The Midlife Reshape Podcast

Managing the Stress That Gets In The Way of Your Weight-Loss Goal

In this week’s episode I start a mini-series exploring the S.H.I.T.E. model which is all about identifying and dealing with the real causes of our over-eating and over-thinking. This week i explore STRESS and provide three key approaches to managing it more effectively. You might find these previous episodes useful to compliment the content in this episode: Episode 75 – dealing with burnout

Episode 63 – Dealing with the Distracted Mind

If you would like a copy of the new S.H.I.*.E. Guide infographic then visit https://midlifereshape.com/shite to receive3 your own pdf version.

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Show Notes:

In this episode of my podcast, I dive into the concept of stress and how it can negatively impact our health and efforts to lose weight. I introduce a handy mnemonic I like to call “SHITE,” which stands for Stress, Hunger, Isolation, Tiredness, and Emotions. I emphasize the importance of these factors and how they can obstruct our personal health goals. Throughout our discussion, I focus on how to recognize signs of stress, handle feelings of overwhelm, and stress the critical role of self-care. I share practical tips that you can use to manage stress, all with the aim of improving your overall well-being and supporting you in achieving your weight loss objectives.

Transcript:

Dave: (00:00:00) – So let’s talk about stress then. Hi and welcome to episode 123 of the Mid-life Reshare Podcast. Okay, so this week I am going to start a bit of a deep dive into the shite. We’re going to wade more deeply into it. And I introduced the concept of the shite mnemonic as a way of identifying what’s really getting in the way of your weight loss, or your health goals, or any goal. To be fair, any goal that you set out, the goal itself would be easy if it wasn’t for the shite. And last week I introduced the concept so stressed, hungry. That psychological binge eating type of hunger, isolation, loneliness, tiredness and exhaustion. And then the e being emotions and our emotional coping, that kind of thing. So as I’ve said over the coming weeks, I’m going to dive into those. This week I’m going to focus on the s the stress, stress, burnout, pressure, that kind of aspect to it. Now, before I do, I will I just want to kind of position this because in terms of the shite, there’s a lot of overlap because I often think stress can be the root cause of a lot of things, but it’s also caused by strong emotions or isolation or tiredness and exhaustion, the kind of go hand in hand and they, they weave themselves in, in amongst each other.

Dave: (00:01:28) – So it’s very sometimes difficult to work out where the real culprit is. And I guess that’s part of the idea of working with a coach or a therapist, is to try to start to look for that. The good news, I guess, is that you don’t really need to get a you don’t need to tease out the one thing, you just need a starting point. And actually with a starting point and doing some work on that particular area, whether it’s tiredness and exhaustion or in this case, stress, doing work in that area can lead to an almost unravelling of the knots, and you just need to get one kind of end to work with. And yes, as you unravel it, there’ll be knots and things that are more difficult as you work on, but that’s the work of life. So what we’re not talking about here is trying to solve things or to solve the whole problem. We’re looking for a starting point because again, the good news is, once you start to deal with this shite, you can actually still start to move on with your health goal, whether it’s a weight loss goal, a health or fitness goal, or whatever other goal it is in life, you can start to get your head in the game on that respect, because you don’t actually need to have solved all of these or dealt with them all.

Dave: (00:02:37) – Sometimes you do. If it’s particularly thorny or gnarly, I guess, you know, you might need to step out and do some deep work, whether it’s in therapy or it might need just a particular focus for a few weeks to look at. How am I going to deal with this more proactively? And that’s particularly true of stress. But often the fact that you are tackling and dealing with it will lead to you feeling better. Perhaps return a bit of energy, a bit of optimism and hope and make you feel more in control. And once you start to feel like that, you can start to then look at the other areas of your life with a little bit more enthusiasm, hope, optimism. And it’s amazing what can happen. It’s a bit like that snowball rolling down the hill. It starts off very small. Give it a kick, give it a knock and it rolls and rolls and then it turns into something huge. And I’ve seen that happen loads with clients and in my own experiences in life as well.

