Stress Fighting Foods
10 Stress Fighting Foods
Stress and Your Diet
How do your eating habits affect the way you handle stress? How does stress affect your dietary preferences? Whichever angle you focus on, food and stress are interrelated. Food doesn’t necessarily have to be your only coping mechanism for stress however. You can manage daily pressures in a variety of other ways.
Three Ways that Food and Stress Connect
• Your over-eating or under-eating tendencies surface when you are under stress. Your blood sugar level takes the toll either way. Severe mood swings result, and you end up compounding the present problem as well as your stress level. Like many people, maybe you haven’t realized yet how food can harm you! Stress management begins with awareness. You must know precisely what you need to change in your food preferences or dietary habits.
• Food is not the cure, but it can help you manage your stress. Supply your body with nutritious food. Proper dieting can sustain your body with the energy required to overcome stressful experiences. Consuming fatty food and sugar-filled treats alone doesn’t really help you much. In fact, you’ll end up feeling more exhausted, more anxious and grouchier than ever. You need more than those to combat stress.
• The right foods fortify the immune system. Stressful situations weaken it. A weak immune system is more prone to contacting diseases, bacteria and viruses. Studies prove that with proper food intake, you can make your immune system healthy and strong. It isn’t difficult to see what the studies are driving at: You have to eat right in order to feel great!
Stress and Diet
The connection between food and stress is so obvious and hard to miss. The kind of foods you consume directly affects the way you feel, think and react. Poor food choices and either over-eating or under-eating subject both your body and mind to more strain. If you want to manage your stress, try starting with your diet. Evaluate what you eat, how much you eat and how often you eat. Then, gradually introduce changes to your lifestyle.
Beyond Dieting
While the right food allows you to cope with stressful experiences more effectively, it isn’t enough. Try pairing a good diet with the following strategies:
• Get enough sleep. Seven to eight hours is ideal.
• Find time to relax.
• Establish a support group.
• Accept your limitations.
• Work and live life with a plan in mind.
• Learn to say “No” from time to time.
Healthy dieting coupled with the above steps can empower you to manage daily pressures well and take better control of your life. Say goodbye to stressed out days. Say hello to a lighter, happier you.
Loosen the Grip of Workaholic Ways
If the bulk of your waking hours goes to your job, you’re in for some trouble: Life will eventually grow unfulfilling for you. Sure, you love your work, but pouring long hours over it can transform love into addiction. It’s time that you break away from your workaholic tendencies.
Identifying Underlying Problems
Underlying problems are often responsible for fueling your workaholic tendencies. While work pressures and deadlines do push you to your limits, there is a greater possibility that you’re using work as your defense mechanism against other problems and insecurities.
Examine yourself. Assess your schedule. Then answer these questions:
• Do you work so hard for the money?
• Do you work so hard so you can minimize social interactions at home?
• Do you work so hard so you can elude some issues?
Working too hard to grab financial rewards is not something you can sustain for a long time. This habit will take a toll on your mental health and physical well-being. Work hard but strive to contain it within a definite timeframe. If you can’t live with this arrangement, then maybe you should aim for a new job that pays better than your present company.
It’s crucial that you address problems plaguing your home as well. Although work can give you temporary relief, it won’t solve anything. In fact, problems don’t get resolved by themselves. You have to face them and act on them. The power to improve your situation at home lies with you.
Restoring Balance
After targeting the underlying problems responsible for your unhealthy work habits, do your best to reintegrate balance into your life. Several strategies can help you with this area.
Make room for the following:
1. Personal Time. Use this concept to place yourself (and your health) above your job. You are entitled to your own time, so when you are in the middle of a well-deserved personal vacation, do not allow deadlines to interrupt you.
2. Bedtime Ritual. Unwind and treat yourself to enough hours of sleep. Set a specific hour when you’re switching the lights off. Spend half an hour before your designated bedtime to do something relaxing. Make sure the activity doesn’t remind you of work.
3. Movement and Physical Exercises. Include exercise routines in your weekly schedule. The frequency need not be daily. You can do it once in every 2 or 3 days if you want. Physical movement helps you to de-stress from work. Exercise is good for both your body and mind.
4. Breaks. You need time away from work. It’s a given. Regular jobs usually designate weekends as rest days. Make an effort to spend your weekends not working. Don’t even try to remember or talk about your job. Just free your mind and enjoy your break.
Starting Out Slow
Breaking away from your workaholic tendencies need not be drastic. Distance yourself from the unhealthy habit one step at a time. Remember that your work doesn’t define your life. There are plenty of activities that you can enjoy, and none of them have to remind you of deadlines, quotas or reports.
Restore balance into your life today with a strategy or two. In no time, you’ll get the idea: Life outside work does exist!
