Let’s talk about stress and busyness and overwhelm, because if you are anything like me, you have had lots and lots of experience with this throughout your life. I’m a single mom. I one hundred percent get it. I also am an entrepreneur. So I work full time and I understand the overwhelm and I understand how busy your schedule is. Every day, you’re juggling all the things you’ve got kids to get to school and get to their practices. And you’ve got a career or maybe you’re in school and then you have a spouse or a partner, and you’re trying to take care of your home. And then also deal with family issues, and volunteer work, things in your community, whatever you’re involved with. I know that you are super busy and I know that stress plays a big part in this.

When I was a new mom, I was very much a helicopter parent. I thought I had to do it all for them. Be there for every single thing. Take care of everything for them. And thankfully over the years, I’ve realized that that doesn’t serve me and that doesn’t serve them either. And I’ve been able to make really good changes in my life. So, I want to encourage you that you can absolutely do these things as well.

First of all, I want to talk about why stress keeps you holding onto weight and makes it very, very hard to lose weight. So, let’s talk about cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone. It’s what kicks in when we are overwhelmed with emails or, you know, the kids are just driving us crazy. It’s the fight or flight response that comes into play. You’ve probably heard this analogy before, but imagine you are being chased by a tiger. That’s how we feel when we get stressed.

Unfortunately, our bodies don’t know the difference between a fight with our spouse and being chased by a tiger. Or just having that overwhelming long list of things to do. So this response kicks in and our cortisol levels shoot up. Every single emotion that we feel in our minds translates into an actual physical response in our body. So if you were being chased by a tiger, your heart rate would increase, your breathing would shallow and get quicker, our eyes would dilate and all these hormones
get released that help us to be strong and fast.

When the cortisol kicks in, that signals for our blood sugar to rise because your muscles are going to need that quick energy. When your blood sugar increase, your insulin level also increases because that’s our body’s way of balancing out blood sugar. Insulin allows the glucose to come into our cells and be converted to energy because you need that energy if you’re going to flee or fight that tiger. But the  if we’re at work, sitting at our desk and we’re overwhelmed by our to-do list and this fight or flight response kicks in, our blood sugar comes up, and our insulin comes up. All the glucose gets stored in our cells, but we never use that energy because we’re still just sitting at our desk. So what happens to that glucose? It becomes stored as fat.

The place that it usually goes is your adipose tissue, which is around your middle, the belly fat. And I know that’s a big issue for so many of us is trying to get rid of that belly fat. What I’m getting at here is that stress is causing you to store fat. And then if you aren’t burning it off, it’s going to stay there and it’s going to accumulate.

The second reason that stress contributes to weight gain is it’s interrupting your sleep patterns. And when we don’t get enough sleep, we tend to overeat the next day because food equals energy. And if you’re tired and you have a long day of work ahead of you, you haven’t had the sleep you need. What are you going to go for? You’re going to go for the donuts, sweetened coffee drinks, and chocolate. All those things are so that you can get the energy because you’re in a sleep deficit.

Also, when you’re asleep, all your hormones get regulated. That’s your rest and recovery time. It’s a time for your whole body to get back into balance. And if your body doesn’t get that chance to do that, all your hormones are going to be out of whack. As women, when your estrogen isn’t right, when your progesterone isn’t right, all that plays into weight gain and holding onto fat.

Reason number three, that stress causes you to both gain weight and hold on to weight, is that food is often a comfort for us. Food is mood boosting. It releases those feel good chemicals in our brain, the serotonin, the chemicals that are released when you feel good. And when you feel happy and when you feel calm. We all all need to feel good. We all want to feel good. And when we don’t feel good, we’re automatically going to be drawn to those things that have worked for us in the past. You may even be doing this subconsciously, or you may very well be doing this consciously. When you feel overwhelmed and you need something to bring you back down to calm you, you are probably reaching for food. And a lot of times it’s the less than healthy food because it’s the sugar and those empty, processed carbs that give us those feel good emotions.

What do we do about it? What do we do about stress? You feel like you have to do all these things that you’re doing. Of course you can’t neglect your kids. You want to spend time with your partner. You want to keep your house nice. I understand that. But you MUST prioritize your own stress relief. And this can take literally only minutes out of your day, and it can make a huge difference.

The fight or flight response that I was talking about earlier is your sympathetic nervous system cranking up into high gear. And in order to balance that out, we need to activate our parasympathetic nervous system. That is your rest, rejuvenate, and digest. Activating that is key to breaking that fight or flight cortisol cycle.

What could you add into your day that will bring you back down and, and calm you besides food and sugar and caffeine?

Meditation is an awesome tool. And some people are scared away by even the word meditation, because it seems hard and scary and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. A meditation can be as little as a five minute break just to breathe, just to inhale and exhale deep breaths. It makes a huge difference in lowering your heart rate, in calming your entire nervous system down. It could be just alone
time. It could be spend 30 minutes after work or after the kids go to bed, reading a book, doing something you enjoy, or going outside. The sounds of outdoor outdoors, the wind, the trees, the feeling of the earth under your feet is automatically calming. Studies have shown that it literally lowers your blood pressure just to step outside. What you can give yourself?

It’s just a little thing, but it can make such a big difference. What can you give yourself each day on a regular basis to break that stress response pattern that keeps you in a constant cycle of feeling bad of overeating, of storing fat? It’s a vicious cycle, because when you feel bad about yourself, you think you need to do more in the world to feel better about yourself. Like taking care of other people and
working harder at your job and keeping a better house. We’re trying to do all those things because we want to feel worthy. We want to feel like we’re doing everything in the world that we should be doing.

What I want to, to really just hit home with you is that you deserve this little bit of time and it’s going to make such a big difference in your life. In how you feel every day. In your overall health. Stress is the new smoking studies show that stress takes years off of your life, just as much as smoking and living a sedentary life.

In terms of overall wellness, stress is urgent for you to pay some attention to and start reversing that cycle. So I would love to hear from you about how you’re going to put these things into practice. Be sure and share it with me in the comments. I want to hear how this makes a difference in your life and how these things are working for you. So good luck!