21. Body Image and Busy Seasons : 5 Tips For Managing Stress and Your Body

Hello friends , and welcome to episode 21 of Sturdy Girl . Megan and I are doing a late evening recording and had to get some goofiness out before hitting record . So hello hi , we're here to be professional now . As professionals , we can get yes to talk about body image and busy , stressful seasons , and I don't remember what the original episode was .

It was supposed to air this week , but I have had a hell of a season recently . Megan has had a super busy , stressful season , and I needed this episode for myself , for me , and I'm hoping that you as a listener can resonate as well . Maybe you need this too . We are all super busy . We a lot of times wear it as a badge of honor .

I personally hate it , oh , I hate it , and sometimes stressful times are worse than others , and so it's looking at when things are stressful , it kind of strips bear of like what can I do ? What am I capable of what is essential , what is non-essential , and how do I set non-negotiables ?

Does this level of tiredness mean I should work out or go to sleep and just figuring those things out ? That's what we want to talk about Making choices that are supportive of the life we want to live . And then how the heck is our body image impacted through all of this ?

So , just starting off thinking about busy seasons , these usually feel like you don't have enough time , don't have any extra time , you have a different schedule than maybe you're used to or a different routine .

It's harder to tune into your body's needs , your hunger and fullness cues , or even tuning into how we're feeling about our bodies or about our lives , and so these seasons can kind of feel overwhelming . So , with that thought , how does our body respond to stress ? How does our body image respond to that stress ?

I was telling Megan before I hit record , when I was putting together the notes from this episode . All I could think about was that I think it was 1980s campaign about . This is your brain , this is your brain on drugs , and it's the cracked eggs in a sizzling pan . And this episode , this is your body on stress . It's not great .

Every single body system is affected by stress . You get sleep issues , attentional issues , digestion issues , high blood pressure . Stress can make our immune system weaker . It affects cognition , our ability to concentrate . It can affect how we view and see our bodies , which I'll get to in just a second .

The main takeaway here every body system is being affected by stress . A lot of times . Our body is down regulating a lot of those systems during stressful times because our stress response is kind of like way back in the day when you're being chased by a sabre tooth tiger .

It's that immediate danger and your body saying how can I take all energy reserves and focused attention to escape that attack ? That rest and digest piece not super important during that ?

And so that's how your body is responding when you're really stressed out , and so that leads right into the body image piece of you might not feel as good in that physical body with the way it's responding to stress .

If digestion isn't as good , if you're noticing inflammation , bloating , things like that , then suddenly your clothes aren't fitting as well or feeling as good , or you're not feeling as good in your body or you're noticing like less muscle definition or different shapes of your body . Maybe you look in the mirror and feel like they're changing .

And maybe they are in the temporary sense , right when you get super bloated , but it's not necessarily hugely changing .

And when I have lack of sleep it trickles into every single thing and then it just magnifies the stress that you're feeling , but also the imperfections that you feel about yourself . Oh for sure .

Also , suddenly you have insomnia or you have weird ass dreams , or you're waking up multiple times in the middle of the night or you can't fall back to sleep , and so you're not well rested or recovered enough , and so then you think about the fallout of all of those things .

Well , suddenly , like your hunger and fullness cues aren't the same and your body is looking for easy carb sources to give you quick energy , you find yourself reading the pantry more and you're like this isn't the behavior that I normally display , and then that can turn into how you feel about your body too . Yeah , I also think about like busy seasons .

A lot of times there requires more going out clothes and , megan , you work from home , I work in scrubs so when you put on normal clothes and suddenly you're like the hell is this waistband ?

You know , and that's something too like you and I can kind of speak on this , as we've been doing the work and going through the process and working on that healthy , resilient body image and we still struggle with this because our relationships with our bodies are never perfect . It's continual work .

Body image is a practice and body image is the lens that we look at our body , not necessarily the truth of how our body appears . So when we think about stress , it can amplify , it can distort what we see .

