Session 15-Keys to Managing Stress

This is an all-important session as most often people give up when there is enough stress in their lives. But how about the social cues we discussed last week? Did you identify some of yours? How did you overcome them? And how about your weight, food, drink, and fat grams intake, calories and exercise minutes? Did you keep a record of them? Good! Give me a five!

Now on to this session, we go. Let's be honest. When we are stressed, we eat more and we do less Physical Activity. Right? So this week we will identify the things that make us stressed and learn how to manage them so that our effort to change our lifestyle will not go to waste.

Doing too many things is stressful, don't you think? So let's learn to say no. Do you find, for example, that you're the only one replacing the toilet tissue in its holder? Then let's not do it because doing so will just enable other people to rely on us. We have to learn to share the work with others.

It will also be helpful to identify how we react to situations that are stressful. Do we get angry and lash out at others and taking our feelings out on them? Do we feel empty inside, sad and depressed? Do we refuse help from others and down too hard on ourselves?

After recognizing how we react when stressed out, let's do some positive self-talk. Let's remind ourselves to slow down, to take things as they come. When things go wrong, replace the negative self-talk with positive ones. Things that happen are not all our fault; they just do, for it is the fact of life.

Here are some strategies to manage stressful situations:

• Read a book of the favorite kind. This always relaxes me.
  


• Plan ahead so you can have an extra time just for yourself.
  


• Take a vacation; it does not have to be a long one. Even a night out with some friends will do wonders.
  


• Talk to someone you trust about what's bothering you; just getting what's bothering you out will give you some relief.
  


• Train for a short walk-a-thon.
  


• Is there something you've always wanted to do but had no chance to do it? Well, now is the time. Just do it!

There are others I wish I could tell you but it's homework time. And we still have one last session to do. After that we will talk more about stress and so for now, try to identify what gives you stress and tell yourself how to deal with it. And do keep track of weight, food, calories, and exercise minutes.