Stress and healthy lifestyle

Nancymcgregor

Hi I've been trying to lose weight since 2005, I've done all the ridiculous fad diets and yes put all the weight back on after I stopped doing them. This year I resolved to stop dieting and eat good healthy food at sensible portion sizes. I have also started running and I'm really loving it. This has been really working for me, except I have a major spanner in the works, stress. Every time I hit stress my healthy eating is thrown out the window and I'd rather crawl under the covers than hit the trails. I've just started University which has been a major dream of mine for years but balancing study and home life is tough and stress is ruining all my hard work towards being a healthier person.

Basically I'm just asking for tips from those succeeding with their healthy lifestyle. How do you cope with stress? Are there things I can do to avoid me stuffing my face with junk even though I know it makes me sick? How do you keep going when some days make you want to give it all up?

I'll be grateful for any of your replies

Best Regards

Nancy x

christinalong1991

While Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to manage stress with healthy eating, I too am at University and finals weeks just destroy my progress!! I don't have many tips on how to fix that, I'm trying to figure that out too, but I just wanted to say your not alone! For me, knowing other people are having the same troubles helps work toward overcoming yours!


But, there are a couple tricks others have told me that helped. One was "you can't juggle all the balls at once". This was AMAZING FOR ME!! Basically, this person was suggesting putting the weight loss on hold while focusing on school/home life and start up when things slow down a bit. The second bit of advice that followed from this was when things are really stressful, switch to maintenance rather than at a deficit. The logic of it, which actually worked for me, rather than going over my calories everyday and getting discouraged in adition to the stress, and going too far over and end up gaining even more weight, which i did, if i stick to maintenance calories I will at least stop gaining weight back.

Also, really short walks when I'm feeling REALLY stressed and anxious. 15 minutes of fresh air helps me so much!


I hope you can figure a way to balance that works for you!

Branstin

I used to be a terrible stress eater. I decided overeating wasn't going to solve anything. The stress will still exist even after blowing my calorie deficiency. Overeating made things worse because then you have one more thing to be stress about. Now, exercise is my stress coping mechanism. I grab my music and walk or go to the gym.