What does stress have to do with controlling your life?
Stress can interfere with your weight control or weight loss - its one of the greatest challenges.
Learning how to approach stress with a fearless attitude could be the single most important piece achieving your weight control.
Stress in your life is like working off a battery power versus a rechargeable resource the more power pull from it the weaker it gets and then you get.
There are different kinds of stresses, and here are a few of these stress excuses I hear:
- I don't have time to workout because I must take the kids to school.
- My manager called me yesterday and told me that I must get my sales up this month. I don't have time to workout.
After years of training clients, I view, some of these "stress" excuses as simply that, excuses to get out of something a person don't really want to do. However, my view of how actual stress plays into our lives for goals, change and well-being has expanded to realize the necessity of dealing with and /or acknowledging the stresses in our lives.
Here's an analogy: The Heavy Burden Of Stress
Imagine running a mile, and every ¼ mile you'll add a 20lb, weight to your back. Eventually adding too much weight will weaken your ability to finish the mile. Either you will slow down drastically or the weight will overwhelm you enough to completely stop.
Now there is the obvious negative stress, but there is also positive stress, and finally the worse: stress that's leads to burnout.
Some of "good" life stressors can actually lead to the same demise of your weight control goals.
For instance, Jim is a happily married man with a beautiful wife and well-behaved children. He is a very successful businessman who travels to many exotic places with his family when closing business deals. He takes his clients to the best restaurants in town, serving the finest wines, and concludes the evening with dancing, deserts and drinks.
However, here is the problem. Jim is overweight, has asthma and bad feet. He knows he has to lose weight, not only for his health reasons but also for daily management reasons in his work environment.
Therefore, he comes to me a trainer. Here is someone who has everything going for them: personal achievement, travel to far away places, financial security and more. However, he needs me to straighten out his life with respect to exercise and weight control. Even "good" stressors can disrupt the normal flow of life.
Important attributes are needed to control or lose weight, and all stressors deplete those resources.
Weight control requires the ability to guard over your time, not only with others but also yourself. When you are continually fighting over daily hassles of life, these stresses weaken your ability to start out on this endeavor, which requires super human effort. Weight control / weight loss becomes the last one on the priority list. The healthy disciplines and patterns of watching what you eat, exercising, taking time to mentally and emotionally focus on your goal is abandoned.
Good and bad stressors are a part of life. It's unavoidable. The key is how well you can cope with the heavy burden of it. At the end of the day we must live with it and overcome.
"If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you will die a lot of times." Learn to embrace both good and bad stresses with the emotional ups and downs, and refocus of YOU and your goals.
EP
Creating and customizing reliable, cost effective but superior voluntary health & wellness and lifestyle benefits for both employer and their employees. Over 20 years of marketing and sales experience within a high growth and competitive business market. Proficient at delivering genuine customer care & service which rewards any enterprise with a flood of referrals and increased profitability.