Is Stress Making You Fat?

Stress Eating!!

Recent scientific studies have shown that stress has a direct result on weight, be it over eating or under-eating. Experiments on volunteers at the Cambridge University found serotonin levels affect the amygdale region in the brain, which makes us angry.

The experiments involved recording the brain’s reaction while viewing angry, sad and neutral facial expressions. Feed with diets which either raised the level of serotonin, or lowered it, they were able to conclude that when the body starts to feel hungry, levels of serotonin fall, causing a flux of emotions to burst forward from the amygdale part of the brain which causes us to become anxious, stressed and angry.

The conclusion is quite simple really. To stop your serotonin levels from falling and as a consequence, making us angry and stressed, stock up on foods which boost the serotonin levels, such as pumpkin seeds, walnuts, avocado, dates and bananas.

Making the right food choices?

At a recent British Association of Anger Management intensive weekend course, Mike Fisher commented that all the biscuits were being eaten, while all the fruit wasn’t. This is predictable because when stressed, the body craves food that is high in fat or sugar.

Serotonin is a chemical which makes your body feel good, and this is exactly what we want to feel when we are stressed, angry and depressed. All too often, we’ll reach for the carbohydrates in the form of muffins, doughnuts and biscuits to comfort ourselves, when we should be reaching for fruit and nuts. This is where the conflict arises. When we are stressed we don’t make the best choices and this includes what we eat.

Getting angry and stressed takes up a lot of energy and we eat into our natural reserves. As stress is being linked with weight issues, we need a greater understanding of the connection between stress and weight to combat the obesity epidemic facing the country.

Stress is a part of modern day life and by understanding the mechanics of our minds and bodies, we are more equipped to deal with our stress and see it for what it really is.

What is the connection between stress and blood sugar?

When we are stressed our body works overtime to cope, by releasing a mixture of hormones, namely epinephrine and adrenaline, which gives us the energy to reach the end of the day.

The body also releases glucose which is of special interest to diabetics, because for diabetics the amount of glucose in their blood is too high.

Even though stress hasn’t been proven to cause diabetes, it has been proven to trigger changes in blood sugar levels which can be a problem for people with diabetes.

Mental or emotional stress has mixed effects, depending on the type of diabetes you have. For type 1 diabetes, mental stress can increase or decrease blood sugar levels and for type 2 diabetes, mental stress generally increases blood sugar levels.

Dealing with your stress?

It’s now evident that dealing with stress is the biggest obstacle we have in finding our inner peace and happiness. Stress comes at us from all angles and it’s only natural that the challenge may seem daunting.

But think again: Other than regular exercise, mediation and Mike Fisher’s intensive weekend courses; your diet can play the ultimate role in reducing stress.

Like millions in the UK, we reach for high-fat, high-sugar snacks when we’re feeling down. But don’t think you are alone in doing so. You aren’t. We are all prone to comfort eating.

The good news is that you now have the information to break the cycle and to break the habit.

It really is as simple as making better food choices.

Find out further how to minimize the stress in your life by visiting Mike Fisher’s British Association of Anger Management websites such aswww.angermanage.co.uk, www.stressexperts.co.uk and www.beatinganger.com.

By focusing on your diet and the choices you make when you are angry and stressed, you can change your life, beat stress and keep your figure in shape.

When stress is good for you?

According to Mike Fisher’s ‘Beating Anger’ book, there are two forms of stress, eustress and distress, healthy and potentially destructive.

While most of us see stress in negative terms, a small amount of it helps us achieve a high performance and can actually be good for health.

High flying executives working in high pressures jobs strive on eustress and wouldn’t choose to live without it. It motivates people to do their very best and triggers an alarm in their subconscious if they aren’t working to their peak performance.

It could even be argued that eustress is fundamental for living fully. Without it our lives could become meaningless. We wouldn’t care about goals or overcoming challenges. Without eustress we may not have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Eustress?
Eustress has become a term used to describe the feeling of, for example, inheriting a large sum of money or receiving an unexpected promotion.

Imagine you won the lottery… For the next few months you will be under eustress as you decide what to do with your millions. It’s the kind of stress you’ll gladly welcome with open arms, as you decide what to invest in first.

Eustress motivates you to be more than you ever imagined. Eustress is winning the promotion and then having to deliver the goods.

