How many of you feel stress on a daily basis? Did you know this is a very important question to ask yourself if you are trying to lose weight? Most people look at their diet and workouts to figure out why they are not losing weight, but another very important factor is your stress level.
The reason why stress plays such a big role in your weight loss is the effect it has on your cortisol hormone. We all release cortisol on a daily basis. Even when we workout we release cortisol. Any stress on the body, good or bad, causes us to release the cortisol hormone. The problem with stress and weight loss arises when we are overly stressed out. When we become too stressed our cortisol hormone rises way above the normal level and can literally halt your weight loss. You have to remember we already are releasing cortisol when we lift weights, go for a jog, eat things that are not good for us, and any other harmful things that cause free radicals in the body causes cortisol to rise because our body looks at these things as a stress to it.
If you are someone that has been doing all the right things like eating good and working out, but still are not losing weight, then maybe ask yourself how stressed you think you are on a scale from 1-10. If your stress level is 6 or higher maybe it is time to seriously work on reducing your stress; because remember when your cortisol is higher than normal your body may not be able to lose weight no matter what you do. Our body will always protect us and make sure we survive, so when cortisol rises our body slows down and holds onto weight. Not only can it halt your weight loss, but high cortisol levels can actually cause you to gain more weight!
I came up with a good plan of action for my clients to attack their stress problems that I think works very well. Stress to most people is a very abstract concept. We talk about it and feel it, but stress isn’t something tangible like eating good foods. When we eat good foods we see those foods and purposely pick them out. With stress, it is hard to see our progress. We can say "Yeah I feel less stressed than I did before", but that doesn’t tell us exactly how much less we are stressed or what stress we need to work on more.
Here is how to track your stress so you can see real progress, and work on the more stressful areas of your life.
1. Get a sheet of paper and make four columns. The columns will be Stress, Level 1-10, Plan of Action, New Level 1-10.
2. In the stress column write down what one of your stressors are.
3. In the level column rate how much that makes you stressed on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being the highest.
4. In the Plan of Action column write down how you will work on this stress. Give detailed and doable ideas here as well.
5. After you complete this for all the different stresses, go back a month later and in the last column rate how stressed those things make you now.
This chart gives you a visual aid on your stress. You can see your stress going down by the ratings you put the first and second time. You can also see what needs more work by the ratings that don't go down. This way of dealing with stress makes it a lot easier to actually work on things, and gives you the perfect Plan of Action to work on those things. If you think you are stressed, even if it isn’t affecting your weight loss, give this method a try. I would love to see how well this works for everyone!