How Moms Can Cope with Stress
No doubt, motherhood is one of the most challenging and rewarding jobs around.When you’re a mom, you tend to neglect yourself because you allow your domestic duties to take precedence over personal care. Both working moms and stay-at-home moms go through the same stressful situations actually. Whichever type of mom you are, know that you can cope with stress.
The Tips
Establish a routine for dealing with your kids. The scheduling will greatly benefit the entire household. Sticking to a routine eases your experience in making meals, monitoring naps and setting bed times. If you fail to establish one, you will quickly become disoriented, overwhelmed and stressed out. Kids can get unpredictable at times. However, the simplest routine can create a semblance of predictability into your life and can help preserve your sanity as you manage your household.
Take breaks. A lot of moms just push themselves to their limit when they should be taking a time out. Your frequent exposure to stressful experiences entitles you to many breaks. Your kids even take breaks, and so should you! When you are in the verge of losing your cool, rush to a room and pace your breathing. Imagine how you wish to react, and then temper your thoughts with one reminder: You should model good behavior for your kids. Your short time outs can spare your entire family’s mood and day!
Mind your diet. Eighty-five out of 100 moms don’t seem to mind their diets anymore. You just tend to eat whatever food you can grab at random times of the day. Although you’re always on the go, make healthy dieting a priority. You need the nourishment to help you cope with stress and match your kids’ energy levels.
Team up with other moms. A support group composed of moms like you is great. True, you cannot afford to meet everyday, but you’ll rest easier knowing that there are people you can count on when you need empathy, comfort and some attention. All moms get stressed, so choose carefully who gets to be part of your support group. Invite only those who are truly into the idea of moms mutually supporting each other.
Enjoy your personal time. With tons of roles to fill and tasks to accomplish, you sometimes fail to give yourself some credit. You should definitely set aside time for yourself on a daily basis. Occasionally get some help with the household chores. While your kids are sleeping or attending school, read a few chapters of your favorite novel. Get a manicure or a pedicure. Treat yourself to a cup of tea, a body massage or a long bath. You need not spend money to enjoy your personal time. Just make sure your “me” time is included in your regular scheduling. Fifteen minutes of the day to yourself can work wonders for you!
Is Sexual Equality Taking an Unequal Toll on Women?
In the last half century, tremendous strides have been made in sexual equality between men and women, but the battle is far from over. For every small gain, women seem to be paying a higher price than men. According to a Time magazine Special Report on The State of the American Woman (Oct. 26, 2009), women today earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. While that’s a tremendous improvement over the 58 cents women earned in 1972, it’s still a huge discrepancy; especially considering that today women are the primary breadwinners in 40% of American homes.
The economy has accelerated the shift in earning power. More traditionally male jobs than female jobs have been lost, particularly in manufacturing. Unfortunately, women’s earnings fell 2% last year, twice as much as men’s. American families that were comfortable with two salaries are struggling to live on one, especially when that salary is brought home by an underpaid woman. Women are feeling the financial strain much more acutely than men.
Not only are women often shouldering the sole burden of providing for their families, but they feel they carry greater responsibility than men for child rearing and home care. The feeling of inequality at home remains despite the fact that 84% of couples recently surveyed said they negotiate responsibilities, rules and relationship issues.
Perhaps most disturbing is the revelation that despite the achievement of greater freedom, education and financial power, women are less happy. Puzzled social scientists say increased female stress and unhappiness are universal across all socio-economic levels. Theories include basic changes in American society and the American family that are felt more keenly by women than men or perhaps gains in workplace equality are now forcing women to battle the same pressures that have long contributed to male unhappiness or it may be that women have finally gained the self-c0nfidence to be honest about what they want and don’t want from life.
Carrying a constant burden of increased stress can eat away at a woman’s physical and mental health. Stress can cause irritability, lack of energy, sleep problems and even lead to serious depression. If taking a mental health day isn’t enough to get you back on track, you may need professional help to learn to cope with stress and re-balance your life.
We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
Time magazine just came out with a very interesting Special Report on The State of the American Woman (Oct. 26, 2009). Comparing results of a new survey conducted jointly by Time and the nonprofit Rockefeller Foundation with statistics from a similar 1972 Time survey, reporter Nancy Gibbs and Time statisticians took a revealing look at changes in the role and status of American women over the past third of a century. The result made for some interesting reading. The bottom line? We’ve come a long way, baby; but there are still some bumps in the road ahead.
