Stressed? What Are You Doing About It?

Music. And welcome to Change Your Relationship with Food, the podcast hosted by me, Kyla Holley.

With many years experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and develop a more healthy relationship with food. Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing. Today, I want to talk about stress because stress is something that comes up every day in the conversations I have with people. It's probably the most common thing that comes up as a barrier to being able to achieve something.

So people say, oh, I was so stressed this week, I didn't have a chance to eat well. The quality of my food dropped because I was so stressed, because I was just going for easy options. I was so stressed this week that I drank too much. I was so stressed this week that my mind just wasn't in the game. I couldn't even think about what to do and what not to do around food. So it's a really common get out of jail free card that people use.

And also I think, and I've covered this before with another podcast, I think we live in this time of this toxic productivity where we're expected to be busy, busy, busy. And it's almost this expectation that we should be stressed. Because if we're not stressed, well, then what are we doing? Are we being lazy? Are we just sitting around relaxing? Life has to come with a certain level of stress.

And the problem is when that level of stress that we often wear as a sort of badge of honor stops us from achieving what we want to achieve or stops us looking after ourselves, then I think we're kidding ourselves, aren't we, that this is a good thing. This is a terrible thing, surely. Anyway, I want to also kick off with a bit of a quote from next week's guest. So I'm jumping ahead a little bit here. His name is Justin Nort, and he's done a whole load of video content.

There's lots out there if you look up Justin's name, but he's with me next week on the podcast and it's going to be an absolute cracker. So I really suggest that you. So I really suggest that you listen to that next week. And one of the quotes that he came out with, which I found really interesting, and it makes you think, and it makes you also consider, okay, well, maybe it's time to be completely honest with myself. His quote is, everyone is living their lives exactly the way they want to.

It's a simple sentence, isn't it? But think about that for a second. Everyone is living their lives exactly the way they want to so if there's something in your life that you claim you don't want my question is what are you doing to eliminate that thing I use this the same same but different when my kids were growing up they would often well not they my daughter would often come to me complaining about something oh mom it's not fair blah blah blah, blah, whatever it was that her complaint was.

And I came up with a phrase that I used to say back to her, which annoyed the hell out of her eventually. But here we go. Don't complain about something that you have the power to change. Okay. Another short sentence. Don't complain about something that you have the power to change. So in other words, if this is completely out of your domain, if you can't make any change in this area whatsoever, well, then fair enough. Then you are kind of trapped in that situation. But if you have the power to

change this situation, then change it. Don't complain about it.

Similar concept, I suppose. So let's go back to stress. This could be stress at home, stress at work, family stress, stress with your children, money stresses, health stresses, and even at the moment, politics. Politics is stressing me out a little bit at the moment. But my question is, if you are suffering from stress in these areas, what are you actually doing about it? What are you doing about it? Are you complaining? Are you feeling sorry for yourself?

Are you feeling a bit hopeless or inadequate? Are you saying it's not fair that I'm in this situation? Because this is the sort of thing I hear every single day. I'm in this situation, it's really stressful and I can't do anything to change it. Well, my question would be, hmm, is that true? Is that actually true? if you were actually really super honest with yourself, or are these excuses that you're hiding behind?

I'm being a bit tough on you today, aren't I? But it's really important that sometimes we don't lie to ourselves. And quite often, we build this big lie that we tell ourselves in order to function in some area of our lives. So if we say, oh, I didn't do all these things because, I was so stressed, it almost gives us that clause, that get out of jail free card, which we can go, well, that's the reason I didn't achieve all this other stuff. So we've built, we've inbuilt this reasoning.

And so therefore we kind of have to stay stressed. Otherwise we would have no excuse other than to get on with all that other stuff. We use this in so many ways. We use it to procrastinate as well. You know, it's been such a stressful week. I haven't had the chance to do this stuff. Is that true or is this just our inbuilt excuse that we've got? So excuses that I see all the time are things like, I haven't had time.

I haven't got the time to do this. another one is I can't afford it or it's difficult or my personal favorite which annoys the hell out of me is it's easier said than done well yeah everything is easier said than done isn't it but I get that a lot from again some of the people that come to see me oh this is all easier said than done super annoying so how about if I said to you you are choosing most of your stress. How would you feel about that? Is that annoying?

Stress at home or stress with family? What are you actually doing about that? Or are you choosing just to stay in that stress situation? So let's break this down one by one, all the different stresses that we can report with. The first one, so stress at home, stress with your family. What are you doing about that. Let me suggest things you could do. So you could be, for instance, learning to communicate better with those people. Have you done that?

Have you actually thought, well, look, I need to communicate better. I need skills in this area. How do I do that? Have you discussed this with members of your family? Hey, guys, we're not communicating really well. And that's really stressing me. That's providing me with a lot of day-to-day dresses that are making my life difficult and it's preventing me from doing other things. Are you able to communicate your needs to your family? So again, where's your effort with this?

If you're saying you're stressed, if this is stressing you out, where are you placing your efforts to solve this problem? Or are you just turning to food? Are you just turning to alcohol? Are you turning to online shopping? Are you turning to online gambling? What is it you're doing to relieve this stress? Are you just taking not the easy road out, but the immediate road out of this problem? So think about stress like a headache.

