2023 - 4:19 LIVE 3 tips for stress w:o overeating Public Podcast
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the concierge weight loss podcast. My name is Cara Hackleman, and I'm a certified life and weight loss coach. I help people just like you lose weight for the last time. Are you a little people pleasing, a little procrastinating? And maybe a little perfectionistic. Do you eat when you are not even necessarily hungry?
I can help you overcome that so you can finish losing weight and get out of your own way. Join me each week to get a little motivation and a lot of inspiration. Good morning. I am Kara Hackleman and I am a Certified Life and Weight Loss Coach. I am the owner and, uh, host of the podcast. Um, same as my business name, Concierge Weight Loss.
And today I want to talk to you about stress awareness. So it's stress awareness month and What I really want to bring you today is three tips to make it easier, uh, to deal [00:01:00] with stress, to make stress just a bit easier without emotional overeating, right? That's what we've all used in the past to cope with our emotions, with our stress.
And so three tips that I can give you to deal with the stress, make it easier and not emotionally overeat. That sounds great. So, let's dive into that. Yeah, so what happens is we overeat to deal with the stress. Okay, and in case anybody's wondering, I had some dermatology treatment done to get the vessels on my cheeks.
I have a lot of capillary since I'm so fair skinned. And so if you're watching this live or later on the video blog, um, and you see what in the world has happened to her. I have a ton of makeup on to try to cover it. Um, but there's still quite a bit of bruising. So, um, it's shining through, but let's get started.
Uh, just let you know, ease your [00:02:00] mind. My brain, I have, I swear I have an ADD brain. So unless I know what is going on, um, I cannot get going. I asked, uh, a lady that I, I follow and I'm in a group where we're doing video zooms all the time together. And she had windows with bars. Um, like a balcony, and I could not focus because all I wanted to know was what was outside the windows.
It was very sad, it was just a front porch. It wasn't as exciting as I was hoping it was, but, okay, squirreled off. So the issue is, when you have stress, in the past you have dealt with it with overeating. Overeating, we know, creates weight gain. You're wanting to lose weight if you're listening to me. So, overeating when you have stress is not going to be the best coping mechanism.
It is a coping mechanism, but if you have a better toolkit, you'll use a better tool, right? And then you can have weight [00:03:00] loss. And still cope. That's what we're going to talk about. So, maybe you're preventing your weight loss. Maybe you're even causing some weight gain. So, one of the things as I was, uh, putting this together for you was hormones.
That's what kept coming into my head. Cortisol, specifically. It's the primary stress hormone. It increases your sugar, so glucose type things, in the blood stream. And that enhances your brain's use of glucose and increases the availability. Um, I'm, I'm totally reading this and I am not in the moment. So cortisol is the primary stress hormone.
It increases sugars. Glucose in the bloodstream. It enhances, so cortisol enhances your brain's use of glucose and increases the availability of substances that repair tissues. Cortisol also curbs non essential function or even harmful in fight or flight situations. So I [00:04:00] had to read that because that is not in my head.
to be able to just explain it. So cortisol, what it's saying is is that it curbs nonessential functions so that it could take care of that fight or flight kind of thing. But what it does is it increases the sugars to be able to draw that repair of the tissues to be able to, um, curb the nonessential functions.
And so as it's doing that, it's raising the, um, the sugars, the glucose. And so that's going to affect your cravings and your urges. It's going to throw your blood sugars off. And so cortisol You might not even be eating sugar, but it's going to affect your sugars. And I may not be explaining that exactly right.
And so if someone hears this and wants to, you know, kindly, gently point me in the right direction, this is how much I understood from what I was looking [00:05:00] up. So coping with stress over eating food, and that is how you have, uh, used. that as a coping tool before. So you are distracting yourself from feeling whatever stress or uncomfortable emotion comes along with your stress.
What I teach is managing, um, emotional overeating. So if you are managing your emotions, you're managing emotional overeating because if you know other coping tools, you will not be overeating, um, due to emotions. So managing stress is going to lower that cortisol. And as I. roughly tried to explain cortisol to you.
It, um, it affects your blood sugars. It affects your weight, it affects all those things, so managing your stress is also going to lower your cortisol. So, new coping mechanisms, managing, um, emotions, overeating, and lowering your cortisol. Uh, it [00:06:00] teaches you coping skills for both the emotions and the eating.
So let's identify first what stress is. So the generic definition that I found is a state of worry or mental tension. Doesn't that sound like it's just so easy? Mental tension. It's just a little bit of worry or a little bit of mental tension. And so when I heard that, I just laughed because stress in our head just feels huge, right?
