EP. 3- How to Manage Stress & Overwhelm without Stress Eating (for the Lady Boss!)

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Most weight loss and diet programs tell you what to eat and how much to eat, but they don’t tell you how to deal with the tricky stuff, like what to do when you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed and anxious. What do you do when all you want to do is eat because you have this really strong craving for your favorite stuff?

Most weight loss and diet programs tell you what to eat and how much to eat, but they don’t tell you how to deal with the tricky stuff, like what to do when you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed and anxious. What do you do when all you want to do is eat because you have this really strong craving for your favorite stuff?

Stress, overwhelm and emotional eating is a common problem for the lady boss. The lady boss has a lot going on. She has a lot of responsibilities. She often feels stressed and overwhelmed. She gets to the end of the day and just wants to take a break.

Can you relate?

She just wants to breathe, relax, unwind and have a treat to do so! Maybe a glass of wine, some dark chocolate, something munchy or crunchy—popcorn, chips, crackers, cookies—or something sweet, like ice cream.

Sound familiar?

It’s very, very common that women these days—especially a lady boss like yourself!—has many responsibilities, feels stressed and overwhelmed, and just wants a treat and to relax and unwind. You’ve been working so hard, you deserve it. Right?

You need to understand why this happens, and how to deal with it successfully so that you don’t sabotage your results.

What often happens is you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, and you start to get cravings. So you try to resist them, but in the end you cave and eat the thing you’re craving. Then you beat yourself up because you’ve sabotaged the results that you’re looking for, and that leads to more stress. It’s a vicious cycle.

Stress  Cravings  Resisting  Increased Desire  Give In  Guilt  Stress

The problem is that resisting only creates more desire for the thing we crave. Resisting through willpower doesn’t work, or if it does, it only works temporarily. It doesn’t work in the long run because eventually we give in.

Not only now have you had the thing, you’re also feeling frustrated and guilty, but you still have to do all that stuff you needed to do. You’re still feeling stressed and overwhelmed because the work is still there and it still needs to be done. It really doesn’t solve anything, and in fact just creates more problems.

So why do we do this?

Food equals distraction; a delicious but very temporary distraction. The problem with that is threefold:

1. It takes you away from what you actually need to do, so it actually makes you less efficient at achieving what you need to achieve.
2. When you use food as a distraction, you don’t actually ever address the stress and overwhelm that you are feeling, or do anything useful about it.
3. You’re eating extra food, and it’s not usually kale that you’re craving!

This results in you feeling frustrated, stuck and disappointed in yourself.

How to manage stress successfully?

You manage stress and overwhelm so when you are in that situation, food doesn’t seem like your only option for temporary relief or as a distraction from the situation. It always comes back to these five simple, powerful and important words:

Your thoughts create your feelings.

Emotional eating is when the action of eating is being triggered and driven by a feeling. Overwhelm is a feeling. Stress is a feeling. Anxiety is a feeling. When you feel overwhelmed, stressed or anxious and you go and eat, that’s emotional eating. So the next five words you need to know are:

Your feelings drive your actions.

When you can manage your thoughts and feelings, you can absolutely control your results.

Thoughts  Feelings  Actions

There is a four-step process Brenda teaches her clients to help manage their thoughts and feelings, and prevent emotional eating:

1. Pause. Slow Down.
2. Acknowledge and identify the feeling. Say “I am feeling ________”
3. Identify what you are thinking that is causing you to feel this way.
4. Come up with a new and different way that you could think about that.

If you understand your own behavior and why you behave the way you do, why you have certain habits, you will be able to actually get results.

All thoughts are optional.

Every single thing that you think is optional. Whether you feel stressed, overwhelmed or anxious about a situation, that is 100% optional. You get to think and feel however you want, no matter what is going on in your business, career, health, relationships, and goals in your life.

Any situation is 100% neutral. The way that you think about that circumstance that will determine how you feel about it.

If you think you have too much to do, that is the truth. But how else could you think about it? What about, ‘I have tons to do and I’m going to freakin’ kill it.’ or ‘I’m going to get all these things done and get them done in a really awesome way.’

The possibilities of how you can think about a certain situation are really endless. They are unlimited.

This is a new skill, and it will require practice. Most of us have never been taught how to actually address and manage our feelings, especially feelings like overwhelm, stress and anxiety.

It’s not going to be easy. It is going to be uncomfortable but it will get you the results that you have always been wanting.

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