Weight Loss – I?m usually good at handling stress. On a day to day basis, I?m pretty stress free. So stress doesn?t really affect my eating. But I pity people in stressful jobs, stressful relationships, stressful life situations …because I know they …

I have friends who have added so much stress to their lives with their complex food programs that they are not only NOT healthier, they are getting fatter as well. Since incorporating ESE, letting go of the term “bad food” and finding exercise that I enjoy, I have never been happier or healthier!

This entry is just another example of your innate ability to simplify and demystify weight loss obstacles. Please don’t ever let the pop-psychology experts get to you. Keep common sense king… it’s what sets you apart!

JK, I find it’s kind of ironic that much of the stress in our lives that can cause over eating comes from the stress of trying to stick to a diet, eating healthy and all that crap. it’s an endless cycle.

I used to be so stressed about “eating right” that I would spend all of my emotional energy on what i was eating and the rest of my life fell apart. Now I have nearly no emotional attachment to food, no cravings, no “addictions” and no guilt.

Oh how great it is to be free! Our stress over food should have ended once we developed as a society to the point where most people could get enough to eat on a daily basis. But nope, we gotta make up all sorts of garbage to keep that stress level about food high.

(*sigh*)

Keep on fight’n,

The Fit rebel

You may have a tremendous amount of discipline to stay on a diet for years. Eventually your emotional pain level will overflow and you will fall to temptation. That is why the Gov. says all diets and exercise programs are just a short term solutions.

The solution is so simple. (it may not be easy to get into the habit). I use a simple 1-5 scale for happiness, Minus 1-5 for not happiness. I have an alarm watch that goes off every 2 hours. On a 3 X 5 index card I note my current level of emotional pain. If it is a negative reading, it is as urgent as if I had fallen and severed an artery.

I have a list of instant happiness makers. It may be to call a friend who I know will cheer me up. I t may be a cup of hot tea. Put a comedy video on the player. You need to be constantly adding additional happiness makers to the list. Just like the Boy Scouts, “Be prepared” is the magic word.

You can only be one attitude at a time. Either happy or not happy. It is your decision. It is your responsibility. You made the decision to be happy or otherwise. No one can make you not happy.

And also you have a happiness tank. In the same way you measure your current level of happiness or not happiness, you need to be aware of the level of your happiness tank. Just like the gasoline gauge of your car, you can not go on empty. No matter how expensive the car, they all need fuel to go.

I was planning on doing happiness coaching, but my coach said there was no money in lifestyle coaching…

Sam Metz

PS we had a leaky roof for five years. My wife refinanced the mortgage to fix the roof. It hasn’t stopped raining since then. Hey, we are very happy campers!

Overeating due to stress in the workplace is very common. So common, in fact, that the Occupational Health and Safety Act of Ontario recognizes it as a hazard to health. It’s labelled “psychosocial stress”… and the employer is held responsible. This is when one should take a “stress leave”.

If you’re ever at work and find yourself craving and pigging out on crap, despite your lack of hunger… you are dealing with psychosocial stress.

If you get home from a long day at work and go straight to the fridge…. psycosocial stress.

It’s funny how many people pass it off as a lack of willpower. It really is not. Don’t beat yourself up! Just remove the stressors… easy peasy

Isn’t it interesting how we can watch ourselves do the thing we don’t want to do during stressful moments…knowing that we don’t want to do it, but going ahead anyway. I think that part adds to the “guilt” later because we know that we know what to do.

How about this. Try to think this way about stressful situations. It’s not the thing that is the problem, it is how we think about the thing that makes the difference. If we try to think about the stressful thing as just a thing that we can choose to deal with one way or another, it may make it easier to make a better choice. Obviously, it’s better to do this intentionally, before any stressful thing is on the radar. For me, traffic incidents used to get me, but good. My heart rate would go up, swearing would ensue – you know the drill. When I intentionally thought about the fact that my reactions were only hurting me, while the perpetrator went on his/her merry way, chatting on their cell phone, I thought, enough of this. Now traffic situations are my practice field. When someone cuts me off or whatever, I think that it’s too bad they are so distracted by what ever is going on in their life that they are driving poorly, and I bless them and my defensive driving radar gets put on High. It’s amazing how much better I feel. So, try to think about a stressful situation as a practice field for how you can consciously retain your calm and sensible self – and stay away from the swearing or the cupcake or whatever your vice of choice may be. Afterward, your appreciation for not following your destructive pattern will just make you feel even better. So, a new mantra could be
“this is just a test” – let that run through your brain a few times, and then decide what to do!

Back to the stress, there are many types of stress, at least from my own experience. Some such as yours with the leak or a broke down car, they level of stress I think can produce different levels of effect on the individual (from my own experience). Maybe you and John can do some digging into stress and weight loss and gain and or stress as a motivator. I know at times when I am stressed about work, or the car, or money I tend to go to comfort food, really bad I know.

From a relationship stand point, in the past for me and others I have known, there is the stress of loss, or breakup stress. My friends (guys and girls) refer to this as the break up diet. Often for whatever reason a break up occurs there seems to be a level of stress that hits individuals where they go into fight/flight mode. I am not sure if this is something engrained in our genetics and subconsciously our body react to the loss, eating less and in most cases dropping weight due to what one could call fasting or the lack of food, mostly do to the feeling of not wanting to eat as the thought of loss makes most of us get nausea. Could this be the body recognizing that we are not fit to find another suitor and thus we know we must look better if we ever are going to find someone? On the other hand with a breakup there is the person how left or walked away, (experienced this from both ends of the spectrum), the person that walked away has a new found flight of energy. A will to workout, eat healthy, to look good because they feel better about getting out of a bad situation, or better because of new suitor in their life. Even though this doesn’t appear to be stress, could it be good stress, welcomed pressure to look good, feel good and move forward?

So in some cases stress can cause people to eat, but in others it can appear to cause them to not eat. I myself would like to be able to harness the breakup diet and bottle it up; it seems to come on fast, happen quickly, and weight loss tends to be almost instant without effort.