Here are some of the more interesting revelations:
- In 1972 with women’s lib starting to find its stride, women made up only 2% of the top echelons of civil service jobs. There were no women cabinet members, no female FBI agents, no women network news anchors, no female Supreme Court Justices. Today women regularly serve on the cabinet and the last 3 out of 4 Secretaries of State have been female. For the first time a woman President became a real possibility when Hilary Clinton ran in the Democratic primary. Two women now serve on the Supreme Court. When Diane Sawyer takes over the reins at ABC, two of the three major network news organizations will be anchored by women. Women, particularly in the corporate arena, say they still feel the pressure of the glass ceiling; but the cracks are getting bigger every year.
- In 1972 women comprised 30% of the workforce; today, it’s half and 76% of both men and women agree that’s a good thing for society. In 40% of families women are now the primary breadwinners, nearly unheard of in 1972. In fact, 89% of both sexes said they were comfortable with the woman earning more than the man. Interestingly, more women (69%) than men (49%) felt men resented the shift in power.
- In 1972, most mothers stayed home to care for their children. Today, only 30% are stay-at-home moms. The majority of both sexes (65%) felt the lack of parental supervision was bad for society. More working moms (55%) than dads (28%) still felt women contributed the lion’s share to child rearing and household responsibilities. This difference in perception was one of the more interesting revelations in the survey.
Monday: Is equality taking an unequal toll on women?
Declutter Your Life
Clutter is the curse of the disorganized. You can recognize disorganized people (or perhaps yourself) by the sea of papers and reports that flood their desks and the piles of “stuff” stacked in their offices. If you are drowning in a sea of clutter, there’s a good chance you need help getting organized.
At the root of a cluttered life is failure to create a system for decision making and task completion. The organizationally challenged tend to defer decisions which interferes with task completion. Disposing of an object, whether a report, correspondence, mail or bill, requires making decisions about what action to take and how to dispose of the item — whether to store, not store or pass it along. Without systems for automating and handling these tasks, decisions must be made on a case-by-case basis. Sheer volume eventually overwhelms a person’s ability to keep up and clutter starts to pile up.
As clutter builds, it serves as a constant reminder of uncompleted tasks which increases anxiety which makes decision making more difficult which leads to more clutter which … You get the idea. Disorganization feeds on itself in a vicious circle!
Have you ever noticed that when events in your life become overwhelming, clutter seems to pile up, even in the lives of generally organized people? A cluttered office or home can be the sign of a cluttered mind. When your mind becomes overwhelmed by extraordinary or unexpected events or simply from trying to juggle too many activities or responsibilities, you feel overwhelmed. You may lose focus or have trouble concentrating. Your mind is filled with “clutter.” All the “to dos” and “what ifs” are interfering with your ability to deal with life and take action.
Efficient decision making and task completion require systems that allow us to follow pre-determined patterns when dealing with similar items. You can learn to organize the “things” in your life; but if your efforts at organization always seem to fail, it can be a sign of a disorganized mental state. You may need the help of an experienced psychiatrist to unravel the cause and develop useful systems for handling stressful problems.
If clutter is burying you, Dr. Marks’ podcast How to Get Organized can show you how to sweep away the clutter and get organized. And if you need more, Dr. Marks can help.
Recovering from Tragedy Is a Process
When you are caught in the throes of tragedy, your emotions feel out-of-control. But there is an order to how we process the chaos that accompanies traumatic loss, whether it is the death of a loved one, a failed romantic relationship, job loss, a difficult medical diagnosis or any of the challenges we face as we move through life. Understanding the process we go through as we work through a traumatic experience can help us cope. There is comfort in understanding that our feelings and responses are normal.
When we suffer a tragedy, we grieve for what is lost. Death, divorce, job loss, relocation, illness — all involve significant change and loss. In order to accept the change and move forward, it is necessary to recognize and mourn what is lost, whether it is friendship, love, familiarity, ability, status, financial stability, etc. Psychiatrists have identified distinct five stages of grief that accompany loss. While these are most often applied to mourning the death of a loved one, we go through the same stages as we learn to accept and heal from any tragic loss.
- Denial and isolation. At first, we may deny feelings of loss or try to minimize the importance of the event. People may withdraw from family and friends through emotional discomfort or embarrassment.
- Anger. Anger can be directed outward or inward if the person feels her actions contributed to the tragedy. Feelings of “why me” are also common.
- Bargaining. No one wants to accept traumatic loss. We may try to bargain with God, promising “I will do this if you remove this burden from my life.” Or be tempted to plead with an employer if we are laid off. Bargaining attempts to stave off the inevitable.
- Depression. As anger fades, numbness may overwhelm us. Pervasive sadness blocks feeling. We may feel hopeless. You may need the guidance of an experienced psychiatrist to help you move forward.
- Acceptance. As we work through loss, we learn to accept the new reality.
For more information on How to Recover from Tragedy, listen to Dr. Marks’ October 14 podcast.
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