Dave: (00:03:27) – But I it’s one of those things where as we dig into the shite, as we start to weird through this, it’s not to get bogged down in it and stuck in it. Because particularly when it comes to stress, I often talk about it’s not about the stress, really. We’re not trying to live a stress free life that’s not particularly human. And actually, it’s not good for us to live without pressure or some form of challenge or stress. Some things that we need to to overcome, obstacles to work on, and and challenges to overcome. Yes, we’d like to choose those obstacles and challenges, but I don’t think that’s part of life. I don’t think that’s the gift of life. I think the gift of life is you learn the tools and the coping to help you manage those, to get through the tougher times and to make take advantage of the times when it’s less pressure, and, and really maximise on that. So when it comes to stress, it isn’t really about the stress. It’s about how do I have the tools to manage it, to put it into place so that I can get on with my life and enjoy it and and live it more fulfilling and and and and stay on track more often than not.

Dave: (00:04:33) – And be present for the people that I love, the experiences that I want to have in my life and just thrive rather than just survive. So that’s the framing, I guess, for the whole lot of the shite. But the shape model, but in particular for stress. So we’re going to get into that shortly. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to share you three key areas to focus on that or to consider, and some tips that if we can start to do the work there, you really can get some traction, you can get some solid ground under your feet, and you can really then push off and move yourself out of the shit and into into the, the, the more positive, proactive parts of life. So before I do though, what I would like to do is my usual request. If you’re not already subscribed to the podcast, whether that’s because you’re in YouTube and you’re just watching it, hit that subscribe button. Or if you’re in the podcast and you found it, or you’re listening to it randomly and you like what you hear, then please press that little subscribe button in your podcast player of choice and and get it so that you get the episodes you don’t miss an episode.

Dave: (00:05:36) – You can find previous episodes that I’m going to call back to. I’m going to call back to 1 or 2 here. you can find them a lot easier. And it also helps to spread the word, because if you’re a mid-life and you’re experiencing challenges with your health, juggling life, the demands of life, feeling burnt out, exhausted, and you want to get a grip of life and really shape your goals the way you really want to shape them, then you’re not the only one. I’m one. There’s other listeners and there will be other people out there. So I want to get this message and this podcast out to lots of people if I can, which ties me into the next couple of requests. The next one is if you are already a subscriber or you particularly like this episode, then leave a comment in the YouTube. on this video, leave a rating and a review in your podcast player of Choice. And if you’re not sure how to do that, pop over to midlife reshape. Com forward slash podcast and you’ll find everything you need there to do that.

Dave: (00:06:27) – And if you know one other person outside of, you know doing the rate and the review the subscribe, one of the person that you haven’t yet, shared this with and you think they could really benefit from the content, then please show them the podcast, send them the link and midlife reshape.com and forward slash podcast. It’s there. It’s all there. And it would be great if we could start to spread this word more widely to more people who can really then start to get their own life back on their terms and really shape their midlife health, weight loss, whatever it is for their midlife health, their midlife and beyond. So let’s talk about stress then. Now, then stress. The word itself can be problematic. I guess we all know what it means to an extent, but it’s misused, isn’t it? You know, we use it as a throwaway term of, you know, I’m stressed and and actually are we and also we can see it as a weakness or it has been seen as a weakness.

Dave: (00:07:17) – You know, we don’t like to say we’re not coping. so I think firstly let’s acknowledge the word it’s used etc.. But what do we really mean? And what I’m talking about here really is the the sense of emotional and psychological strain we can feel when the demands of life and work, and the demands and pressures we put on ourselves really exceed our capacity and our ability to cope with them. You know, if we have challenges and stressors in life, we have a busy day, but we’re on top of it. We’re not. We’ll do it, we’ll finish it and get it done. Still take the breaks and what have you. What we’re coping. The challenge is not that. It’s when we feel like we’re not Corbyn or can’t cope, or our sense of confidence in our own coping abilities is diminished. And that can happen for a lot of reasons, can happen because of we’ve had a bad time where perhaps, you know, we’ve had our confidence knocked quite a bit, or just the sheer volume for quite a bit of time has knocked our sense of confidence in our ability to cope.