So it's like putting a freaking fish eye lens on your camera and then thinking that what you see is real and it's just that lens needing to be adjusted or maybe cleaned , I don't know , but it's looking at stress in so many different forms . You're feeling sad , alone , unworthy , unsettled , overwhelmed , exhausted .

Even a new job or a big project , something testing your confidence or your sense of self worth , some situation in your life Like it's so easy in those stressful times to zero in on our feelings about ourself and hyper focus on our body as the issue .

My face looks different , my stomach looks different . Part of that is is , like you know , in that busy season , not being able to do a lot of those activities I was doing before . So the really high intensity cardio , like all the time , isn't happening . Yeah , yeah .

You're doing some extra schooling for work stuff , you're working on so many different things , so a lot of your time is taken up .

You are dealing with an injury , so it has changed the way that you were able to move your body right now , and so all of those emotions that are coming up and suddenly you're like it's so easy to fall into that spiral of like man , you've really let yourself go , you're not moving like you used to .

Yeah , see , this is what your body looks like without high intensity cardio , and I say that only because similar season , where I have so many things on my plate right now , that movement hasn't been as consistent for me and that's on me just with time management and the other things taking priority .

But I get into those thoughts viral so easily of like it's your body , like your body's the problem . When it's not , there's these emotions that come up about your body , but it's usually a symptom of something else .

At the end of the day , you know your body best , especially if you've taken time to develop awareness around feelings , your thoughts , reactions and how your body does respond to stress . But I think the next thing , too , I wanted to talk about was the idea of seasons . So we've talked about already in this episode of just taking a seasonal approach .

For any of you listeners who have done team sports , you understand the benefit of off season versus in season . We don't train the same way year round , but when you're an adult , there's just such a sense of like well , I should be able to do it all . Well , I set out to do these things , I set these goals , so I'm going to do them .

And I think about like Megan , you and me in our early 20s and just being like oh , I'm going to arbitrarily train for this race and do all this lifting and just keep adding on to all the things we could do .

Like I ran my first marathon , my first year of dental hygiene school and I look back at that , taking 20 something credit terms with full time clinical schedule .

, fine .

It's saying like this is not the season to do this thing , but there will be a season . You know you're not going to pick up training for a marathon at the same time that maybe your work schedule is super ramped up , both of your kids are in team sports and maybe you're battling some like small health issues .

We can expect our bodies and our brains to make drastic changes during these super busy or stressful seasons . That is the whole point of talking in terms of seasons and especially to if you're like what season am I in ? Right now ? I am in this really busy season because of this . This thing is something that I don't have control of .

So , how can I best manage myself and my time and take care of my needs ?

it's that feeling of being stressed and busy and I think that we're all pushed to our breaking point because everything that's going on like we're just constantly stressed out , and so I think that that also trickles into my time management .

That feeling of yeah , I got off at five and all of a sudden it's eight o'clock and I haven't worked out or done anything because you know you have that time of decompressing . And then you're like oh no , I'm stressed .

Like , I truly believe that actions that we take have a reason .

So in your mind , that mindless scrolling , like there are times there's a name from and I'm blanking on it , but when you go from , like finishing work and then moving on to another task , having that buffer time of like , maybe it is a little bit of scrolling , maybe it's meeting 10 pages of a book or something and then moving on to the next task , there's

nothing wrong with that . Oh , no , just manage your buffer time . I think to just that paying attention to where our time is going .

I've had that conversation a lot with clients recently about just starting to bring more awareness , like non-judgmentally , but that realization of like , oh , you know , I work from home and I clocked out from work at 430 and suddenly it's seven o'clock and I don't know what happened between 430 and seven .

But I'm mad at myself because I didn't get up early enough to work out and I don't really like working out in the evenings . But you had this time . What were we doing ? I'm not really sure what I was doing .

Bring a little more attention to it to say like , okay , is this something where you could get a run in right after work and then just relax the rest of the evening , or what makes the most sense .

