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 Reduce your constant desire to eat more fat and sugar by managing stress.
Humans love the right amount of stress. Stress energizes, stimulates, and excites. That's why you go on wild rides at the amusement park. That's why you watch horror movies. That's why you crank up the music or go a little too fast on the freeway. The goal is not to have a stress free life. A little bit of stress is fun. And that's what you are built to handle: a little bit of stress at a time. Historically stress did come in short bursts. Let's say it's late at night and suddenly you see someone possibly lurking outside your window. To respond to the threat you body immediately mobilizes all its resources and shuts down everything nonessential. You release energy so you can either fight or flee. Your heart rate goes up. You start to sweat. Your pupils dilate. Your body turns off growth, reproduction, and your immune system so you save energy. There's no reason to worry about reproduction in a crisis. You need to worry about surviving. Now! All these physical responses turn on when you think something threatening is happening. The threat doesn't have to be real, you just have to think the threat is real. If the stranger turns out to be a burglar then you are prepared. But let's say the scary stranger is really your roommate. Then your thinking immediately changes. You sigh with relief and all the physical stress responses reverse and you go back to normal again. That's exactly how your stress response is supposed to work. Stress stays low normally, a crisis happens and your stress response ramps up, and once the crisis is over you return back to normal. Chronic Stress Decreases Your Life Expectancy The problem is in the modern world you can experience stress all the time. You may experience stress in traffic, waiting in line at the grocery store, or worrying about your mortgage. The number of stressors in modern life is potentially infinite. All these are psychological stresses. They come from your belief that something threatening is happening. You think yourself into feeling stressed. The good news is you can learn to manage these stresses. Psychological stresses, like worrying about being fired from your job, can be chronic, which means they happen all the time. Under chronic stress your stress response is turned on all the time. The problem is your stress is response is not meant to be on all the time. When your stress response is on all the time all those wonderful fight or flight responses start causing damage and you get sick. You can suffer from hypertension, impotency, osteoporosis, exhaustion, muscle waisting, ulcers, heart disease, and loss of memory. And we've seen the strong link between weight gain and stress in the Stress Threat. Chronic stress is not good for you. What can you do about chronic stress? Dealing with stress is a lot like dealing with weight problems. Stress management isn't something you can fit into a five minute break between meetings or just do on the weekends. It's something you have to do all the time, which is exactly like staying on a diet and is why managing stress and staying on a diet are both so hard. Some common stress management techniques are: Relaxation Exercises – You learn to relax muscle groups throughout your body. When a stressful event happens you can use this skill to reduce tension. Breathing Exercises – You learn to breathe deeply when you become stressed, like you do when you are calm, so you can control your fight-flight response. Meditation – Meditation is a skill that has been shown to be very calming and improves your ability to handle stress. Visual Imagery – You learn to take time during the day to imagine you are in pleasant and calming place. Physical Exercise – Exercise helps relieve stress and improve your physical, emotional, and mental health.
Positive Self-talk – Talk to yourself with positive calming phrases like "I am calm, I can stay relaxed," "Breathe deeply and slowly, let the tension go," or "I can handle this." Too often the way we talk to ourselves inside our own heads just makes things worse. Balanced, Healthy Lifestyle – Eat a balanced diet, get enough sleep, don't work too much, have fun, develop meaningful relationships, and put some effort into spiritual growth. Don't Use Alcohol and Drugs to Cope With Stress – You only create more stress by using drugs and alcohol to deal with stress.
All these techniques can work well for you. But in the end these are all just rules. What is hard is consistently applying the rules. Overcoming temptation is always the challenge. To go beyond techniques you have to look at attitudes. Why does one person get stressed in a traffic jam and another person sing along with the radio, apparently unaffected by the traffic disaster around them? What makes the same exact event psychologically stressful for one person and not another? Why does one person see the glass half-full and another person see the glass as half-empty? It stands to reason if you can be more like the people who handle stress better then you can avoid the bad effects of chronic stress. The Long Lived Nuns A really interesting study called the Nun Study shows how certain personality traits help some people handle stress better and that handling stress better leads to much better health as you age. For over thirty years data has been collected from the School Sisters of Notre Dame. Nuns are a good group to study because they live in very similar environments over long periods of time. What researchers noticed is that the nuns who had the most positive attitude at a very young age were 2½ times more likely to be alive late in life when compared to sisters who were more negative at a young age. That's a dramatic difference. The nuns who aged well showed a sense of humor and the ability to adapt to new challenges. It's not that these nuns didn't experience psychological stress. They did. But because of their positive attitude it's thought these nuns shut down their stress response sooner and quickly returned to normal. They didn't experience chronic stress. So the obvious next question is: how do you get a better attitude? Develop a Better Stress Handling Attitude Robert M. Sapolsky, a top stress researcher, has come up with a few characteristics of better stress handlers: Can you tell the difference between a big thing and a little thing? A lion attacking you is a big thing. Is a traffic jam really a big thing or is more likely a little thing? Better stress handlers know what is a real threat to them. If it's a big thing, do you try to get a little control? Do you take control by acting or do you just sit around and mope? Better stress handlers don't sit passively by and let events happen to them. They try to get some control of a situation by acting. Can you tell if the outcome is good or bad? Can you tell when your life is improving? Can you tell when you've won or lost? Or do you get just as stressed over a good outcome as a bad outcome? Better stress handlers can tell when they've won and there's no reason to be stressed anymore. If the outcome is bad do you at least have an outlet for dealing with the stress? Do you take your frustration out in other ways or do you just bottle it up? Better stress handlers find a way to let out their pent up emotions rather than keeping it all inside.
Approaching events in your life with these steps in mind will help you become a better stress handler. Develop a Supportive Social Network Unfortunately, it won't be enough to manage stress using only the stress management techniques we talked about earlier. Neither is developing a better stress handling attitude. There's a much bigger source of stress in your life that we have yet to talk about: isolation. Sapolsky says you are much more likely to have high stress levels if you are socially isolated. There is a three fold difference in mortality rates for people who are socially isolated. Being alone is a major source of stress. This is especially true as you age. As you get older the people in your life may get sick, grow apart or die. Many older people find themselves all alone and this is a major health risk for them. We are social animals. A big part of our well being seems to come from being with other people. It's crucial to keep and develop relationships with family and friends, especially as you age. To Learn More |
