Weekly Meeting Topic : Managing Stress

This morning I rolled out of bed at 8am, all I really wanted to do was stay in there.  Also I was feeling rough, like hangover rough when I didn't have the good time the night before.  However, I got myself up and going, cleaned the boy's litter tray (yay), made a pot of tea, then headed out the door to my Saturday Weight Watchers meeting.  I got there to see we didn't have our usual meeting leader, I was saddened to find out her Dad had passed away a week ago and she's having a hard time with it.

I'd like everyone out there who leads a stress-free life to put up there hands out there.  Mmm hmmm that's what I thought not a single hand went up.

There are so many stressors in life let's list a few that come to mind:

• Your job
• Your family/spouse/children
• Finances
• Your Weight
• Holidays & celebrations
• Change

There are so many more here that aren't listed but they cause stress!  At times our stressors are within our control, we put ourselves under undue stress.  Sometimes things/life are just beyond our control and we have to ride the wave.

Stress has a funny effect on our bodies, and if you've followed The Biggest Looser at all you know from their weigh ins the weeks when a contestant has been under extreme stress despite the controlled setting (food & exercise) they have a very poor result or a gain at the scale.  For some strange reason stress can make us gain weight despite our best efforts to eat properly.  So we have to learn to deal with it.

How can we deal with our stress?  For many of us folks who are or have been overweight, our first instinct has been to reach for food.  We eat for comfort (a very fleeting feeling) or sometimes just to feel (again short lived).  We often eat without thinking when we are stressed out, I know I also start skipping out on workouts, go home from work and go to bed. 

So when we are stressed and are about to reach for food one should try to STOP.  Think about why we're reaching for that food is it a WANT or a NEED?  Are you eating just because you want to or are you eating because you're hungry?  Instead of eating, get away from the food, go out, go for a walk, to do something to distract yourself.  During this time you've gotten away from the food analyze why you wanted to eat, maybe you can come up with a solution as to why you're stressed (remember sometimes, its beyond your control).

So what can we do to deal with the stress?

• Exercise (I felt fantastic last night after finally getting to the gym!)
• Use your tracker, not just to track your food but make notes about how you've been feeling, about the bad days and the stressful days.  You can look back on this especially when you didn't have the results you wanted at the scale
• Ask for help
• Learn from your experiences
• Manage your environment
• Manage your feelings
• Monitor yourself
• Prepare yourself
• Take care of yourself

There are ways we can approach a stressful situation or time and it all comes down to attitude.

• Those who do
• Those who don't
• Those who will
• Those who wont

You want to be the person who does and who will.

Gosh my notes from today's meeting are just all over the place, I found this leader wasn't so streamlined in her thought/presentation which made it challenging for me to pull all the information together to share with you.  She did have a great quote at the end from Abraham Lincoln :

"Always Bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any one thing"