How Stress Sabotages How You Eat (And What You Can Do About It)

Everyone deals with stress from time to time. But if you’re dealing with ongoing stresses, it’s important to understand how it affects your food choices.

Emotional eating or stress eating is a common response to stressful situations. Around 27% of adults say they eat to manage stress – and a good percentage more might not even realise that is what they do!
Eating comfort food is not just in your head. It is your body’s way of releasing feel-good chemicals to help you cope with stress. But over time, it adds up to unhealthy choices and extra weight.

The good news is there is a way to counteract stress eating naturally.

What stress does to your body
In the short-term, stress can shut down your appetite. You might have experienced this if you’ve ever had a shock, such as a sudden relationship breakup or the death of someone close to you.
The general response to stress includes the digestive tract slowing down as you enter fight-or-flight mode. The body releases sugars into the bloodstream so that you have quick energy to deal with the perceived threat. This results in you eating less, which can have a negative effect on the metabolism.
But when stress persists, it can have the opposite effect. The adrenal glands release the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol can increase appetite and ramp up the motivation to eat.
Have you ever noticed that you get ravenously hungry on your busier weeks? That is cortisol at work.

The impacts of stress on your food choices
It’s not just what happens to your physical body. Stress also affects your food preferences and the foods you choose to eat on any given day.
Studies have shown that distress, whether physical or emotional, leads to a greater intake of foods that are high in fat, sugar, or both.
These ‘comfort foods’ have a calming effect on the brain. They inhibit activity in the parts of the brain responsible for stress. Because they are pleasurable to eat as well as reducing the stress response, it reinforces our enjoyment of those foods and encourages us to eat more than we actually need to.
Unfortunately, when you eat an excess of these comfort foods, they are converted into fat deposits. Under stress, these deposits gravitate towards the waistline and around the internal organs. This visceral fat is associated with a higher risk of dozens of chronic diseases.
So if you want to live a longer and healthier life, addressing stress and its impact on your eating habits is key.

How mindful eating combats stress eating habits
So now that we know that stress eating adds up to poor health, what can we do to counteract it? This comes down to a technique known as mindful eating.
Mindful eating is about focusing your attention and awareness on the present moment. It helps you to disconnect from unhealthy habits and behaviours around eating, including stress eating, boredom eating or eating mindlessly.
When you eat mindfully, you’re focusing on what you are eating while you’re eating it, instead of focusing on the things that are stressing you or demanding your attention.
Mindful eating isn’t just a way to slow down your eating. Research has suggested it can help with blood sugar control and weight loss, reducing cortisol levels and even reducing unhealthy eating habits such as stress eating and binge eating.

What a mindful eating practice looks like
Ready to give mindful eating a try? Here’s how to get started.
You want to eat slowly, with minimal distractions. That means putting the phone away, switching the TV off. Make sure every mouthful you take has your full attention.
As you eat your food, notice everything. Enjoy the presentation of your meal if it’s colourful or cleverly plated. Appreciate the scent, texture and flavour with each mouthful.
Now is also the time to observe how food might impact your emotions. Does this food make you feel happy? Or do you feel guilty and anxious about eating it? Be aware of how different foods make you feel.
The end goal is to until you are satisfied, not stuffed. But by eating slowly and mindfully, you train yourself to eat until you are pleasantly full at every meal.

Are you interested in learning more about how you can reduce the impact of stress on your body? Then my Busy Women’s Monthly Membership is the place you want to be.

How Gratitude Can Make You Happier And Healthier

When you think of being healthy, you might think of eating vegetables, drinking water and working out. Gratitude probably doesn’t even make it onto your healthy habits list. However gratitude is a word that we hear often at this time of the year and being grateful might be one of the best things you can do for your physical and mental well being. Let’s have a look at how gratitude makes you healthier, and how to practice it regularly.

Are you coming from a place of gratitude or grumbles?

We all have our grumpy days some days. But if you find yourself constantly saying things such as ‘no one appreciates me’, ‘people are so rude’, ‘life isn’t fair’, or similar attitudes, you might be missing out on gratitude.

