Thursday, November 30, 2006

What Does Stress have to do With Losing Weight

You can eat healthy and exercise on a regular basis, but if you don’t deal with your feelings and what is in your head, you still aren’t going to feel good. Our emotions and our mental health have a lot do with who we are and the decisions we make in our lives.

Eliminating stress, or I guess I should say reducing stress, I don’t think you can completely eliminate it in today’s society, it is going to go a long way in improving your quality of life. The problem is a lot of people are under so much stress, they don’t know where to start to make changes to reduce it.

Here are some of thing that I have found helpful in reducing stress in my life:
• Do 5 five minutes of deep breathing.
• Take some time to reflect on the positive things in your life.
• Say “no” to tasks you don’t want to do and you don’t have to do.
• Have a bed time ritual. (I cross stitch or read for up to an hour before I go to bed).
• Do deep relaxation or medication exercises.
• Spend some time doing something you know will make you feel better. This could be doing something to pamper your self, taking a walk in the park, organizing a small area of your home or office, writing a letter to a friend or writing in a journal. This can be any number of things that you may enjoy.
• Spend some quality time with your family.

I have found that getting organized in other areas of my life makes it easier for me to make healthy food choices and to stick to a regular exercise plan. My experience is that when I get organized in some areas of my life the other areas of my life soon fall into place.

As soon as I start experience a lot of chaos in my life, I try to take some steps to eliminate the stress and get the important things in my life back into place and then it makes easier to move forward with the areas that take more time and effort.