Finding it hard to take off a few pounds? It may not be what you eat after all. So says a study conducted by Zofia Zukowska of Georgetown University. In experiments involving mice, Zukowska and her associates set out to determine whether there is a causal connection between stress and weight gain.

To explore this, Zukowska and her colleagues subjected mice to chronic stress — either standing in cold water an hour a day or being caged with a more aggressive alpha mouse for 10 minutes a day — and then gave them standard feed or a high-fat, high-sugar diet similar to the junk-food fare that many people consume.

“By treating the mice the way humans are treated, which is introducing a chronic stress from which they cannot escape and introducing this abundance of food, we mimicked what happens in American society,” Zukowska said.

After two weeks, only the mice that were both stressed and fed the junk-food diet gained a significant amount of weight, accumulating about twice as much fat in their bellies as non-stressed mice that consumed the same diet.

So send the kiddies to Grandma’s, or just put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the bathroom door. Then take a long, hot soak in the tub and unwind. You’ve got nothing to lose but your worries… and maybe a few extra pounds.