Is Too Much Stress Keeping You Overweight?
Most health conscious people know what to do in regards to food choices and exercise. In fact many of them can be considered experts! However, healthy food choices and regular exercise are not the whole story when it comes to losing excess weight. Too much stress is a huge factor in making it nearly impossible to release extra weight and keep it off. Stress Depletes Nutrition Simply put, anxiety, rushing, forcing, pushing, and negative self talk all put your body in a physiological fight-or-flight response. In this stress state, vitamins and minerals are excreted, blood flow to the digestive organs dramatically decreases, calorie burning is slowed, and hormones that signal the body to gain weight are produced. Even if you are eating well you are not able to absorb the nutrients. Your emotional state powerfully influences your nutritional metabolism. Many of us are overeating and undernourished.
In addition stress increases salt retention and makes you bloated, negatively affects your cholesterol, compromises your immune system, endocrine system, nervous system, and just about everything else in your body!
Increases Cortisol Levels Negative self-talk about food or your body can actually produce a placebo response that causes it to create the very thing you fear. For example, if you are consistently living in fear of gaining weight, you will produce consistent elevated levels of the stress associated hormones cortisol and insulin, which both signal the body to store weight and fat, and to refrain from building muscle. Your fears can literally make you overweight!
Affects Your Ability to Think Clearly
Stress also constricts your blood vessels along with other biological changes that control how you think, how your body and brain function, how strong your food cravings come on, and how quickly your brain can react to a given situation.
With all these things combined it means that when you’re stressed, you end up making poor decisions about what to eat, often breaking your good eating and exercise habits, and then your body struggles to digest. You end up putting on more weight!
This is why when you are stressed you often frantically grab something to eat and before you know it you are asking yourself, why did I do that? You have lost control over your behaviors! The stress takes over your body and inhibits your ability to think clearly and make good decisions. The foods we typically crave during these stressful times are usually not the best choices as well.
Suppresses Serotonin (the feel good hormone)
Frequently when we are stressed we are looking for sugary carbohydrates? Carbohydrate rich foods increase brain concentrations of the amino acid, tryptophan, which is the building block for serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, which, when released, brings about feelings of calm, happiness, peace, and satisfaction. So, overeating in the moment will make us feel much better. We usually choose high carbohydrate foods because our brain is looking for pleasure. However, after the sugar, feel-good rush your insulin levels drop and you become cranky and depleted. This triggers a craving for more sugary carbohydrates to get back that sugar high. It becomes an ongoing cycle until you can't take it anymore and you decide to do something drastic like going on a restrictive diet or using dangerous diet medications.
Restrictive Diets Don’t Work
We then put ourselves on a restrictive diet, to force weight loss and often times punish ourselves. We eliminate comfort food, increase stress and eventually gain more weight.
So many of us today are under chronic stress and it’s hard to make the best choices about what you eat and/or whether you exercise, you end up putting on more weight as time goes by.
Stress Related to Many Health Problems
In addition, to weight challenges it has become evident that many diseases has an emotional element. We are now aware that stress and anxiety are two prevalent reasons why many people acquire health problems ranging from ulcers to sleeping problems to depression and more serious chronic ailments. In addition, chronic stress is attributed to emotional scaring, and causes ongoing damage to your cells. Many people carry emotional scars—traumas that can negatively affect your health. The Good News Is…
Modern Energy Techniques like Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) are excellent stress management tools that have been scientifically shown to significantly reduce cortisol and emotional distress. These techniques work by releasing blockages in the energy system which are the source of emotional intensity and discomfort. In addition to challenging us emotionally, these blockages in our energy system are the root of the chronic stress response in our body.
Modern Energy Tapping (MET), created by Silvia Hartmann is the most updated version of this meridian based treatment that teaches skills about gaining freedom from chronic stress and anxiety, enables you to go from stress to success in a broad array of areas and the one I advocate the most.
Like its predecessors Classic EFT and then Energy EFT, MET teaches you skills about gaining emotional freedom from negative or low energy states. With Modern Energy Tapping you tap or touch lightly, focusing on positive energy, balancing, de stressing and energizing your energy system, clearing blockages as you go. The objective is on increasing the flow of energy through the system. As your energy flow increases, stress decreases and you begin to feel more positive and energized. Modern Energy Tapping has shown to be an accelerated way to aid you to move beyond your problems and into solutions.
I have consistently seen the positive effects of Energy EFT and more recently MET in my own life as well as with the many people I am privileged to work with. After all this time, I am still amazed at how elegant and rapid change is when applying these simple techniques.
By applying Modern Energy Tapping, you help your body eliminate stress and reprogram the way your body responds to emotional stressors. Since these stressors are usually connected to physical problems, many people’s diseases and other symptoms can improve or disappear including releasing excess weight and maintaining a slim body.
Imagine aligning to your health and fitness goals and releasing excess weight without deprivation and struggle! I'd love to tell you more!
If you or someone you know are struggling with similar issues, Contact me for a free consultation/strategy session. Receive clarity about your health and wellness goals and learn empowering tools to transform your challenges with food, weight, and body image into experiences of personal growth, peace, and success.
To learn more about Modern Energy Tapping and how to apply this powerful technique Click Here