It's a natural normal. Human response and yet it feels so big. It feels so Overpowering encompassing of all things. And so when I looked up like what? Emotions kind of are what people say so like I listened to some of my clients I've listened to some of you and I wanted to know like what is it? that stress, what emotion goes with stress, right?
So it's usually a grouping of them and it could be one [00:07:00] predominantly or it could be a whole bunch of symptoms or feelings, emotions. Um, some of the ones that were, um, the most common were anxiety, uh, worry, um, fear, um, there was some, like, lack of confidence kind of thing. And then some general irritability I heard.
And then physically I heard, um, symptoms like headache and fatigue, um, anxiousness, like in your body, not just in your feelings. And so those were the ones that I heard the most often as the definition, the, the emotions that go along with stress. So I said, if you can learn some alternative coping, right?
So like right now, let's say you come home from a busy day and like, You're finally in your safe place. You're finally at home, and you have the kids in bed, or they're off doing their homework, whatever age group you have. And now, it's time [00:08:00] to just sit. And yet, you still have all of these feelings, all this stress bubbling up inside of you.
So, in the past, if you were anything like me, how I used to do it, I would go, and I would alternate between sweet and salt until I was either so bloated and disgusted that I thought I was gonna get sick. Or I ran out of the bag of whatever I was eating, chips, ice cream, chocolates, whatever, and I just kept eating and it distracted me from what I was feeling for a minute.
It didn't take anything away and the few times it did, what I've learned so since, is that in the the distraction, sometimes what happens is it's like giving your permission to not think about it. And so you're giving yourself permission to not make it a big deal anymore. So it's not that the food took away the issue.
It's that you decided that you were going to release the issue. And so you decided right now, because I [00:09:00] had food. It cured it, and so you dropped it. The food didn't cure it, or nobody would ever have stress, because we eat food every day. You deciding that it was done. You decided that you dealt with it or that it was not important anymore or that you were letting it go.
That is what let go of it. So some alternative coping distractions. If we're gonna call this a coping mechanism, and we know that it's not truly dealing with the emotion, let's just stick with that. These are coping distractions, right? Your food was a coping distraction, but your food has a side effect that you don't want.
You don't want weight gain. If you're listening to me, you want weight loss. So, you don't want the weight gain that comes with that particular coping mechanism. So, the coping distraction, that's kind of my favorite right now. So, instead of food, let's find some coping distractions that do not lead to weight gain.
You could potentially exercise. Exercise [00:10:00] is going to burn some of the um, energy and it, it'll help take down that, that anxiousness. It'll, it'll release some of that energy too. You still decide when you've dropped it, when you've released it, when it doesn't bother you anymore. You create a new thought that I'm, it didn't matter.
Or you think that, um, Of course this person said this or did this or whatever the thing is you've you've created a new thought So that you can release it, but the distraction side of it Maybe exercise is a in the moment coping distraction for you Meditation this one's fun. I have a friend and she loves meditation.
I Think meditation is funny because when I'm already all up in my head I cannot meditate, but if you can more power to you. I like to think meditation is the thing that you do before You [00:11:00] have the stress to help with it. She does it during but I don't understand that one at all She she can just stop and journal.
She can stop and meditate and usually when I'm that stressed. I am so in my head. I can't even write my words for journaling. So meditation, however you want to use it in the moment before to kind of get you, um, to get you so that you're already calmer kind of thing. I don't know. Um, deep breathing. This one works for me and it may feel a little bit like meditation, but deep breathing for me is me coming to myself and taking as many breaths, but it gives me something to focus on, which kind of is what meditation does.
Brings you back to yourself or tries to get you to, um, not let the outer world in or focus on certain things. Um, so in that respect, I would call that deep breathing [00:12:00] meditation for me. So deep breathing and, um, as silly as it sounds, it's a counted deep breath. And so however long it takes you to inhale, try to exhale for twice that time.
So if you inhale for four seconds, try to exhale for eight. If you, they call it a box method. So like a rectangle has shorter sides and longer, longer, um, side to side. I don't know, uh, short height and long side to side, whatever you want to say it. And so the inhales would be the short side. The, uh, The inhale short, exhale long, inhale short, exhale long.
And so it's like making a box and you're getting your exhales longer and longer and longer than you're breathing. You're slowing it down. I'm trying to do that now. I get all excited when I come on and talk to you guys. So, and then, like I said, the friend, and she does the journaling. Sometimes mine is [00:13:00] after.
So I have different combinations of this, and so a walk, um, a distraction with a walk, and maybe like some loud music for me, um, or maybe a favorite podcast. Pick mine, please. And so, um, whatever it is, you do that. But I can come back to journaling after. Um, when I'm in the moment, um, all I have are like single words.
