Is stress stopping you from living your life?

Is it weighing you down – literally?

Stress is the pre-cursor to many illnesses, both mentally and physically.  Stress will always find a way to impact on you, your life and health; even more so if the cause of stress has not been identified and dealt with.

What if you do not actually know the cause of your stress?  What if you have been living a stressful life for so long you cannot even remember what started the stress in the first place?  What if you have never known the cause of your stress? How do you deal with it?

To deal with stress you have to first recognise it, and it can materialise in many differing forms.  For example, irritability, mood swings, sleepless nights, palpitations, memory problems, loss of appetite, an increase in appetite, aches and pains, procrastination, too much sleep, weight problems……….the list goes on.

The thing about stress is that it can be missed completely when deciding what is causing an illness or pain, or even why someone is overweight. How come?

Stress of any kind gets a reaction from the body by way of the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism. It is triggered automatically when faced with stress of any kind.  Now the fight mode is easy to recognise as you are agitated, jumpy, angry and ready for whatever – even a fight!

The flight mode however is completely different. In this mode you pull away, you withdraw and this is often accompanied by little or no emotion.   If you have lived your life this way (probably because at some deep rooted psychological level at some time, you perceived that it was ‘easier’ to live your life like this than to face conflict), you may not appear stressed to others or indeed yourself.  Now to deal with stress of any kind it is quite common at a sub-conscious level to turn to ‘substances’ to help you cope such as smoking, alcohol or food.

I would like to address those who use food as a comfort during times of recognised and unrecognised stress.  It may be stress that is causing you to have a weight problem.  Now all of this is more than likely happening at a sub-conscious level.  Herein lies the danger.  Why?  Because the process will continue – almost unnoticed.

Stress is becoming more and more recognised as a key factor to being overweight.  Once that IS recognised and the stress is dealt with, excess weight can and often does seemingly disappear. (Especially with the right guidance).

Identifying and letting go of your stress triggers, is easier than you think.  By using a very simple method that is equally as easy to learn, they can be identified and you can set yourself free from the burden of being overweight.