Eustress is the stress of winning and achieving, while destructive stress on the other hand, is distress. It’s related to being overwhelmed, becoming depressed and not coping.
Distress de-motivates us, wear and tears us down and can lead to chronic exhaustion. Unchecked distress leads to fatigue (chronic stress), which in turn, becomes a trigger for anger and in turn affects your safety, health, wealth and relationships.

Distress is what keeps you in bed unwilling to get up to tackle the day. It reinforces your low self esteem and makes you feel as if your life is a disaster area, you’re wasting your life away and that the world is against you.

How to get more?
Too much of a good thing eventually becomes unhealthy … But don’t let that deter you. If stress is inevitable in our daily life, it only makes sense to strategically take what you need and discard the rest.
A simple way to build eustress and dump distress is to cut out the things you do which drain and exhaust you.
Choose the things in life which nourish you and increase your happiness.
One way to decide what is a eustress or distress activity is simply to recognize your feelings towards it. Do you feel excited about doing it? Or is it a ‘want to’ activity as compared to a ‘have to’ activity?

Mike Fisher

We all experience distress and eustress. It’s become an unavoidable part of modern day life. However, as Mike Fisher points out, the trick is to maintain a balance between positive and negative stress in our lives.

Boundary Setting
It’s a matter of making yourself the biggest priority in your own life! Being courageous enough to say ‘no thanks, that’s far too stressful for me’, and instead say ‘Wow, that sounds challenging, I’ll give it a go,’ is an ideal tool in dumping distress and taking onboard eustress.

Notice how you feel and listen carefully to your intuition. If a task gives you a deflated, scared and loathsome feeling, then it usually means the task will only add to your distress and bring on its common symptoms, where-as, if the task gives you butterflies and an excited nervousness in the pit of your stomach, then you’ve cracked it. You’ve discarded distress and replaced it with eustress.
Well done. 

How to change distress into eustress?
There is no magic formula, but you can change your perception of what stress is and shift its perception to change its experience.
Stress is a reaction to perceived threat. Hence the logic says that if you don’t perceive something as a threat, then there will be no stress responding to it.
Changing your perception of threats to challenges, changes distress to eustress. Only by taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, can you see threats as potential benefits to be exploited and used for your own benefit.
Once you start policing your thoughts, you’ll come to look at things as challenges more often.
So to recap, it’s important to have eustress in your life. The effort is to cut out as much distress as possible by changing our perception of stress, and adding positive activities to our lives which promote eustress.

As with everything in life, it’s about balance.

What to do next?
Beating stress and knowing the difference between eustress and distress has become a science. Though relax. Mike Fisher from the British Association of Anger Management has spent the last 16 years perfecting the tools to beat stress and having helped over 16,000 people and still counting, I couldn’t recommend you more to check out his websites www.stressexperts.co.uk and www.beatinganger.com for more practical advice on beating stress and anger.

Heat-waves and anger!

The whole country is basking in a heat-wave. The beaches are full, the parks packed and the sales of ice cream are going through the roof.

But is this heat-wave leaving people cool calm and collected or is it leaving them hot under the collar and ready to blow?

A person’s level of anger and stress is a response to their environment. Police chiefs and medical staff are more than aware of this as heat-waves are associated with an increase in violent crime.

But how do heat-waves affect families and individuals?

As the temperature gets hotter, so do our tempers. Summer heat-waves make us act like cranky, whiny toddlers, ready to lash out and apportion blame.

Any doctor would explain that an increase in body temperature causes an increase in physical arousal – your heart rate goes up and your blood pressure rises as your body tries to cool itself off.

Its all very well sitting by the seaside, licking an ice-lolly and sipping a cool drink, but for many of us, heat-waves mean being uncomfortable, irritable and more prone than ever, to anger and stress.

Normally congenial folks seem to be simmering, while others are on a slow burn. Hotter heads are steaming, and a few have even been pushed to the boiling point.

Health officials are warning people to take care as the UK continues to bake in a prolonged heat-wave, with special attention being paid towards the very young children, elderly people and pregnant women.

When it’s very hot, people have a tendency to get dehydrated or under-hydrated, and that can certainly result in becoming anxious and irritable, so it’s very important to maintain hydration.

With records for the hottest day of the year appearing to be broken on a daily basis, its best that everyone takes measures to stay cool and not to over-boil.

Five ways to keep cool calm and collected.

Stay hydrated.
This one is obvious but it bears repeating: drink lots of water. Never stop drinking water.

