Overweight and obese people who are under pressure at work or stress at home, or who have all sorts of problems in their personal life are more likely to gain more pounds than those whose weight ranks as normal. A new study comes to show that there is a direct link between how much a person weighs and how many pounds they will gain under stress conditions, as USA Today informs.

The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, analyzed data on 1,335 men and women. They had their weight and stress levels measured twice, once in 1995 and then again in 2004, and then eventually compared throughout time. The findings revealed that both men and women whose weight was over the limit had a clear tendency of packing even more weight in situations of stress.

For men, these translated into job-related issues or difficulty in terms of paying the bills; for women, the stress inducting causes were more varied, ranging from a feeling of lack of control over their own lives to job issues and problems in their personal life. Oppositely, researchers learned, people whose weight could be classified as normal did not fluctuate in poundage over the course of the years no matter how much stress they were under.

“The stress effect didn’t appear to impact normal-weight people, just those who are were overweight or obese from the beginning of the study.” lead author Jason Block, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, says for the aforementioned publication. This, in turn, Block further says, could be one explanation for the current obesity epidemics that health experts keep warning us about, in the sense that stress derived from recession has led to more weight gain in already overweight people.

“This tells us that periods of stress, like we are experiencing right now with the economic decline, can lead to even more weight gain among those who already have a weight problem. And weight-loss programs should incorporate stress-reduction techniques as part of their plans to help people lose weight more successfully.” Block concludes by saying.