It's similar in a lot of ways. So imagine every day when you woke up, you had a headache. And you trot it off to your medicine cabinet or your useful drawer or wherever you keep these things. And you took a couple of headache tablets. And that got rid of the headache. But later in the day, the headache came back. So you went again and you took more headache tablets. And just about bedtime, damn, that headache's back again. And you take more headache tablets. And these headache tablets,

they do the job. They stop the headache for a while and they allow you to function pretty well, but then, hey, the headache comes back. Now, how long would you let this go on for? How long would you suffer from a headache all day, every day, and rely on medications to get you out of that headache on a temporary basis? How long would you let that go on for until you said to yourself, well, hold on a second. Why? Why am I getting these headaches?

What's happening in the background to make these headaches? What's happening to cause them? And how long would it take you to take yourself off to a GP or some sort of doctor and say, hey, I'm getting a lot of these headaches? And what if your doctor said, well, look, we've run some medical checks on you. There's actually nothing wrong with you. You're just in a situation where your body's not coping very well with your environment.

So how about we learn better ways to cope with your environment rather than you keep taking these medications? To be fair, the chances of a doctor telling you that are probably pretty low, but it makes sense, doesn't it? Why would we keep just taking medication to numb the pain before we actually look at what's causing the pain. And that's what I'm asking you to consider here with stress.

Think what's causing that stress and what you can actually do to alleviate the stress rather than just these fixes to temporarily numb the stress.

So another one, stress with money. A lot of people have stress with money. So what are you doing to deal with that? Have you sat down and worked out a budget? Do you even know how to do that? Is that perhaps why you're stressed about money? Because you don't have these good financial skills. So have you been looking at how to acquire those skills? Have you looked at perhaps how you can earn more? Is there a way to do that? If not, have you worked out a way that you can spend less?

There's a lot of us that don't have the opportunity to earn more, but I think virtually every one of us has the opportunity to spend a bit less. Are you spending money on things that really are unused or unnecessary?

Necessary things like streaming services gym gym membership if you're not going takeaways all those things that we those little subscriptions we have that we don't really need if you're using them fair enough not a problem but if you're not getting the use out of them if you're not getting your money's worth well do you actually need these things at all so if money is your stressor have you actually looked at solutions? Have you actually kind of realized, okay, this is my problem.

How am I going to fix this problem? Or are you just hoping that the problem will go away magically on its own?

Next one, stress with health. Again, take that step back. Have you actually sort of reviewed your life, evaluated it and decided what would actually be the single biggest improvement to your health? If you're drinking too much, would that be the biggest improvement to your health to stop drinking or to rein it in, to slow it right down?

If you're eating too much and you're feeling sluggish and you're feeling horrible, is that perhaps the best solution to try and tackle that side of your life, that side of your health. So are you being proactive with this or are you being reactive? Will a pill just fix this up? Is that the best solution for you?

Or are there actually better ways so that you don't actually need that pill in the first place or you don't need that donut or you don't need that glass of wine or gin and tonic or something?

So if you're not doing these things, if you're not actually applying the time you have, and we agree that time is valuable, if you're not applying that time to actually finding solutions, if you're applying that time to just numbing the stress out in some other way, well, then you've got to ask yourself, how long do you do that for?

Just like the idea with the headache medication at what point do you just shake yourself awake and go well hold on this is not the best solution for me I have to try something different because this isn't working this is just numbing the pain and the pain keeps coming back whatever the pain is I mean today we're talking about stress but this could apply for so many things in life so if you're looking for that quick fix something to feel better straight away is it

just because you don't have a proper solution because you haven't invested your time in actually finding that proper solution so let's look at the things that are possibly important in your life and try and go here for i've heard you've heard this expression before the low-hanging fruit So. Try to break it down and say, what is one thing I can do today, one really simple thing that will make a really big difference in my life? Try not to tackle the things that seem massively overwhelming.

Try and tackle the little things first, the easy things, but things that just doing one single thing will make one big difference. So I've made a little list of possibilities here, and they're kind of in the domain that I work in anyway, which of course they would be because that's what I do. So the first one is hydration. So simple. So massively simple. Are you well hydrated? Because your body is mostly water. So if that hydration level goes down,

how's it going to affect your thinking, your cognition? How's that going to work? How's it going to affect your relationship with food if you're dehydrated? So hydration, let's say that's number one, and it's probably the simplest thing to do. It doesn't cost you anything. All it takes is you remembering to drink some water. So this could be as simple as, when I wake up tomorrow, the first thing I will do is have a glass of water.

Or I will have a glass of water before every meal or after every meal. Or I'll remember to have a glass of water before I go to bed. Or I don't know, whatever way you want to play this, but it will make a big difference by a very small action. So maybe try that one tomorrow. How much hydration can you get in during the day?

