CHAPTER 10

Relief From Stress

When tension runs high, we all have a natural reaction - we reach for food. No, not carrot sticks! Stress food has one common ingredient - it’s fattening. But that’s not the only physical reaction to stress...

Headaches

A sick feeling in the pit of the stomach

A general feeling of anxiety

The body’s reaction to stress is to signal the adrenal gland to release the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Cortisol interferes with your normal eating habits, inhibits the muscle repair process and alters your metabolism. This means that your body will store more calories as fat rather than burning them off. To make matters worse, the fat will tend to deposit itself around your waistline. That’s because intra-abdominal fat has more cortisol receptors than fat below the skin.

The bottom line on stress is that it will hamper your wellness and weight management program.

Here are 14 ways to de-stress your life:

  1. Good Communication: Keeping good lines of communication with your partner, children, friends or a colleague can go a long way to reducing the load of stress. People with social support networks have a tendency to cope better with stressful situations.
  2. Develop Peaceable Qualities: Learning to interact with other people on the basis of respect and fellow feeling is a great stress reducer. You will get back what you give. Such qualities as mildness, self control, kindness and peace may be out of step with the world but they are the qualities you need to develop for your life to be balanced and smooth i.e. stress free.
  3. Don’t Expect Perfection: Expect your best. Know that you’ll make mistakes. Rather than beating yourself up over it, meditate on the experience, distill it, take what lesson from it you can so that you’ll be better next time, then forget it.
  4. Prioritise: Have a daily things-to-do list. When you are doing a task, focus on it completely and do it to the very best of your ability. If it’s not important, don’t stress about it.
  5. Have a Sense of Humour: Learn to laugh at yourself. Develop a self-deprecating sense of humour. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Having a sense of humour will help you to get the situation into perspective. Tomorrow is another day.
  6. Get Enough Sleep: You need an average of 8 hours sleep every night. Get it and your stress levels will diminish. Have a regular bedtime. The bedroom should be quiet, dark and relatively cool.
  7. Get Back to Nature: Have a regular time each week when you go hiking, walk along the beach or just sit in the back yard. Take this time to see the beauty of nature around you. Hear it, see it, feel it and appreciate it.
  8. Learn to Say Sorry: It’s amazing how de-stressing to a situation that one word is and rather than leading to people feeling less of you, the reverse is usually the case. You will be more respected if you say sorry.
  9. Develop Humility: Just as pride goes before a fall so too, humility serves to clear the road ahead. It smoothes the way, removes obstacles and attracts us to others. Don’t, however, mistake meekness or humility for weakness. It is a sign of moral strength, give it a try.
  10. Forgive: Forgiveness is a beautiful thing to see. It is also therapeutic. Unforgiving thoughts have been shown to lead to increased blood pressure and heart rate.
  11. Meditate: Learn to take time to sit quietly and meditate about what’s happening in your life. Get the situation into perspective. Make this a logical brain rather than an emotional brain experience. When irrational emotional thoughts raise their head, quash them immediately. Look for solutions.
  12. Depersonalise the Situation: Stuff happens. It’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself for every little thing.
  13. Delegation of tasks: As well as taking a load off your own shoulders, delegating builds others up because it shows trust in their abilities. Just make sure that you select the right person for the task.
  14. Obstacle Management: Some of the most common obstacles that increase stress are procrastination, interruptions and feeling overwhelmed. You can nullify them by having a things-to-do list, then select the top 6, allocating a set time to each one. To avoid interruptions, turn off your technology and learn to say no!