sleep, and following through on your goals all require attention.

Your greatest resource is your attention. Be careful where you spend it.

Try It for One Week

Try changing your information habit for seven days. Check the news at predetermined times rather than continuously. Turn off unnecessary news and social-media notifications. Avoid doomscrolling for at least an hour before bed, and put the phone away while you're eating. When you notice yourself automatically reaching for your phone, pause for a moment and ask why. Sometimes it's useful to discover how often we pick up our phones without consciously deciding to do so.

Use some of that reclaimed time for things that actually support your health: walking, exercising, preparing food, spending time outside, reading, talking with someone you care about, or simply allowing yourself a few minutes without constant stimulation.

Weight management is about much more than calories. Nutrition and exercise matter, but so do sleep, hormones, metabolic health, medications, lifestyle, and stress. When someone is struggling to lose weight, it's worth looking at the whole picture rather than assuming the answer is simply to eat less and exercise more.

Sometimes improving your health means adding something—a better diet, more movement, better sleep, or appropriate treatment. Other times it means identifying something that's working against you and doing less of it.

Turn off the news. Put down the phone. Give your mind some quiet—and put your attention back where you want it.