Don't make it obsessive, but just say to yourself, okay, what's one little thing I could do to make this happen? Another thing. Another thing is less alcohol. How can you reduce the amount of alcohol you drink if you are drinking? Alcohol affects your sleep. So generally with alcohol, you may fall asleep quickly and you may feel that alcohol is helping you do that because you may say, oh, otherwise I go to bed and my mind's racing. I need a drink to help me fall asleep.

That's been said to me before. And you do. Alcohol does make you fall asleep quite well. The problem is that you then wake up later on in the night, either because you're dehydrated or because you've got a headache setting in. But generally, you don't get that good quality sleep. You just get that early stage of sleep, which isn't quite the same quality that's going to actually replenish your energy supplies that's actually going to restore you and renew you for the next day.

That's the sleep that you're missing out on if you're drinking to fall asleep. So again, be simple about this. Don't go into it saying, that's it, I'm going to give up alcohol. It's gone from tomorrow, T total. Just maybe say to yourself, right, well, if I normally go to bed at 10, then I will make sure I don't drink for three hours before I go to bed. If you can't manage that, two hours before you go to bed.

But put in a little parameter where you go, you know what, I'm going to do that because it's not going to stop me having my drink with dinner. It's not going to make me set myself up for failure. It's just my way of looking after myself. if I stop drinking a few hours before, I might get better sleep. And that will be a good thing for me.

So better sleep, you're creating a better sleep pattern. You'll be creating a better, life pattern, I suppose, for the next day because you won't be sleep deprived. You would have had that renewal. You will feel better physically. You will feel better mentally. Another thing that's so common is screen time.

The amount of people that I speak to that say, I can't sleep, so I just lie in bed playing on my phone, or I can't sleep, so I get out of bed and I play on my phone or I play a game or I watch some YouTube videos, they're watching something that is stimulating and they've got that kind of blue light going on. So it's that real contradiction in I can't sleep, so I'm going to get out of bed and do something that won't help me sleep.

So again, try and limit screen time before bed. The same as alcohol. Say to yourself, you know what, I'm going to put my phone down at a certain time. Another thing is try not to have these devices in your bedroom. I know I've got kind of rules around this, which has always been in place.

The one thing I swore that I would never do when my husband and I met and we got married, I said, we must never have a TV in the bedroom. End of. That must never happen because the bedroom should be, apart from the obvious, it should be a place of rest and relaxation. And it should be somewhere that's this little zone of peace and tranquility. And having devices in it and having TVs in it, it detracts from that. It makes it not a bedroom.

We've got those in other rooms. The bedroom is a completely separate place. So try and keep your phone out of the bedroom. Try and keep all those sort of things that will stimulate you to stay awake out of your sleeping place. And try and create this place that sings sleep to you. You know, a place that's lovely and comfortable and tranquil and beautiful where you want to drift off to sleep and you want to wake it up in it as well.

Maybe learn some relaxation techniques. So if stress is your thing, what have you got that you can use during the day as some sort of technique to alleviate some of that stress? And if you're telling, if you're sitting there at the moment saying, oh, for God's sake, I don't have the time to do that sort of stuff. Well, let me tell you, you are exactly the person that needs this.

If you think this is nonsense if you think you haven't got the time if you think this is crazy new age stuff learning how to relax learning how to calm your body down and calm your nervous system well you are the one that needs it most i've done a podcast in the past which is about dropping the anchor a relaxation technique which will alleviate your stress it will lessen your stress, it will lessen things like anxiety as well. Learn it, use it, it will help, I promise.

And if you think it's stupid, then as I say, you need it more than anybody.

So hopefully today. I've given you something to think about. I know I've probably been a bit tougher than normal, but you've got to remember I hear all day, every day excuses why people can't do things. And it's my job quite often to try and provide solutions or ideas to free you up from those self-limiting beliefs. I think I've done a podcast on that as well. self-limiting beliefs that keep you stuck where you are. And stress is one of those things that keeps you stuck where you are.

And it's become, in these modern times, a universal excuse. People just say, oh, I'm stressed, therefore it eliminates my responsibility for my actions. I drink too much because I'm stressed. I eat too much because I'm stressed. I do all these things because I'm stressed and it's not my fault. I shouldn't take the blame for it. It's the stress that does it.

All I'm saying is take a long, hard look at you and say how much of this is excuses that's making it so that you can deny responsibility for something.

And how much of those things that stress you out do you actually have some level of control over and try and be a bit more solution focused to this rather than just going ah I'm stressed say to yourself how can I alleviate some of my stress how can I stop the stress occurring in the first place, rather than that approach of the headache tablet, where I take something to alleviate the stress.

Okay, so just think about it the other way around. As I mentioned earlier, next week's guest is Justin Nort. He is fabulous. He's with me next week. And he has little pearls of wisdom, which I really think you would find super useful, plus the fact that he is certainly one of the people in life who does not make excuses. He doesn't let things get in his way. So listen to me and Justin next week having a chat. It's worth your time. And the week after, it will be just me again on my own.

I look forward to your ears then. And thanks so much for listening today. Don't forget to check the links in the episode notes to our six-week Change Your Relationship with Food course and to the Change Your Relationship with Food workbook and journal, which is available on Amazon. Music.