Dave: (00:08:16) – It can also be the reality, you know, there is just too much to do in in too little time. I can’t get it on, but I’m expected to and I am expecting myself to. So that sense of being able to cope is really important. And that’s where we can start. Experienced psychological strain if we feel like we haven’t got this. I’m not coping. I don’t I’m not in control here. I’m not on top of this. And that’s the challenge. So when we’re talking about stress, we’re talking about that psychological and emotional strain and the demands of life and work, the demands we add on ourselves, the big stuff, the little stuff, they are cumulative. So now we can add the personal life into the professional life. You know, it’s very difficult to separate them out. It’s the cumulative lord of all of those stresses that really come with us down. Now, I use the, the, the metaphor of the cabbage, of a particular age. I remember a children’s program called crackerjack.

Dave: (00:09:08) – I will put a link to the video in the show notes, because I’m not going to explain that, but it’s basically that the cabbages, the negative stresses and demands. In life, the goals that we set ourselves that require us to take on things like extra work, study for an exam, training for a particular marathon or whatever it is. They can be cabbages, and the cabbages are representing each and every demand that we have in life, both home and work, big and little. So the cabbages are there. We also have the sprouts, the sprout size things, little actions, comments, small things that are seemingly insignificant. But they add to that pile and we’re carrying these all around. We’re carrying them around in our head, which we’re often juggling this stuff, these cabbages in our head. Aren’t we trying to remember? I’ve got all this to do. We’ve got that to do. We’ve got to know. These cabbages are in our head and I often see it. You know, our head is a rubbish cabbage storage device for that very reason, because we haven’t evolved really to carry this much psychological and emotional lord in our head.

Dave: (00:10:07) – We’ve evolved really to be present in the moment, to problem solve, to socially interact, to get out there and hunt or gather or whatever it is, you know, whatever the the evolutionary drivers were, we haven’t really evolved to juggle all of this stuff. Yes, some of us might be more suited to it than others, etcetera, but it’s not what we’ve evolved to do. So this thing that we’re doing, this juggling of all these cabbages and these demands and pressures and stress in our head, can lead to that stress, that overload, that sense of psychological and emotional strain and that feeling of, I haven’t got this, I haven’t got control over this. I’m not able to cope and feel like I’m wading and running behind. I’m gradually losing the battle here. I’m like getting swamped more and more with the cabbages and the sprouts that are being thrown at me, and that’s that psychological sense of strain. And what that can lead to is that firstly, it can lead to overwhelm in the moment, peak state of emotion law, state of rational thinking.

Dave: (00:11:04) – You know, where your brain might actually be able to come up and solve a particular problem or an emotion. So we’re feeling not thinking. And if you’ve ever been in a position where steam is coming out of your ears, you’re about to press send or house press send on an email you should never press send on. You’ve said something you really should not have said, or you freeze. You just don’t know what to do. You can’t concentrate or focus on anything and you panic. That’s awful. That’s a peak state in the moment. But what often comes hand in hand with that is the overload, the day to day grind of carrying those stresses around. And I had juggling. I’m thinking, I’ve got this to do, I need to, and thinking, what am I going to do? I don’t know why I haven’t got this. I feel like that’s just thrust on me. I don’t know what to do. I haven’t got a solution for that. And this stress can lead to that sense of overload.

Dave: (00:11:47) – So we have overwhelm in the moment and the grind of overload. Carrying of those cabbages around that stress can lead over time to, well, ultimately mental health issues, physical issues, burnout, psychological and emotional and physical burnout, and lots of other things, including coping mechanisms, ways of Corbyn that aren’t the healthiest. So it might be just working. Working it on and on and on without break. It might be not being active at all because I’ve got time for exercise. I’ve got time for that. It may also be things like, binge eating or snacking on something that gives you just that momentary hit that makes you, gives you, breaks it in the moment that that strength, sense of strength and momentary distraction and ultimately the cumulative effect of that isn’t great. Or alcohol or alcohol can be. And I’m using air quality. It’s not great, but it can seem like a really great stress reliever, relaxes us in the moment, etc. the fact is, with alcohol it has lots of counterproductive sides to it, but I’m not going to dwell on that today.

