Stress is a silent killer because it can filter into our lives and have both mental and physical impacts. So in this podcast we’ll have chat about stess and cover 4 effective strategies to deal with stress.
The 4 things we’ll cover on this podcast are:
- How being proactive makes a difference
- The difference between your circle of influence and your circle of concern and why that matters
- The importance of sleep and a few supplements that can help
- Eating well
Extra Resources
Supplements for Sleep
Phosphaidyl Serine – If you have trouble with restless sleep or waking up in the middle of the night it helps restore cortisol patterns to normal. Cortisol is our key stress hormone and its cortisol that is often be responsible for those erratic sleep patterns because under stress it moves out of its natural pattern.
Valerian – is great if you have trouble getting to sleep because it acts as a natural sedative.
Magnesium – a generally good overall muscle and mind relaxant.
Looking for some fast meals? Check out this list of 15-minute meals
TRANSCRIPT
Today I wanted to talk about a topic that I’m sure we can all relate to and that is stress.
I know I have covered stress in a previous podcast but I wanted to talk about it again because stress is a BIG issue for many people, including myself at times.
It’s an unfortunate truth that many of us are way too stressed these days and it’s even more unfortunate that things like adrenal fatigue or even other health issues can be an end point of too much stress and trust me; that’s not a place any of us want to end up if we can help it. That’s why it’s a good idea to be aware when you are under stress and put a few simple things in place to help manage it better.
It’s really a strange thing though because when we are going through times of stress or we have more stress in our lives than usual, we sometimes don’t have the ability to recognise we are in fact under stress. Or when a stress passes, we realise how much that ‘something ‘has’ been a pressure on us.
I was talking with my Mum about this recently because we’d both had some extra stress. I have just come out of a stressful time, with finishing my Masters. And it wasn’t until after I submitted than paper that I suddenly felt exhausted. Have you felt like that before?
Sometimes it’s like your body and mind just keeps on going while it has to and then when you finally get that holiday you get sick and feel exhausted. For me, this was one of those instances where there was a whole build up to the end, and just letting go was lie, phew I can finally breathe again.
I hadn’t realised how much pressure there was until those final weeks and looking back now it was pretty intense. Thankfully I took a few days to myself, the first day was a much needed movie marathon spent on the couch. I love having those sometimes. Then I took myself off to have some acupuncture, which I find very therapeutic, and I had hot baths and slept in for a few days.
I think when we can recognise what we need and allow ourselves to have that, it’s a very good thing. But I know it’s not always that easy either.
However, the unfortunate truth is that in today’s modern world none of us are totally immune to stress because we are simply surrounded by it all the time. And like I said, sometimes we don’t even recognise just how much stress we are under and it can start coming out in other ways.
That’s what happened to my Mum recently. Her whole body broke out in these rashes and sores and she couldn’t figure out why. But after digging into it a bit she just realised that work had been a huge source of stress for her and she was going to have to do something about it.
That’s the interesting thing about our body’s and health, is that sometimes things can seem so very unrelated. You might not think that something that comes out on your skin is related to stress and emotions but it can be.
Stress affects the way our immune system functions and is one of the reasons why at the end of it all we can often get sick, or slowly but surely things start breaking down.
Stress is a silent killer in many ways because it can filter into our lives and have both mental and physical impacts. And we can all be thrown a curve ball and things can start to unravel at any time.
So in this podcast we’ll have chat about stress and cover 4 effective strategies to deal with stress.
The 4 things we’ll cover on this podcast are:
- How being proactive makes a difference
- The difference between your circle of influence and your circle of concern and why that matters
- The importance of sleep and a few supplements that can help
- Eating well
Although it may not feel like it at the time, we can actually do quite a lot about stress so I’ve got a few tips to share that I hope you will find helpful.
Tips for Stress Relief and Stress Management and just general life too.
The first tip is to be proactive.
But first, let’s talk about our normal response under stress because this is a key area we need to be more aware of.
One of the interesting things that I’ve observed and learned with my own experiences with stress is that we tend to take less care of ourselves under stress.
We start putting ourselves last.
We go to bed later because we need to get things done, we eat more sugar and junk and drink more coffee because we are trying to chase energy.
What tends to happen is we let things slide when what we really need to do is become slightly more pro-active and take better care of ourselves. This is not something that comes naturally.
I still work on this myself all the time because I am the kind of person who always tries to do a million projects at once. And when I share tips with you I never exclude myself from the equation because just like you I need constant reminders all the time.
I must admit that I am much better at saying “no” than I was years ago, and I am also better at recognizing signs of stress so that I can be slightly more proactive. And that’s the key.
If we can recognise when we are “in stress”, then we can start to do a few things for ourselves, instead of going against what we really need. We may still struggle, but at least we won’t let ourselves go down the spiral too much.
