Got Stress? Watch Out for Weight Gain

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Break the Stress-Weight Cycle

Women are particularly vulnerable to stress, suffering from an ailment sometimes called “the disease to please.”
           
“Women’s self-esteem comes from their relationships with others,” says Mary Ann Bauman, M.D., author of Fight Fatigue: Six Simple Steps to Maximize Your Energy (Tate Publishing, 2005). “It’s what makes us great nurturers, but it can go too far.”
           
She created this six-step plan to break the stress cycle:
1. Identify. Think of an encounter you’ve had with someone in the past 24 hours—good or bad. The important thing is to reflect on it. “Be careful not to overanalyze the encounter because at this point you will have a tendency to find fault with your reaction,” Bauman says.

2. Evaluate. Ask yourself how you felt just prior to your encounter. Were you annoyed? Angry? Rushed? What effect did this have on the situation? “This is important because your emotional state at the time often colors your reaction to the situation at hand,” Bauman says.

3. Challenge. Think about your assumptions going into the situation. Compare these with what actually happened. “This way you are testing the validity of your assumptions,” Bauman says. “And those assumptions often determine how you will respond to a situation.”

4. Explore and experiment. You’ve analyzed your encounters with others, identified your emotions, and challenged your assumptions. Now, visualize what you could have done differently. Can you pinpoint a moment when it turned positive or negative?

5. Attack barriers. Tackle the energy-zappers in your life. If time spent chatting at the coffee machine sucks 30 minutes out of your day that might get you out of the office faster, cut the time in half. If you can’t find time to exercise—the biggest energy-supplier, according to Bauman—go for a 10-minute walk during lunch.

6. Set boundaries. That old mantra that no one can take advantage of you without your permission has its merits. To reclaim your time, it’s vital to inform the people in your life of your boundaries.      

Learning how not to take on too much won’t be easy. These tendencies didn’t start overnight and won’t go away in a flash. But by using these steps, Bauman says, you will start to understand the connection between your mind and body, which may help increase your energy.