For example, you might be out shopping (watch out Boxing Day sales), and someone barges past you with a full trolley to get to the checkout. You might get really grumpy at their selfishness, and let it throw out your mood for the rest of the day.

But when you focus on the negative, you might miss the greater context. Maybe they have their kids hanging off them, and they just want to get out of there (we’ve all had those days). Or maybe you didn’t notice the person who stepped aside to let you pass them.

This is all too common when it comes to your health and well being. Women often come to me and say things like:

• I have so much weight left to lose

• Pregnancy ruined my body – I hate my stretch marks!

• I lost all my fitness when I had kids – now I have to start from scratch

But what these women aren’t seeing is the blessings that came with those situations. They don’t see the weight they’ve already lost or the fact that their body gave birth to a healthy human being. They don’t see that they have a functioning body that allows them to rebuild their fitness.

This negative mindset is why many people fail to achieve their health goals. They’re focusing on what’s ‘wrong’, instead of appreciating the progress.

But if you turn your way of thinking around, you can move towards a more grateful mindset that makes you feel better and is more supportive of your health goals.

Why gratitude is essential for wellbeing?

I probably don’t need to tell you that gratitude is good for your mental health. We’ve all experienced how gratitude can make us feel more upbeat and happy.

But gratitude is also beneficial for your physical wellbeing. Studies have shown the benefits of gratitude to include a strong immune system, reducing the experience of aches and pains, reduce stress, lower blood pressure and even help you get a better night’s sleep!

It’s important to remember that you don’t have to be positive all the time to benefit from a sense of gratitude. Instead, it’s about the overall pattern of being positive and grateful vs negative and ungrateful.

How to develop a gratitude mindset?

Are you looking to bring more gratitude into your life? The more that you practice expressing and feeling gratitude, the more grateful you will feel. So here are some tips for you to practice more gratitude.

• When you wake up, start with gratitude – think of 3-5 things you are grateful for each morning as you lie in bed. That way, you’re already starting the day off with a positive mindset. It also sets you up for spotting more reasons to be grateful throughout the day.

• Finish your day the same way – as you wind down for the night, think back over your day. What were you grateful for? It could be something big, or it could be something small like finding the perfect parking spot at the supermarket.

• Take time to express your gratitude – when you’re grateful for someone, tell them! It might be something they did for you, or it might be the way that you feel around them. This is a win for both of you – you get to express your gratitude, and they feel good because they know they are appreciated by you.

• Keep a jar of awesomeness – we often forget all of the amazing things that we accomplish. Whenever something awesome happens, write yourself a little note on a post-it reminding you what you did and how it makes you feel. Once you’re done, pop it into a jar. If you’re having a down day, or if you just want a mood boost, re-read your jar of notes.

Neale Donald Walsch said it best when he said, ‘the struggle ends when gratitude begins’.

My Mind and Body Bootcamp includes practising gratitude as well as ways to reduce your bodies reactions to stress (hint: gratitude).

Combined with 28 days worth of exercise and nutrition, it is a perfect reset to your mind and body. The next round starts on 1 January 2020. Make sure to book your spot by contacting me here.

Move Your Body & Free Your Mind

We all love a facebook memory, don’t we?  I’ve been thinking about what to write for my guest blog, so it was timely this picture taken 2 years ago popped up in my feed. It’s me lifting at the 2016 Eliekio Australian Masters Nationals, Oceania and Pacific Rim tournament

I love this photo.   It means so many things to me.  A culmination of three years training since discovering the barbell.  Testing myself in ways I never had before.  It makes me think of how strong weightlifting has made me – and not the way you’d expect.

During a heatwave in the middle of January, my second child was born.  And boy, did I feel the heat – adjusting from one child to two was really difficult.  My son was only 2, little more than a baby himself, and didn’t have the tools to understand the baby needed me more a lot of the time.

