My Personal War Against Indiscipline: Lets be honest, dealing ( or blaming) with stress

On my way to Zumba

So in my last blog post I talked about mother nature, which as we know can be very stressful, so if you have a tendency to snack, eat for comfort as  a way of dealing with stress, you need to be prepared that this can have an impact on your weight loss plans.

So I have been under a lot ao stress in recent times, it started in December 2013 when my 23 year tenure as a civil servant came to an end under a TUPE agreement, I was moved ( along with several of my colleagues) to a private company. Well talk about shell shock, couple that with the fact that my husband ( my best friend, my confidante) had and in fact continues to work away, knock me for  six it was a lot to contend with and then trying to stay on a strict albeit a generous routine then becomes another stress and I quite often found myself feeling sorry for myself. The issue is these stresses are really not reason enough to just not do what you are supposed to do, signed up for, whether, its a weight loss plan, work whatever,  its just that they can weigh you down ( no pun intended!), make feel as if everything is an event, for me personally i can related it to using a wet towel to keep helium balloons down ( this was a recent ploy of mine to transport such balloons in my car). We all know what a wet towel is a euphemism for!

So when bouts of “ oh i feel sorry for myself, I’m going to have these chocolate biscuits, desserts or just good old chocolate”  becoming  part of your daily mantra, creeping up on your good work, sabotaging your efforts.

I have to be honest though, as i popped down to SW yesterday  I cant complain or be surprised that i stayed the same. Please don't get me wrong , my SW cocking has been amazing ( ok we know that self praise is no praise), its everything else the all of a sudden penchant for rich tea with my mid morning cup of tea, not preparing  breakfast, running on empty ( dangerous from all sides that one!) the wine,  funnily enough not much chocolate but i did have more than my fair share of quavers and other types of crisps and the granddaddy of all things morish bread!! And yes lest i forget not weighing my cereal. All in all I’m out of control!  Can i really blame it all on stress? I am pretty certain there are other tools available to deal with stress  so why lay what is just ordinary greed and indiscipline at the feet of stress? I need to take back control. My biggest saving grace has been adding much more exercise to my repertoire, I  walk a lot more, i have added an extra zumba class. These are paying major  dividends, but imagine who much more i could get if I were only to stick to plan. 

So on a serious note now it has emerged in the news that American Doctors/ scientists have confirmed a direct link between stress and one’s tendency to have a stroke and / or heart attach.  Apparently stress causes a build up of white blood cells build up in our vessels causing blood clots.  Do you see where we are going with this?  I can imagine  and to be honest I have heard it, seen it and indeed felt it. that the cycle of doing well and messing up can be stressful in itself.  The fact of the matter is, external forces of stress cannot be controlled, how we deal with them though can be, and we really must get a grip on how to do this, i’m not qualified to say what works for anyone else, but anything less than trying to deal with stress without resorting to comfort eating si sabotaging more then your weight loss plans and how you look, would you not agree?

My Personal war against indiscipline: when Mother Nature intervenes!

So it struck me the other day that really I do seem to feel permanently hungry when I am on my star week as we lovingly refer to it at SW ( personally to me its the visitor from hell!) I always felt that i noticed this but that i was really making excuses in my head as a cause to eat junk or simply just to eat more!  

Everyone knows about the bloating, personally i have been known to put on up to 1/2 a stone because of it! But did you know that its medically proven, oh yes, its accepted that we do actually burn more calories on and around the time of our period hence the hunger. Apparently the cravings we get are hormonal ( imagine that!)  Anyway don't get excited its only between 100 and 300 calories. We know how easy it is to blow 300 calories without even thinking about it!

So I spoke to my friend who is a doctor, he confirmed that this is true, but you know what he also said was that whilst he has not researched if yet but he believes that women are more susceptible to alcohol when they are on their period, as in it takes half the amount of alcohol to get drunk. So I don't know if any of you have experienced that, but it kind of makes sense, as i know for me when i am really tired any amount of alcohol will make me drunk tired, compared to when I'm full of energy where it just gives me more energy!  So as Im usually dirt tired whenever the dreaded visitor is here, it stands to reason that i would be more susceptible to alcohol at this time!

it would be very easy to go off piste when one has one's period, after all it cant be helped if you conjure up these hunger pangs and cravings every month. They do tend to take you by surprise!

what we need is a strategy, one that deals with this obstacle I can imagine that it will be quite emotional too and then add to it the normal joys of life and phew its enough to knock you off your perch! 

One of my long term strategies is always to have cooked food in the freezer, so when you come in from your day's travaille  you don't have to start worrying about cooking. One thing that can be hard is to recognise the symptoms, because as lots of women have testified, its only when they come on that they say to themselves ah, thats why I wanted this and wanted that or felt particularly cranky! So I feel there is a need to look at it a bit more holistically and consider dealing with the issue of craving in the minute. If you want something you ordinarily would be happy doing without, then what can you substitute it with, what would you ordinarily be eating at that moment?   I think those questions can only be answered by individuals, as what works for one does not necessarily work for the other. If you are going to have that bar of chocolate or bag of crisps or whatever it is that has taken your fancy I try to stick it within the plan although as I've said that can be hard. 

Slimming world did some research into what they refer to as your tipping point, (http://www.slimmingworld.com/tippingpoint/#/ ) what this means is how much alcohol you can have before it impacts on your ability to stay on track, on other words, how much alcohol do you consume before you say oh sod it and go off and just eat and drink what you like!  I would say they may well like to do one regarding our food intake because I for one certainly give in quite easily after I have eaten stuff I generally should not be eating and have not bothered to account for the syns.