Dave: (00:12:48) – The point is, we cope in ways that are then undermining ourselves. This is why it’s part of the shite, because. It gets in the way of where you want to be with in terms of getting towards your goal. It undermines us and actually moves us away. Things like binge eating and drinking. They’re part of the the, the the shame mnemonic, but the stress itself is what is leading to that. So as I said in the intro to this, it’s about where do I start? And if you recognize that you are feeling like that, you’re feeling ground down by the pile of stuff, the emotional, psychological weight of the cabbages, and you’re having lots of overwhelm and perhaps engaging in things like binge eating, etc. then perhaps the stress area is the place to start. And that’s really what I wanted to explore here. Because ultimately, if we don’t do something about this, then it’s not going to get any better. Yes, you might have some freak occasion where somebody takes all the cabbages away for you.

Dave: (00:13:43) – Don’t worry about it. Or, you know, whoever you are and you just sit yourself down. But let’s be right. That doesn’t happen in life, does it? You know, people are willing to give us cabbages, but very well, unwilling to take them away from us unless we reach out and ask for help, that kind of thing. But. We need to recognize that if that stress is affecting us and not just to war in terms of getting towards a goal, but just generally affecting our health, wellbeing, our presence, our time with family, our relationships, our sense of energy. It’s draining the battery. Then we need to do something about it. So that brings me onto some thoughts and some tips. And again I’ve got some. I’ll put a link in the show notes to a short little short video. I call it Emergency stress CPR with, a small e-book and an infographic that can help you, just get the kind of the basic principles here. The six steps are call it to managing stress and putting in its place.

Dave: (00:14:37) – so I can put that link in in the show notes. so you can check that out at midlife reshape.com/free. But what do we do. And I think I like to break down into, I guess four key things. The first one is to know that you’re under that stress to recognize it. So we’ve already talked about it, but what are the signs? And get to know those signs and are you there now? Because if you know it, you’re in a position of choice. You may not feel like you’ve got as much choice as you have, but you’re in a position where you can choose to not do anything about it and carry on or do something about it. If you were not aware, we’re often too stressed to notice was stressed then it’s very easy to carry on, but use this episode if this is a particularly relevant to you as your wake up call. As your point of you are stressed, you need to do something about it. So that’s the first one. Is this is this you? Because it’s all well and good thinking about the goal.

Dave: (00:15:31) – And what do you want to do to improve my health. And I’m going to go out for a run and add more stress in. But actually we need to deal with the stress. It’s about what do I need to put down? Rather than what else do I need to pick up? Am I going to drive myself harder, ground myself in the ground? Hopefully the answer is you the same as others? No. So let’s just stop. Let’s just recognize that and then let’s look at the three areas really that we need to start to do a little bit of work on. And I see a little bit ultimately this may be lifelong work because life isn’t stress free. You’re not necessarily going to have that kind of life. I think to be human is to be stressed or in a state of stress at some point. And I use that at the at the level of there’s some sort of challenge and level of demand in life. I don’t mean that you’re going to be stressed all your life. but what I do mean is you’re going to have demands and you’re going to have to rise to them and meet them and cope with them.

Dave: (00:16:21) – That’s what I mean by that stress. So what do we do to manage ourselves? So the first thing is we need to look at overwhelm, then overload, and then some self-care. Because self-care is often the bit that we forget about, the bit that we need to help us decompress from the stress. So overwhelm is that peak state, that momentary situation where you feel like the demands have totally overwhelmed you in the moment. Steam is coming out of your ears, and you know that if you are still there and if you don’t do something positive, things are going to get worse. You’re going to do something you’ll regret, or you’re not going to do something that you needed to do. You wish you had done. And with overwhelm that peak emotional state, the number one priority is to manage the situation, to manage yourself back down out of over one. It is not to solve the problem. It’s not to deal with the stresses and sort of sort them out. It is to manage your emotional state back down.

