fat.
Stress will cause high blood pressure, which can lead to heart problems that can lead to strokes, heart attacks, or even death.
In order to be healthy, you will first have to manage your stress.
As you can see, stress puts a tremendous toll on the body because our body’s reaction to stress is only designed for short-term and the effect that it has over a long-term period is far from healthy.
In addition to the above, stress can also trigger bouts of emotional eating and/or cravings.
The hormones released into our bodies while we are stressed trigger cravings for foods that are sugary, salty, and fatty.
When under stress, we crave those things and so we are more apt to hit up a drive through, grab a few donuts or some pre-packed snacks, all of which are full of processed foods, artificial ingredients, calories, and full of fat.
Emotional eating is often an outlet of stress simply because we are not sure what to do, and we translate that stressed feeling into hunger, even though we usually are not.
We eat to burn off the excess energy that stress causes our bodies to build up.
Getting a handle on your stress will not only make you feel better, but it will help your day go by smoother.
When you can handle stress in a healthy way, you are better equipped to deal with life, either at home or at work.
Things are not as hectic and you do not feel as rushed or as anxious. You will even find that you have time for yourself.
Not only will your days be easier, but also you will boost your weight gain factor by learning to manage your stress as well as reducing your risk for stress related diseases.
Stress is not something that can be avoided, there are deadlines to meet, your child might have gotten hurt, or a car accident could have happened, these are things that you cannot control but you can learn to control your reaction to them.
Simple breathing exercises are the best way to give yourself a break from stress.
If you feel your emotions going high, feel flustered, anxious, or overwhelmed you can take a few minutes to just do some basic deep breathing exercises, which will help boost your oxygen intake, and will help you feel not only refreshed and rejuvenated, but more relaxed as well.
These are a great way to boost your energy if you feel like you are starting to lose your energy during the day, instead of reaching for a candy bar, have some fruit and do about five minutes of deep breathing to make you feel more awake and energized.
Either standing straight up, or sitting up straight in a chair, take a slow, deep breath, filling up with air from your lower belly first so that your chest expands last.
Hold this for a few heartbeats and then very slowly exhale until you have slowly let go of all of the air and as you exhale let all of your muscles relax and go loose.
Imagine as you inhale that you are sucking air in through a straw, so that you are filling with air from the bottom first, then your chest and then very slowly exhale, feeling your chest empty first, then the rest of you.
With each exhale, feel yourself go more and more relaxed. Continue doing this until you feel relaxed and calmer.
Exercise can help you burn off that energy that you store when feeling stressed. So take a walk or take a class in Yoga, Pilates or Tai chi, these are low impact classes that not only help you tone muscles but they help manage stress by incorporating breathing exercises at the same time.
Meditation is a great way to help calm your mind and find your center so that you can go about your day without feeling like stress is weighing on you like a ton of bricks.
Meditation can be traditional, you sitting a room and doing some basic breathing and mind calming techniques or it can be in a more familiar way.
You have probably gone into a meditative state before without realizing it, anytime you find yourself doing something and then realizing that you had tuned out or gone to autopilot, which is a type of meditation.
When you are fully engaged in a hobby and your find yourself so focused on what you are doing that you find that your worries and anxieties have just slipped away, that is meditation.
Pick up the daily crossword, jog, garden, or spend some time daily working on a hobby that you enjoy.
Trust us, the time will be well spent so find time for yourself and for what you enjoy.
You can try meditation with visualization as well. This is when you are meditating and you visualize yourself being someplace peaceful and serene.
The goal is to make the visualization so real, that you respond as if you were, letting the stress melt away.
You are forcing your mind to stop focusing on the things that are causing you stress at the moment and to focus on something pleasant instead.
Several guided visualizations also include PMR or progressive muscle relaxation, which is a guided visualization to relax.
Stress makes us tense up our muscles involuntarily so by using a progressive muscle relaxation guided meditation, you will be walked through guided imagery to relax each and every part of your body.
You can buy CD’s to listen to or you can find clips online, youtube.com has a variety of guided meditations with or without PMR to help you.
Try pampering yourself occasionally. Anybody who has ever had a massage can tell you that they feel wonderful afterwards so get a 15-minute massage on your lunch break every now and then to help un-knot up tensed muscles and to help promote a feeling of wellbeing.
When things get stressed and situations often escalate quickly and you have no choice but to deal with it, do not panic.
You will never solve a problem by worrying yourself to the point of nearly having an anxiety attack.
Before you lose your cool, take a five-minute time out. If you find yourself in a situation where you are not making progress and it frustrates you, this could be a project that you are momentarily stuck on or even an argument with a co-worker, walk away for five minutes.
Walk around the building, sit outside for a moment and do your breathing exercises, or go grab cold water.
The point is to take a break so that you can re-focus your mind onto something positive. Take a look at the flowers outside; find a butterfly to watch, just get away from the stressful situation, and find something that makes you smile.
Pull out a picture of your spouse, your kids, or even your pets. Close your eyes, pull up a happy memory, and just re-live that memory for a few minutes until you are feeling calmer.
Think of stress like a pressure cooker, the longer it stays closed, the more pressure it puts on you but if you find ways to release the steam inside – the stress – then the pressure never gets to the point of putting you in danger.
You will still have some stress, we all do, but it will not be to the point of being unmanageable if you learn to keep it tolerable.
You have heard of the phrase “letting off steam,” consider it
