Manage Your Stress For Quicker Weight Loss

Many people tend to adopt unhealthy eating habits and reduce their physical activity levels when they are experiencing stress in their lives. Learning to manage your stress will help you to adopt healthy lifestyle changes that will contribute to weight loss and maintenance. Here are some ways to manage stress:

• Identify your stressors. Ask yourself why, what, when, where and how you experience stress.
• Determine how you will deal with each stressor. If you find yourself eating to relieve stress (this is called emotional eating) or consuming alcohol to drown your sorrows, exercise instead. Exercise gives you a natural high and is great for unwinding at the end of the day or recharging in the middle of the day.
• Learn relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, visualization, tai chi, yoga or meditation. Aromatherapy, talking to friends and walking your dog are more examples of ways to de-stress.
• If eating is the only way to relieve stress, choose crunchy and/or low-calorie foods that help to reduce tension. Examples are carrots, celery, crispy apples, sugar-free chewing gum and low-fat ice cream or yoghurt.
• When you feel your life spinning out of control, have something stable to latch onto. That something could be a regular exercise routine. For example, if you wake up at 6 a.m. every morning to exercise, you not only get your daily dose of stress relief but also improve your sleep pattern and quality (compared to those who keep irregular hours). With regular exercise, you will feel more alert and be more productive during the day. With increased productivity, you will get more done and your stress level will drop.

Self-Monitoring

It is easier to get back on track if you have gained 2 kg than if you have gained 6 kg. And just because there's diet pills like Abdominal Cuts available doesn't mean that you can binge on food, then take weight loss pills to make up for it. It doesn't work like that unfortunately. To detect weight regain and react promptly, self-monitoring is important. Faithfully monitor the following:

• Measure your weight and waist circumference weekly.
• Complete a three-day food record every month and work out your average daily caloric intake.
• Record your physical activities and step counts in your physical activity diary.
• After visiting your doctor or after completing your annual check-up, tabulate your latest blood pressure, lipid levels, etc., against past records to see the trend.

If you find it too tedious to monitor the above parameters, you can always resort to diet and exercise software that can make your job easier. There are desktop as well as personal digital assistant versions.

No Time to Exercise?

It is common to hear people say they are unable to adhere to their weight-loss program because of their busy work schedules. However, at my sports medicine practice, I see many top executives who exercise regularly. Not surprisingly, they don't have a weight problem.

I was initially puzzled as to why the busiest of executives tend to choose the most time consuming of sports, such as Olympic distance triathlons (1.5 km swim, 40 km cycle, 10 km run), iron-man distance triathlons (2.4 km swim, 180 km cycle, 42 km run), marathons (42 km) and ultra marathons (about 100 km). After interviewing some of them, these became obvious:

• Their daily training sessions served as their "escape" from work and provided time to unwind and think.
• The busier they got, or the more stress they faced, the more they insisted on sticking to their training schedules!
• The regularity of their training provided an anchor around which to organize their hectic and erratic work schedules.
• They found that their training increased rather than decreased the productivity.