Ep: #16 - Managing Stress For Wellness & Weight Loss

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Do you ever feel stressed out? Feeling a little frazzled? Overwhelmed?

You're not alone, me too!

But it doesn't have to control your life. There are things you can do to manage stress and keep your weight in check at the same time.

At the end of the day, you deserve to feel as good as you can both mentally and physically.

With a little bit of time, practice and patience thought you can take back control of your life and start managing stress in a healthy way.

Let's get you started on that today.

Research has shown that chronic stress can lead to increased hunger and cravings for high-fat, high-sugar foods.

Now, I do not advocate cutting out any food groups but instead playing about with quality and quantity in a way that feels aligned with you and super doable but clearly, this is may not be as easy if physically your body is throwing up a false signal and stress is messing with your mind mojo but you can take back control.

Stress also causes our bodies to pump out more of the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that can increase appetite and fat storage, particularly in the abdominal area.

So not only are we more likely to eat when we're stressed but we're also more likely to store any excess. Not ideal when you're trying to lose weight.

Throughout my weight loss journey, I worked on stress and finding balance as I talked about last week and taking control of my stress and weight loss has been life-changing. Hence why I advocate working on life and weight loss so you can take control again and step into your true power.

So what can you do about stress?

Identify Your Triggers

The first step is always ALWAYS awareness. You got to know where you are at. Becoming aware of what triggers your stress is critical. Once you know what sets you off, you can start to develop a plan to manage it.

You are likely going to have a number of triggers. You may also find that those triggers change on any given day or as was my case during your lady cycle for example.

Some common triggers and things that impact stress are:

- Lack of sleep

- Reduced movement

- An overly demanding job or home life

- Finances

- Relationship problems

- Lifestyle choices

One thing I would offer on this is to really try and face the stress, get to know yourself well and your triggers and be specific.

Saying 'work' isn't going to cut it. What about work? Why? When? Who? How? Etc

Say it’s a particular person…what do they do, when, why, how etc?

It is worthwhile jotting these down as and when you notice these situations coming up.

Circle of Control

Something that can be really helpful when working on stress is identifying what is in your circle of control. I have an exercise on this in the Triple-A-Way Course and Membership.

In short, your circle of control includes all the areas of your life that you can change or influence. For example, you have control over how you react to a situation, what you eat, and whether or not you exercise.

On the other hand, there are things that are outside of your control. You can't control the weather, other people, or the economy.

When you're feeling stressed, it's important to focus on the things that are in your control. This will help you feel more empowered and less overwhelmed.

So going back to your list of things that cause you stress what is or is not in your control on these? 

If you find yourself worrying about things that are out of your control, this is where Mind Ninjary comes in.  Mind Ninjay is what I call the module in the course where I teach all the life coaching tools I know and how to use those to self-coach.

Your ACTION steps can then be built around changing things to lighten off the triggers, focusing on things within your control so you can gain back control over your stress.

These might include things like:

• Scheduling Time for Relaxation, make it a non-negotiable. Doesn't have to be for long even 10-15 minutes a day. It's important to take a step back and relax.
• Journaling - leave me a #journaling if you want the link for the video I shot on Journaling
• Gratitude practices - Often overlooked as a bit woo but it is all about finding ways to create more of the emotions you want to feel, given equal air time.
• Thought work/mind nijary and self coaching - I have a whole suite of tools on this in the membership depending on what is triggering the stress.

To give you a live example I still work on to this day:

In the day job the workload is not within my control it just appears in my inbox and I cannot stop it. What I found was that I had certain thoughts that would come in like "I am too busy", "I can't do this", "I will never get it done". 

Funny thing is these were not true! I would always get it done. 

These thoughts would all lead to me feeling stressed. When I felt stressed I would procrastorsnack and get distracted by the thoughts and rising anxiety. 

The result, my work got harder to complete and I would get more behind and my weight loss was impacted. By identifying this I am now able to catch myself when I hear the thoughts. I stop stress in its tracks most days as a result. 

I then have techniques I use to complete the stress cycle like saying mantres, breathing, moving, and music. Most importantly though thought work. From gathering the awareness I see the thoughts for what they are…lies….I can then have an internal chat with myself to self soothe and focus. The work was not in my control but I had the power to choose how I showed up at that moment and it changed everything!

Commit to figuring it out

Holding yourself ACCOUNTABLE and committing to figuring out the root of your stress and continuing to take action is critical.

You can choose to try and ignore your stress and battle through each day but this is like trying to hold a balloon underwater.

You can hold it for so long but eventually, it is going to pop up and smack you in the face. It is always better to be proactive and try to get ahead of the stress before it builds up too much.

This might look like scheduling regular check-ins with yourself or setting aside some time each day/week to reflect on how you're feeling and what might be causing your stress.

It's also important to be gentle with yourself during this I have covered in a previous video let me know if you want the link for that one about the importance of self-compassion and self-love in weight loss leave me a #selflove. This goes for stress too. The fighting of reality, judging the fact you feel stressed, and that you 'should' not feel stressed only creates suffering. If you can move into a place of acceptance this is when you can do great things as the path becomes clearer for how you can solve it as step out of the role of victim to your circumstances and into the creator of your life!

What is the next easy step you could take? & How are you going to hold yourself accountable to that?

RECAP

We all have stress in our lives it is a part of life. But when it starts to affect your day-to-day activities, like eating habits and sleep patterns, you need to take notice and make changes. You don't want this type of constant worry or anxiety to end up impacting other aspects of your health too and other areas of your life.

You can take steps today to take back control of your life & weight loss & step into your true power.

Want to get started on losing weight for the last time? 

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