One more point I want to mention before we get into kind of the main part of this episode on just managing body image and ourselves during these busy and stressful times . And that's just like us saying now's not the time for a marathon or competing in powerlifting or whatever it is these big goals that you want to tackle .

When has there been a time in your life that you don't feel busy , that we don't feel like our schedules are full ? Never . There really isn't . So . It's looking at like , considering how stressful and busy is this season , am I making it worse on myself ? Are there ways I could make it easier ?

Are there ways that I could make small steps towards these goals that I've set ? What can I accomplish , even in the busy and hard times ? Because that says a lot about you as a person , too . Like , as soon as things get hard , are you the person that's like , oh yep , well , I don't have any time for exercise at all , I'm just not going to do anything ?

Or is it like you know what these dogs need to walk as much as I do , I can start getting in a couple of 20 minute walks a day . Or is it I've set this goal to eventually run a marathon ? Can I start running once a week ? Can I make that eventually twice a week ?

And just with the context of we're always going to be busy , how are we managing our time ?

So , yeah , I might not be going to the gym and lifting and running and doing all of these intense things that I did before , I might not be spending two hours , but it's hey , did I put on my gym clothes ? Go there for 45 minutes , do some cardio , get moving .

Just recognizing the small accomplishments on those days where you just don't feel like you have anything in you . Yeah , that's huge .

, Well , and you think about not just the physical health but mental health benefits that come from your Olympic lifting from the higher intensity from mountain .

deal with my stress .

But just that shift in it was a mental kind of mind fuck for the first like two weeks , trying to be like all right , I have to use machines . What are machines ?

It's leaning into that self respect , taking care of yourself of no matter how your body is functioning , no matter what your brain is thinking . Your body is deserving of that respect and care . It can be so easy to turn our focus on to our bodies and all the things we don't like and searching for something within that that we can control .

So it's asking yourself in these seasons like what is the next right thing For me in this season , with all the things I have going on ? It's usually evening and I'm asking myself okay , are we going to run , we're going to lift , we're going to go to bed ? Are we going to modify or run or lift ?

What do we have capacity for and what is the most self compassionate thing that I could do ? How do I take care of myself ? What are my needs ? And understanding that , especially when you're stressed and sometimes during stressful times , you actually just need more sleep .

So compassion isn't letting myself go , it's holding yourself accountable and responsible , but still taking care of you and not ignoring your feels and your needs . Exactly , I'd like to think of this as like the friend test too . Like if my best friend was going through what I am , what would I say to them and how would I encourage them to act ?

I've had to kind of distance myself recently of okay , what do I need tonight ? Because it's usually it's the end of a you know , 10 plus hour workday , plus time in traffic , and it's okay run , lift , sleep or a modification . How am I feeling ? What are my energy levels ? Like ? Did I eat enough today ? Did I drink enough water ? How did I sleep last night ?

What are my sleep needs tonight ? If my best friend were explaining this to me , what would I tell them to do ? And it helps me to better tune in to you know what I'm going to start this , lift and see where I'm at , and nine times out of 10 , I can do the whole lift , and maybe I've modified a couple of things , or maybe I skip accessories Anyway .

So self compassion being thing number one in managing busy , stressful seasons . The second one we want to talk about and we kind of alluded to this earlier is non-negotiables .

If you are a client of mine listening to this , non-negotiables are something that we talk about every single week because they're important , and this isn't a list of all the 15 habits you want to do every single day . No , this is leaning into basics .

This is the understanding that in a busy season , you're not going to put yourself on some crazy new diet , you're not going to completely start a whole new workout routine . What are the basics ? How are you showing up for yourself every single day in a way that you're taking care of you ?

Is it carrying a water bottle with you everywhere you go to make sure that you're drinking at least half your body weight in ounces of water a day ? Is it recognizing that when I'm stressed , I have this propensity for staying up way too late trying to get one more thing done ?