Stay inside if you can.
We all love to bask in the sunshine, but keeping in the shade, keeps us from boiling over.

Get wet.
Stick your feet in a tub of cold water, jump in the sea or a swimming pool, or just put a soaked towel around your neck. Having a bucket full of water thrown over you always cools the temper!

Avoid alcoholic drinks.
There’s nothing better than a cold beer on a hot day, but alcoholic drinks make you urinate more frequently and that’s not good. Same goes for coffee.

Keep covered.
Wear sunscreen to avoid sunburn and try to stay out of the sun as much as possible, even if you are spending the day outside. If a sun umbrella sounds too dainty for you, at least put on a hat.

Heat-waves are there to be enjoyed and savoured but be aware of the dangers. Sunburn isn’t the only symptom of a beating Sun. Anger and stress levels are very often raised but with sound advice and a cool head; there is no reason to get too hot under the collar and no reason to boil over.

For more information on keeping your temper cooled, check out the websites of the British Association of Anger Management, such as www.stressexperts.co.uk,www.beatinganger.com and www.angermanage.co.uk.

Enjoy the sun but don’t become its victim.

Depression and Aggression

It’s common practice to greet friends, colleagues and family with the opening question, ‘How are you today?’

More often than not we reply with the short answer, ‘OK’.

Even if you are feeling depressed, would you admit it? If you are feeling sad or miserable; is it common to share these feelings?

More often than not, we are prone to answer ‘OK’ rather than be open about our inner emotions.

But is it healthy to keep such emotions bottled up? Can depression lead to aggression?

In its mildest form depression can mean just being in low spirits. To its most extreme, it makes you feel suicidal. Being depressed doesn’t stop you leading a normal life. Thousands of sufferers carry on with life regardless, with the only symptoms being mood swings, bouts of annoyance and feelings of hopelessness.

Aggression makes an appearance as a consequence of depression. It’s there under the surface ready to show its head in the most unwanted of occasions.

How often do you see mild mannered individuals grimace for no apparent reason? Or clutch their fists tight or even hit the wall or kick an object out of sight?

Whether it's uncontrollable anger towards oneself or outward aggression toward others, whether a person or object, it's clinically proven that depression and aggression run hand in hand.

What to look out for?

Symptoms of depression vary from person to person, though common threads do appear across the board.

• Feelings of sadness and gloom can either make you sleep too much or not sleep enough. If your sleeping pattern is being disturbed, it’s a sign.
• Do simple tasks become a major annoyance? If you find you have trouble concentrating and that simple tasks become major obstacles, it’s a sign.
• We all have feelings of being up and down. Everyone feels sad or has ‘the blues’ from time to time, but if feelings of hopelessness and helplessness persist, it’s a sign.
• Again, we all have light and dark thoughts racing around our minds. The Yin and Yang philosophy teaches us that you can’t have one without the other. If you find you can’t control your negative thoughts, no matter how much you try, it’s a sign.
• Losing your appetite or you can’t stop eating, is a sign.
• Feeling more irritable, short-tempered, or aggressive than usual, is a sign.
• Consuming more alcohol than normal or engaging in other reckless behavior, is a sign too.
• And the most alarming sign, which you must seek help immediately with, is having thoughts that life is not worth living.

Why am I depressed?

Life throws up a varying array of challenges which manifest themselves into depression, which in itself leads to aggression. To name but a few reasons:

• Loneliness
• Lack of support
• Life experiences, such as child-hood trauma or abuse.
• Marital and relationship problems.
• Financial strain.
• Being unemployment or even underemployed.
• Alcohol and drug abuse
• Health problems and chronic pain.

What can I do?

Acknowledging your depression and aggression is the first step to dealing with depression and aggression. Whether it’s affecting your work life, or family life, help is at hand.

Mike Fisher from the British Association of Anger Management has over 16 years experience of treating depression and aggression.

Learning what causes anger and what can be done to avoid becoming angry are among the main focuses of treatment. Also important is learning what to do when becoming angry and finding positive ways to focus feelings instead of becoming aggressive in response.

By visiting the websites www.stressexperts.co.uk, www.beatinganger.com and www.angerguru.com, you will find a number of programmes from weekend work shops, to 1-1 coaching sessions, to one day courses, which are all designed to beat and overcome depression and aggression.

Mike Fisher is happy to help with any questions, queries or enquiries you may have.

Give him a call now and beat the stress once and for all.

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”