So try to recognise when you are “in stress” and be a bit more proactive in taking care of yourself.
The second tip is to take a breath and work in your circle of influence
Breathe in, breathe out, just close your eyes and focus on your breath for just a minute and bring yourself into the present moment.
Under stress we can be all over the place and everything seems amplified. It seems like everything is out of our control and while some things might be, try not to focus on these things too much.
Instead, focus on your circle of influence. This is a concept I picked up from author Stephen Covey. He talks about 2 aspects of our circle, one is the circle of concern and one is the circle of influence. The circle of concern is all the things that seem out of our control, which can seem like a lot when we are under stress.
The circle of influence is where we can put our energy and focus.
So he says if we can recognise what is in our circle of concern, clearly that’s probably what we’ll think about most when we are stressed. But instead of just focusing our energy there we can think about what things we can change or work on right now to make a difference, that’s your circle of influence. This makes the circle of concern smaller and the circle of influence larger and brings about positive change so much faster.
One example might be just to simply focus on looking after yourself better as we mentioned earlier. Although you might still have worries, you can have more influence over taking care of yourself. Or for my Mum, we talked about how she could go and talk to her boss and see if things could be changed around at her work so that she wasn’t under so much pressure.
So here my Mum started working in her circle of influence, thinking proactively about what she could do in the moment. So try to shift your focus out of the circle of concern and do more things to expand your circle of influence by focusing on what you CAN do, change, and influence in a positive way
Tip number 3 is to try not to let your sleep suffer
This is a tough one because sleep can often get affected under stress and we may find ourselves with erratic sleep patterns.
Restless, not being able to get to sleep, waking up in the middle of the night, that type of thing. I know I have had various bouts of sleep problems and even insomnia in the past. And toward the end of my Masters I did have some restless and sleepless nights.
This isn’t great because it always makes the problems worse. Sleep deprivation also increases inflammation in the body, so it can exacerbate aches, pains, headaches, and various other problems you may have.
In times of stress, sleep can be difficult so here are a couple of supplement suggestions that can improve sleep.
If you have trouble with restless sleep or waking up in the middle of the night, a supplement called phosphatidyl serine can be useful as it helps restore cortisol patterns to normal. Cortisol is our key stress hormone and its cortisol that is often be responsible for those erratic sleep patterns because under stress it moves out of its natural pattern. So that’s a supplement called phosphatidyl serine.
Valerian is also a natural sleep aid that can be useful. It’s a great one to use if you have trouble getting to sleep because it acts as a natural sedative.
If you want some more info about these supplements after this podcast, head over to GFE.com/62 and I’ll provide a bit more info in the show notes.
The most important thing to know is in order to restore balance and help our body and mind deal better with stress what we need to do is get as much sleep and rest as we can, when we can.
The forth tip is to try to Eat Very Well
What we eat affects how we feel, how we function, how our body reacts, and also the strength of our immune system.
Like we already talked about before, we do have a tendency to eat more sugar and junk when under stress but it only contributes to the problem, making us feel worse and stealing more of our energy.
On the other hand, eating well will support you to keep on going without ending up sick on the other side.
I know cooking doesn’t seem like a high priority in these circumstances BUT your health is important so try to put it higher on your list.
I often turn to my crockpot and I also have a list of fast 15-minute meals I can turn to. In fact I’ve got a list of 15 minute meals on the GFE website, so if you want to take a look at a few of those delicious meals I’ll leave a link to those in the show notes too. GFE.com.62
There is no doubt that when it comes to dealing with stress we do need to do a bit of pre-thinking. We also need to be aware when it hits and take that little bit of extra energy to care for the person that matters most, and that’s us.
We are no use to anyone else when we are a mess, so sometimes it’s okay to shut everyone out, say no and give a bit of extra lovin to yourself.
So the 4 things we have talked about on this podcast today are to:
- Be proactive – try to be conscious of putting energy in positive places
- Breathe and work in your circle of influence – focus that positive energy where it matters
- Sleep and rest when you can
- Always eat well – or at least as best you can and avoid sugar, caffeine, and stimulants
These simple things are often enough to avoid ending up with burn out, fatigue, or illness. None of us want that so do what you can to stay happy and healthy.
I hope you found these tips helpful and try a few of them out for yourself.
If you want to access the show notes with those extra resources, head over to GFE.com/62.
Just on a short note, the doors to the Good Food Eating Virtual Nutrition School are open this Sunday 26th October. Our first class is called ‘This Is NOT A Diet’, and it’s a weight loss and nutrition fundamentals class that is designed to help you quit the dieting cycle so you can get to your ideal weight and stay there. There will be some info over on the GFE website if you want to see what we have on offer. And in next weeks podcast I will talk about our first class in a bit more detail.
Thanks for joining me and I’ll see you next week.
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