I set a bedtime for myself , and so it's lights out by 10pm to make sure that I get at least seven hours of sleep at night . You know , is it 10 minutes at the beginning or the end of the day to like word vomit in a journal or just have some focused decompress time with yourself ? Right , these are basics . This isn't putting all these things on a list .

It's saying what are the things in this busy season I tend to forget and how can I show up for

me and keep taking care of me ?

But I have started doing the little eye patches and stuff like that and I keep them in the fridge and I will say I don't know if it's doing shit for my skin , but it makes me feel good .

But just in context of like that is something for me that when I'm stressed , it is everything I can do to like take a shower every day and washing my hair and washing my face and going through that skincare routine , knowing that if I actually wash my face and put on the lotion that makes my skin feel the best , my skin doesn't look so shallow the next day

and it legitimately feels like an act of self-care . But it is one of those like I set that as a non-negotiable for myself for a while , because I usually will just use makeup remover , skin cleanser , whatever wipe and I'm done .

You know , for one of my clients the last couple weeks , their non-negotiable was making their kids's lunch and their own lunch every day before work , and that was the single non-negotiable we worked on for the week . Yeah , that's great , okay . The next thing I'm going to talk about is finding the joy , and I hesitate in putting this in here Anytime .

We talk about , like , finding the joy , finding gratitude , focusing on the here and now and , you know , remembering you're not going to get another today , right , it's true , but it's so oversimplified to people and there's a lot of benefit from gratitude and finding joy . But I liked this piece of .

I read oh , it's probably been close to a month ago now about finding glimmers in your day , and it's this idea of finding small moments of peace or happiness , because , again , we're always going to be busy , we're always going to have stress , all of those things finding those glimmers of .

I don't even want to say positivity , right , but just this , like earlier today I went out for a walk and it had been weirdly snowing and then raining , it was still drizzling , and then the sun came out and I was like sunshine on my face , what this feels so good , but those moments of just glimmers , finding those little bits because not everything is bad , or

at least , for your sake I hope not everything is bad but finding those pieces of enjoyment . And this is something that I have again in this season , trying to do for myself too , a being grateful . Some of these things that are making my life busy and stressful right now are good things .

They're going to be bigger things , gooder things as they grow , as they change , and I know everything is moving forward . But in the season it was like all right , where are the small moments of joy ? Or standing on a dining room chair yesterday , megan , taking pictures for a sturdy girl apparel .

I was so anxious about getting pictures done and all the thought and then trying to find those moments of just being present . And one thing I want to call this back to last season we did an interview with a stress coach and they talked about , in the stressful times , doing a couple of different grounding exercises .

So I do want to mention those real quick and then we can kind of move on . One of them is the five four , three , two , one , so five things you can see , four things you can touch , three things you can hear , two things you can smell and one thing you can taste .

So taking that moment from that like thought spiral to go through that list can help bring yourself back to the present moment . Or is it stopping and taking five deep breaths , five seconds inhale , pause , five seconds exhale and you can touch your thumb to the pad of each of your fingers .

And the next thing that we want to talk about in busy , stressful seasons is stop blaming your body . We've talked about how stress and busyness can affect your actual processes of your body . It can affect the lens with which we look at our body .

We can get a lot more hypercritical , and it's so easy to blame our body when all it's trying to do is support us through this busy season . Your body's not the problem . A lot of times , it's the thoughts about our bodies that are . So can we acknowledge those thoughts that come up about our body in these

seasons and ask yourself where is this thought coming from ? Is it really true ? Like , if you can get to the point , beyond the just acknowledging the thoughts , right , that's a whole skill in itself . But as they come up and you recognize that they're coming up , can you challenge them ? Can you say is this really true ?

The wild thing here is you know our feelings are a signal that something is going on and a lot of times our brains aren't great about interpreting what that something is . So take skill to recognize the where and why of that feeling coming up .