Dave: (00:17:18) – And as I’ve said in previous episodes, and I’ve got a couple of links to those, the key thing, if in doubt, if all else fails, it is to pause, to stop, to give yourself some time and space. Breathing helps. I talk about the rescue breath. Breathe in for two. Hold your breath for two. Breathe out for four. Nice and slow. But what you’re doing, ultimately, you’re stepping away from the stress, removing yourself from the the immediate demands and pressure that’s there in your face, and you are giving yourself some space to allow the emotional temperature come down. And as you come allow that emotional temperature to come down, you can start to re-engage the the, the rational part of your brain, the part of your brain that has the fighting chance of giving you a solution or something that that is sensible to do rather than what you feel emotionally you need to do. Give yourself that time and space, and then once you’ve done that, start to work out what your next step is.

Dave: (00:18:16) – Now I’ve got a whole range of little tips and tactics on that. I even speak and do coaching around that, and I could spend ages on it. And that’s not really the aim of the podcast today. But if you check out that midlife reshape.com/free, you’ll find an e-book in there, audiobook version of it, and a short video that gives you some tips around this. The key core to it all is to give yourself some space away from the stressor, to allow the emotional temperature to drop, and you to re-engage the thinking part of your brain. And that can be 30s five minutes. Or it might be a couple of hours. It depends on the stressor that sent you into overwhelm. And also what. Where you were at with the Overlord, the general carrying around of the stresses and the cabbages. Because if you’re pretty knocking on the door of burnout, then decompressing after as you’ve experienced overwhelm, it’s going to just take a bit longer, because regaining that rational sense of thinking and and and planning and problem solving can just take a little bit longer.

Dave: (00:19:19) – It can sometimes feel out of reach, which is where reaching out and asking for help is also not just a valid strategy. It’s something I would just urge you to do if you particularly struggling. So that’s another one. But what you need to do is think about the underlying issue of the Overlord. And there’s again, loads we can do here. But the first thing is to know your cabbages nor your stresses. Once you’ve come out of overwhelm. If you step down, grab a pen and paper, just get it out of your head, get the cabbages out of your head. And by that I mean get the stress of what’s on your mind. Because if it’s on your mind, it has your mind. So get it on the paper, get it down, write it out and write. Write. I need to sort that bill out. I need to speak to the bank about I need to speak to my partner about this. We need to arrange childcare for that week when I’m going to be, working stupid hours for the for whatever I need to, blah, blah, blah.

Dave: (00:20:08) – And we need to just get it down, get the cabbages out of your head, and let your brain free itself from the responsibility of having to remember having to juggle all of those cabbages. And then once you’ve got them out on paper, you then pick a cabbage. Pick one cabbage. You can pick any randomly. What I would suggest you should pick the smelliest, most ugly cabbage, the one you least want to deal with. And that’s the cabbage that you need to slice, dice, and chunk down into sprout sized actions. Because one of the things your brain doesn’t do, it’s rubbish at carrying around the cabbages. It can’t carry around cabbages productively, but what it can do and likes, particularly when it’s on the stress, is sprout sized actions, small things that it can do and regain a sense of control and confidence back in. So you get it on paper. Pick a cabbage, slice it down and chunk it down at that sprout sized actions. You don’t have to chunk it down into all the actions to get rid of the cabbage.

Dave: (00:21:03) – You just need 2 or 3 to get you moving, to get you that sense of confidence and control back. And once you’re off there, you just keep repeating the process. Deal with overwhelm, get back to getting the cabbages on paper, sort them out by cabbage. Have different lists if you like, in terms of it, and then deal with 2 or 3 cabbage sprouts at a time. Sweat those sprouts and you will start to feel better. It may not be a long term solution, because the long term solution is to start to look at your cabbages critically. Is that a cabbage I’m carrying because somebody else has dumped it on me and it’s not even my problem. Does that need to change? Do I need to renegotiate some boundaries with clients, or a member of my family, or a work colleague? Do I really need to have a difficult conversation with somebody about this? I need to ring the bank about that. I need to start the ball rolling in so many different areas. But that is a longer process that you start with 1 or 2 sprout sized actions and start sweating those sprouts.

