Did you know that stress can make you sick. Stress can create illness or make any disease or condition you have worse! And stress can even affect your weight.
Are you stressed out and overweight? Did you know that stress can make you sick AND overweight? There is a very strong connection between these two experiences that may have even begun BEFORE your birth. I know that sounds crazy, but actual unbiased studies are showing that when your mother was pregnant with you, if SHE was stressed or even dieting it could have affected your body in utero!
What Causes Stress?
Are you suffering from STRESS? Sure, everyone has stress occasionally, and your body is designed to deal with a bout of 30 seconds and then go back to its NORMAL state of calm. You’ve heard of fight or flight or flee? That’s short-term stress.
Animals In The Wild Experience Short Term Stress
Short term stress is what animals in the wild experience when trying to escape a predator hungry to eat them. Either they escape and go back to normal, or they are lunch. They don't converse with their fellow zebras about how hard they ran and how scared they were for days afterwards! Their stress is over once they escape and they go back to their regular life.
Not So For Humans
Short term stress like animals experience are actually not harmful. That's because that kind of stress passes quickly. It's like exercising a muscle. But human stress is different. In our modern lives, stress rarely lasts under a minute and then goes away! We talk to others about it and go over and over the details. We re-experience the stress when we talk about it. That means your stress response is lasting far longer than the stress trigger itself! It becomes long-term or chronic stress.
Rather than being a little annoyance, the effects of chronic stress, or serial stress (like death from ten thousand paper cuts) can affect your life and your health.
It’s been estimated that between 75-95% of all visits to doctors’ offices are for conditions created by or worsened by stress.
Stress affects people physically, mentally and emotionally- It’s a 3 part system.
What Does Stress Do To You?
Everyone has the potential to have stress. It’s a normal response to a short-term event. When you exercise you stress your muscles. But when you rest afterwards they heal and actually get stronger.
It can serve a good purpose of testing you and can make you more resilient in the future. But stress becomes a big problem when it SHOULD go away quickly, but it doesn’t.
You develop chronic, habitual stress from the things you tell yourself are “bad”. This type of stress is very harmful to your body and mind. It actually makes biological changes in your body from the stress hormone cortisol.
Physical symptoms of chronic stress
Stress is a feeling that you have from an experience in your life that you tell yourself is “bad”. It's a bit confusing, because you may believe that "something" is stressful, but it's actually what you tell yourself about it that makes it stressful. And the psychological response can actually end up being worse that the actual event! That goes away, but the thoughts remain in your head and continue to stress you out. That’s like PTSD.
What Causes Stress?
Stress triggers are some of the things that you allow to cause you stress.
Here are the big stressors that are common to all people:
- 1Economic Security– not enough money, job loss, losing your home
- 2Lack of Safety: Abuse (ACE Study)
- 3Health Issues - having a disease, illness or chronic condition that impacts your health
- 4Death of a loved one
- 5Traumatic event – near accident - PTSD
- 6Moving away from home
- 7Divorce – poor relationships
Psychological Stress Triggers
People pleasing – Not Being Yourself
Being SHAMED about Your Body
Rushing, not having enough time- multitasking
Dealing with Traffic -
Too much Responsibilities: Caregiver for children, elderly parents
Perfectionism
Me Too – Sexual Harassment
Inner Critic – Low Self Esteem
Depression/Anxiety
Loneliness
Body dysmorphia – Hating your body
DIETING and restricting food
Lack of Assertiveness
Lack of Exercise - sitting too much
add your own.....
Are YOU Stressed?
When you are chronically stressed you may not even notice it! Here are things to do to scan your body. Although these are not all inclusive, it may give you insight into whether your body is reacting stressed. Awareness is the first way to stop stress!
- Are you holding your breath? (breathe through your nose) – Parasympathetic system
- Are your shoulders raised and getting close to your ear lobes?
- Is your face tight and your brow furrowed?
- Are you holding tension in another part of your body (if you have neck stiffness, focus on your neck, or your lower back)
- Are you grinding your teeth?
- Are you feeling anxious, or depressed?
- Is your heart pounding?
- Are you sweating?
Relieve Stress To Manage Your Weight and Health
People often use "comfort food" when they are stressed. If you are stressed and overweight it is important to consider whether you are eating from stress. When you are multitasking and not paying attention to how much you are eating you will end up overeating and gaining weight. Multitasking is stressful as well! Stress can make it impossible to get a good night's sleep- and that too can affect your metabolism and make you gain weight!
A Practice of Stress Relief
There are many effective ways to relieve stress. But the best thing is to have a steady practice to you are not reacting to stress, but PREVENTING most of the things from bothering you in the first place!
You can learn many techniques that I rely on:
- EFT Tapping
- HeartMath Stress Relief Using Biofeedback
- Becoming Assertive
- and more....
What will practicing HeartMath® Stress Relief do for you?
24% improvement in the ability to focus
30% improvement in sleep
38% improvement in calmness
46% drop in anxiety
48% drop in fatigue
56% drop in depression
43% improvement in indigestion, heart burn or stomach upset
Can you imagine your life if you DON’T manage stress? Are you risking your physical and mental health by ignoring this problem?
I invite you to work with me- we’ll identify your stress trigger, and work on an individualized program to lower your perception of, and reaction to stress.
The only thing that will keep you from relieving stress is if you are getting something more from staying where you are… (are you ready?)
But you must be ready to deal with stress in order to improve your health and to STOP stress eating!
The antidote for stress is CHOOSING and practicing to change your attitude and behavior. You alone can make yourself happy, by using your thoughts, feelings or body. It doesn’t matter which way – it’s part of that three way loop you saw above. You can change your thoughts to change your body, change your emotions, or change your feelings- and it goes through the loop and changes everything!
No time to do stress relief?
Finally- If you don’t have time for stress relief – do it TWICE!
Find the method of stress relief that works best for you! Or schedule a free laser-focused call for suggestions.
We can work together to get you free from unrelenting stress that will improve all aspects of your life!