If getting dressed in the morning feels even more like an ordeal , standing in front of your closet , going what the hell do I wear , can you lean into the season of wearing clothes that you feel good in , clothes that are comfortable because , like we've said so many times before , fashion really has no rules .

So , where what you want , right , the season of where what's comfortable , is it t-shirts and leggings ?

Incidentally , we have an episode coming up later this season I can't remember two or three episodes from now on how to manage your self-talk when it comes to looking in the mirror , and how to improve the skill of affirmations , which , yes , it's a skill and there's a right and wrong way to do it .

So we will be talking about that shameless plug to keep listening . And one thing along these lines too , of the stop blaming our body , as we have talked so much about this already on this episode is , you know , if you notice the amount of movement you're getting in has decreased ? Noticing , not judging .

Can you think about ways to increase that , even if it's just getting the dogs out for a walk . So this isn't saying , like you know , megan , for you you're not able to Olympic lift right now and you're not able to mountain bike . Okay , we understand that .

But you are finding so many other modalities and ways to get in movement and figuring out how that can manage the mental health piece .

Right , because movement can help our feels , help us process them , work through them and especially when it comes to those feelings about our bodies , it's almost like that thought of a nurse I like the more sedentary we are , the harder it is to work through those feels about our body .

If I reach more than a mile , great .

And finding those small ways , those non-negotiables , incorporating little bits towards working towards your goal as a way to counteract or just working through that season . And then , last little thing to help us through these busy times is rewarding yourself . Now , this isn't the overuse like treat yourself . Even though I am a firm believer in my emotional support .

Iced coffee as a little treat myself every time I go run errands . Same . This is more for the listeners that are overachievers , the listeners that gain those dopamine hits from checking things off the to-do list , who tackle a goal and then move immediately onto the next one .

Can you take a moment when you complete that big project or you're making huge progress towards a house project or big things going on in your family , whatever it is ?

Can you take a minute to just celebrate all of your freaking hard work , bask in the progress that you've made , even if it doesn't feel measurable on how well you're surviving or thriving despite it all ?

Like that's the whole point here Is there's a small way to treat yourself , to reward yourself and take the time to actually acknowledge the things that you are working on , because I'm assuming that the busyness and the stress isn't for nothing , or hopefully it's not . Hopefully you're not like a slave to your job that you hate and it's ruining your life .

I am a person that has a very hard time saying no to anything , and so I mean I've worked really hard as far as , like , I think it's important to set boundaries in your own time , especially when your time is already so scarce and you're already having a hard time managing it and so in feeling overwhelmed or overworked , stressed , and so it's just kind of one

of those pieces where it's okay to say no , it's okay to pencil in time for yourself and not over commit .

And if you struggle with time management and you struggle with ADHD , like I do , you can try and fit a lot of things in there and then all of a sudden that's what makes you late and then that's what makes you panic . It's a spiral .

was responding to emails at 9 30 PM , what the hell .

So instead of sitting in my office at home like if I'm doing homework , I'll go out into the living room and set up in the kitchen . That separation I like it . Yeah , even though it's on the same computer , it's like mentally it's a little bit different .

Remember to treat it with respect and care that it deserves , no matter what is going on in your life . And that is the end of the episode . One thing I do want to mention before we say goodbye . This episode is airing on Friday , march 1st , and that is when Sturdy Girl apparel drops . Yay .

This has been six months in the making , six months of research in all different types of screen printing and different t-shirt companies and all the things . It's finally here . So if you're listening on release day or afterwards , be sure to check out our apparel at SturdyGirlcoshop . All photography is courtesy of Megan . We're so stoked to bring it to you .

I'm so stoked to see Sturdy Girl shirts in the wild . It's going to be awesome . Thanks for listening to another episode . Friends . Be sure to tune in next week to listen again . Megan will actually be interviewed next week . All about being a Sturdy Girl in the bike racing scene and all of the impacts that injury has had on your body image .