How To: Manage Your Stress Levels for Good

With getting back into the first work week of the year, we all had a simple choice to choose stress or choose ease. I woke up a couple of mornings with so much to do...feeling super overwhelmed, and made the conscious effort to choose differently. It's something I work with clients all the time too. It’s so easy to get back into work and get super stressed but know that every time you let that happen and don’t prioritize your peace, there’s an internal reaction that happens in your body.

 So first, before we continue, let me ask you a few questions.

Do you ever feel like

you can’t ever get to the end of your to-do list?

There’s not enough time in the day?

You have to take care of everyone else, and you come last?

Know this, everyone experiences stress, but it’s so damaging on the body when we let it keep going long term so let’s discuss some simple tactics to manage it better. I struggled with this for so long — from the physical stress of restricting food I put in my body to the mental stress of trying to be perfect — it all took a huge toll and caused major hormone disruption for me, so I wanted to bring light to the subject.

I want to break this up into two parts. How to deal with long term stress and how to deal with short term stress. So we’ll talk about steps to take when dealing with more chronic stress and how to deal with something that comes up in your day how to calm your mind and body.

Whenever you feel any stress, an alarm system goes off in your body that says panic. All of the blood in your body rushes away from your internal organs and into your extremities so you can run from whatever the dangerous situation is, even if it doesn’t seem dangerous that’s how we evolved. Stress signals your brain to release the hormones adrenaline and cortisol. The adrenaline will increase your blood pressure and heart rate, while the cortisol basically stops all body functions that you don’t need to survive. Cortisol lowers your immune response, increases blood sugar, and can shut down your reproductive system. So if you’re really in a dangerous situation, this is great. We want this to happen. But if this is happening all the time because of stressors that aren’t real threats, it can damage your hormones and body.

So now that you understand how stress affects your body, it’s important to know it also has a huge impact on your mood, levels of anxiety and depression and, fertility, and so much more.

So now let’s talk about solutions. 

1. If you’re struggling with something that comes up in your day or an immediate stressor - the first thing I like to do is a breathwork exercise where you breathe in for 5, hold for 2 and exhale for 7. The longer exhale will begin to turn on your parasympathetic nervous system. When you breathe all the way down to your belly, you activate your vagus nerve, which is what runs from your brain to your gut. When it’s activated, you feel nice and relaxed, and when you’re anxious and stressed, that’s why you feel like you have to go to the bathroom or your stomach hurts.
2. From there, you can ask yourself two questions. Is this situation in my control? If it is, have I done everything I can to ensure a positive outcome.
3. Put it in perspective by asking yourself if this will bother me in one month — usually, if it’s traffic or someone who bugged you at work, the answer is no. There’s no reason to but your body through the stress response if things are really insignificant in the scheme of things.
4. When it comes to long terms stress, it’s all about being more mindful because long term stress is often a buildup of smaller short term stressors happening daily. Whether that’s a journal or morning meditations, starting a mindfulness practice becomes more aware of when you’re getting stressed. The more often you’re releasing cortisol and adrenaline- the easier those hormones are to activate.
5. The more you meditate long term, the more you’re going to become aware of what stresses you out. Still, you’re going to begin to release old negative energy and thought patterns that cause stress as well, and by doing that, you’re releasing long term chronic stress even if you may not feel it at the moment.

These are just a couple of tactics I use - it goes so much deeper when I work with clients from nutrition to supplements to get everything back in balance, so you can click here to book a free consultation with me if this sounds like you.

I hope that the biggest takeaway for you guys here is that it’s all connected. Mental health is just as important as physical. So sometimes, even if you’re eating healthy and exercising regularly, you might be holding on to unwanted weight because your stress hormones are out of whack. If that’s the case, I will urge you to open up to checking in on your mental health and share any tips on the stress you have with me on my social channels!