Dave: (00:22:00) – So there’s two key areas or three. So the one is to know your stress. The second is to not overwhelm and to recognize it and to deal with that. Third is to deal with the overload. The fourth is self-care. It’s often seen as quite a soft, fluffy thing, but self-care is absolutely vital and it means different things to different people. So how would I summarize and capture self-care? It effectively is the collection of things that you have, you’ve probably put down in order to cope with the cabbages, the things that remind you you are more than your job, but you are more than just a human doing. You’re a human being. It’s the things that you actually used to enjoy that you might even see as a chore. Now, in the background, the picture. If you’re watching, you can see guitars here. the guitar is often something I enjoy, but at times in my life it’s become a chore, something I felt I should do. And what we need to do is recognize that those items are self-care.

Dave: (00:22:56) – Whether it’s taking time out to play the guitar, to read for ten minutes, to pray, meditate, to go for a walk, to do some exercise, to eat a healthy meal, whatever it is to talk to a friend, to catch up with somebody, whatever it is for you. Those are things that we put out. So in order to get the mix right and we’re not talking about solving this overnight, we’re just starting to get a handle on it, start to unravel the stress ball. What we’re looking to do is pick back up one thing, one self-care thing that’s minimal friction that you can bring back into your life and commit to a little bit more than you already have. And whether that’s ten minutes of exercise, ten minute walk, or some mindfulness or meditation, a prayer, or just a conversation I’m going to speak to me made ten minutes a day. I had people during lockdown in particular, where that was part of their to do list was every day, and they’d ring somebody whilst on a walk and have half an hour’s chat with them.

Dave: (00:23:48) – That was what they did to protect their mental health. And there are some real practical things that we can do that are often dismissed because self-care seen as quite fluffy and soft. So I want to kind of urge you to think about that, think about stress, if you like, in, in in that from that kind of approach, you have a goal, but you’re feeling stressed out. You’re feeling worn out. Firstly, acknowledge it. Permission to be human. We all experience it and sometimes it gets on top. So then we need to deal with those moments of overwhelm. And what we’re trying to do there is not make things worse. We’re trying to just give ourselves some space to come down and normally then we need to get to sweating some sprouts by picking a cabbage. One of the cabbages that’s weighing us down, slice it down, chunk it into sprout sized chunks and start doing something, and then pick up one self-care thing. And if we do that, we’re starting to get back on the road to recovering from the stress, the effects of it, and to regaining our sense of ourselves, our motivation, and our willingness to then start to look at, well, what is it I want to do in terms of my goal? Because we’re not trying to eliminate stress.

Dave: (00:24:54) – We’re not trying to live a perfectly stress free life doesn’t exist. What we’re trying to do is get a grasp, grasp of it, get on top of it, so that as we start to build our sense of confidence in ourselves, I feel like we’re coping better, regain a sense of our energy. We can then start to return our attention to the goal at hand, which is whatever the goal is, whether it’s weight loss, health improvement, whatever. That’s where dealing with the shite, and in particular the stress, can really start to help you get on a consistent and sustainable journey towards better health. And that’s pretty much it. So that’s it for stress. Next few weeks I’ll look at the other elements of the HDI, the T and the E, but I want you to have a think about it this week. What what is it? What aspects of your life are you finding stressful? Is stress an issue and a challenge? Because we’re not just talking about the extreme, it just might be a low level grind that’s just getting in the way.

Dave: (00:25:46) – And by 6:00 at night, you cannot be bothered. And then you resort to the default habits of binge eating or drinking or whatever. And that’s when it becomes an issue. So it doesn’t have to be extreme. It just has to be something that can be chronic and ongoing and rob you of that sense of vitality in life. And it does deserve some work. It does need some work. Take care for now. Thanks for listening. You can check out the show notes and other episodes at Midlife reshape.com/podcast, and it’d be great. Also if you could subscribe, share, rate, review and all of that, that would be magic. And if you are a midlife and you’re finding that your health has taken a backseat and you really want to get life back on your terms, put stress in its place and start. To lose that weight and lose it sustainably long term for midlife and beyond. Pop over to midlife. Reshape. Com to find out about the community membership and I’d love to see you there.

Dave: (00:26:34) – Any feedback or questions or ideas for future sure topics or guests? Then drop me a line at Dave at Restless Midlife at. Com and just one more shout out to Logan Nicholson of Music for americas.com, and for the awesome music for the podcast. That’s it for now. Take care. Keep sweating the right sprouts and look after yourself.