Let’s Stop Eating Our Stress | stedtnitz. design your life

Let’s Stop Eating Our Stress | stedtnitz. design your life

Are your New Year’s intentions set and do you already find yourself struggling with one of your most persistent obstacles?

Yes, I’m referring to your stressful, daily spinning wheel.

When the symptoms of stress and anxiety become present in our daily lives, it is widespread (and indeed, human) to get discouraged from our initial good intentions and return quickly to old patterns.

Food is often a way to deal with unpleasant feelings and can provide some temporary relief from stress.

In other words, we try to eat our stress.

HOW FOOD CAN PERPETUATE  SYMPTOMS OF STRESS

Regardless of the root cause of stress, sustaining certain eating habits over time is, in itself, a source of strain for the body. This might make stress or anxiety worse over time.

It works like a vicious circle:

  1. We have stress for “X” reasons
  2. This leads us to put our eating habits on autopilot, guided by the symptoms of stress and the urgent need to soothe them.
  3. As a result, our food choices are often not the best ones to bring our bodies back into balance, but rather the opposite: They perpetuate a cycle of “stress/false relief/stress/false relief“ that may end up affecting both our physical and mental wellbeing, let alone the feeling of frustration that emerges right afterwards.

SEARCHING FOR THE ROOT CAUSE OF STRESS IS LIKE ROWING UPSTREAM

As a practitioner of the principles of Functional Medicine, I firmly believe that searching for the root cause of stress is the first step to managing it successfully.

A no-brainer, I know. What is astonishing is how seldom we embark on such a journey to search for the very roots of our discomfort. And when we do it, we see ourselves seated in a small boat, rowing-upstream with all our might, and the initial unwavering determination to find our whys. Often there is not much help from professionals along this path, either.

Following this analogy:

  • Our mind is the boatman, ready to look for answers.
  • The river is the channel of our daily life at a given time.
  • Rowing against the current is nothing but a symbol of the extra effort involved in investigating our lives, our circumstances, and most probably our psyche, as we pursue some answers.

ESSENTIAL PILLARS TO OVERCOMING STRESS

There are FOUR NON-NEGOTIABLE PILLARS for good health (and also some excuses that we often like to use)

  1. NUTRITION
  • “Next Monday, I will start eating healthier”
  • “After the weekend, I’ll stop…”
  1. SLEEP
  • “When I deliver this project, I’m going to catch up on my sleep…”
  1. BREATHING
  • “Next month, I’ll sign up for that mindfulness class.”
  1. EXERCISE
  • “As soon as I finish this report, I’m going back to the gym four times a week (!)…”

 

Needless to say, those good intentions keep slipping through our daily cracks over and over again.

 

SO, WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR US TO PAY ATTENTION TO OUR BODIES?

Because, in most cases, we identify ourselves with our boatman (our mind), but not with our boat (body), and we treat the latter as if it were something foreign to us that must be taken care of by someone outside ourselves.

Do you resonate with this analogy somehow?

Are you interested in discovering more about these essential pillars and how they may help you with supporting your stress-free 2020 goals?

If the answer is a sound YES(!), I invite you to the evening seminar “LET’S STOP EATING OUR STRESS,” that will take place on Thursday, February 13, here with us in Zurich.

 These are some of the topics that we’ll address:

  • Which foods directly affect stress and anxiety (both positively and negatively).
  • Some essential nutrients to restore our permanently over-vigilant nervous system.
  • How to identify and keep at bay the emotional hunger that often comes hand in hand with stress.

I will also share practical tips and recommendations that are easy to incorporate into daily life.

The primary purpose is to provide you with an “edible toolbox” that will best support your New Year’s goals, whatever they are!

Here you have the information and the program.

If you can’t make it to the seminar, but still resonate with some of the things that I’ve talked about in this post, feel free to get in touch here to schedule a free orientation consultation with us, or write us an email at info@stedtnitz.ch, so that we can talk about your specific questions in more depth.

I wish you a happy, fulfilling, and tasteful New Year!

Teresa Morillas

 

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Photo by: Atia Naim on Unsplash