After 6 weeks, I knew I wasn’t ok.  I felt heavy all the time.  I felt trapped in the house.  I was trying to be all things to all people, and of course, I couldn’t.  I remember breaking down and crying one night, feeling like an absolute failure.  I told myself I wasn’t just a bad mum, but a bad person.

The next day I knew I had to make changes. I chose a 2 prong approach:  mind and body.  For my mind, I went to my amazing GP who referred me to an equally amazing psychologist.  For my body, I knew I needed movement.  I found a mum’s functional fitness group and went 3 times a week at first.  It felt good to move my body.  It felt good to sweat and channel all the frustration I was feeling into a healthy outlet.  Did I notice an immediate benefit?  Yes, I can honestly say I did.

Over the next few weeks, the pressure I had placed on myself to be all things to all people disappeared.  Time inside those grimy gym walls was MINE.  As I clapped the chalk on my hands, stood behind and thought just about my cues, my body, what I needed to do to get that lift, that jerk, that snatch, I felt unshackled.  In loading up my body, I freed my mind.

Lifting doesn’t just help me vent my spleen in a healthy way, it makes me feel good.  And I mean, really, REALLY good – I get those endorphins working overtime!! We live so much in our minds, it’s sometimes easy to forget we have these bodies, and they’re made to move. Some may find zen in meditation:  I find it in movement.

As an Olympic Lifter, I see health, strength and fitness come dressed up in so many different shapes, sizes, ages and abilities.  I meet everyday people and see them do extraordinary things.  I have days where the lifts just don’t go as planned, where it feels heavier and harder than normal.  Days when I question my purpose; days when I’m tired and don’t wanna.

In other words, gym-life echoes mum-life!

Working through this in the gym gives me greater capacity to get through the hard days I have as a mum.  As a weightlifter, there are times you need to be tough and just get on with it.  There are also days where you need to pick your battles, be kind to yourself, and do what you can do and finish on something you know you rock at.

I’m not saying you should all do weightlifting – even though you should, because it’s bloody awesome with proven benefits to body and mind.  But when you can, just get out and move.  Go to a space that forces you to see other people, even if it’s a nod hello.  Make yourself sweat, just a little.  Feel the muscles move.  Know how beautiful your perfect body is for all the things it does.  Balance is so important for mindset.  Walk.  Dance.  Talk to Nikki about your options 

Move your body to free your mind.

Jennifer Zeven

Jennifer Zeven is a mother of three, weightlifter and copywriter for Blurb-ology.  She lives in the Adelaide Western Suburbs, loves walking on the beach, and of course, lifting that barbell. 

Have your Chocolate…And Eat it Too!

Usually, at this time of year, your social network apps become flooded with delicious looking chocolates, followed by guilt-inducing posts of how many calories you need to burn to work off that egg.

As mums, we have enough pressure and guilt placed upon us. We face daily pressure to be the perfect mums, juggle all the balls and oh the guilt should we decide to do something for ourselves!

Then there is this expectation placed upon us to ‘get our bodies back’ and ‘be bikini body ready’…..

Why do we have all this pressure and expectation placed upon us?

What has happened to be able to have your chocolate and eat it too?

Personally, for me, Easter isn’t about feeling guilty at the number of chocolates I have consumed.  Yes, I will eat chocolate this Easter (in fact I will likely eat a lot), however, I lead a healthy and active lifestyle and one day of eating some chocolate isn’t going to be the end of the world.

I have hit on a keyword there – LIFESTYLE – what kind of lifestyle would it be if you couldn’t enjoy foods with your family?

At the end of the day, it comes down to balance. On Monday I will continue on my health and fitness journey and I certainly won’t be trying to calculate how many calories I need to burn to work off that chocolate!

So my message to you is enjoying your Easter. Spend time with your family and participate in all that makes your families lifestyle. Eat that chocolate if you want to!

I would love for you to join my Mum-Me Fit Time community and receive regular motivation and inspiration on all things fitness, nutrition and mindset. If you are keen to join me, CLICK HERE

Have a great day!
Nikki