It's like most of my brain cells have left and all I have are single words to be able to explain what I'm feeling or thinking. So, like I said, these are still just distractions, but they don't prevent weight loss. They don't add to weight gain, which is what your goal is. So you're wanting to lose the weight.
So finding different distractions, um, there, these are, um, also forms of self care. So along with that, making sure that you have enough. sleep. Um, you're definitely going to add to your stress if [00:14:00] you're not getting sleep every single time you're going to add to your stress if you're not getting enough sleep.
And so, um, in that self care thread, anything that you think is self care, you can decide. is how you manage your stress. I love a cup of hot tea and it just, it makes me feel completely warm and cozy. Um, that, that heat in my hands. And there's just something about when you were sick, maybe as a kid and mom would tuck you into bed or, or something that a cup of hot tea reminds me of that, that being taken care of thing.
So to get started, I want to talk about the three to get started. To continue on, I want to start with the three tips to make stress easier without the emotional eating. So the first one, so the other things were tips as far as like how to deal with stress, but this is the how to do it without emotional [00:15:00] eating, like how to actually deal.
with stress. Not just, um, cope with it as a distraction, right? So this is the dealing with it part. So you're going to deal with the actual problem, the actual stress. So stop fearing the feeling first off. No feelings can harm you. I don't know if you've heard me say this before, but a feeling is a vibration in your body.
And so when you stop for a moment and try to explain, um, to somebody, like maybe somebody who's never, ever, um, understood that feeling before or they don't know what that word means and you have to explain it. Maybe like an alien, an alien from another planet came and they do not understand what feelings are and you're trying to explain it to them.
So you're going to think about like, how does it feel in my body? Like, where is that? Like, is my heart racing? Are my hands sweaty? Do I have a headache? Does my skin feel like it's electric going all across it? Or do I [00:16:00] feel cold and solid like lead? Like. A lot of that's going to be that fight or flight. So it starts to build up and it's different in each person.
Maybe you feel like, like you're trying to, um, how do you say that? Like, uh, turn in on yourself. You're trying to like protect yourself and turn in your body, trying to escape kind of a thing. So. And so as you do this, you're going to stop fearing that feeling, the feeling cannot hurt you. It's just a bunch of, uh, vibrations.
It's just a bunch of sensations that your body is noticing and feeling caused by a chemical reaction in your brain. And so there are no. Vibrations in your body that are going to actually harm you. They are uncomfortable. I'm going to give you that one, but as you get comfortable being uncomfortable with those, then you're like, yeah, yeah, it's just, yeah, it's uncomfortable.[00:17:00]
And, and then it's an explanation and it totally is uncomfortable. I'm not even saying that it's not, it's, it's uncomfortable and it doesn't matter. It's. It's just uncomfortable. Um, it's not my favorite, right? I have a lot of emotions, probably all at once. I'm, I'm, I'm a woman. I, I'm in touch with myself and I totally get that.
I have a lot of them and sometimes all at once and some are uncomfortable and some are a little more enjoyable. So as I've gotten comfortable, being uncomfortable, it, it doesn't even feel as uncomfortable anymore. It's, it's understanding. Um, I totally get why it's uncomfortable. So the next tip for you is to manage stressful situations.
So this is going to sound like, duh, but if you can remove yourself from the stressful situation, So if you can make any difference about the stress, stressful situation, you know, like maybe your, um, [00:18:00] maybe your laundry's not done and you needed a certain uniform for tomorrow. And if you would do the laundry.
that avoids that stressful situation. If you do not sign up, this one's my favorite because I used to sign up for everything. If you do not sign up for things that do not fit in your schedule or that you did not even want to do in the first place, stressful situation solved, right? You totally curtailed it from even happening or you stopped it in its place, you pivoted and got a new route, whatever it is.
So stop fearing your feelings is number one. Managing Your Stressful Situations, number two. Now, let's be honest, there's a lot of things that you just simply do not have control over, right? So, learning to deal with the thoughts and feelings that you have is going to be how you deal with everything else.
If you can make a change and it's going to [00:19:00] work, why wouldn't you do that? It's fast, it's easy, great. Doesn't take a whole journal book to understand. You know, do the laundry and then you have the uniform clean. There's no reason to have stress over it. But In all those other situations. And when we talk about other people, a lot of times there's only so much control we have.
But what we always have control over is our thoughts. So what I'm thinking about the situation. What I'm making it mean. How I'm feeling. Did you know this? Okay, so when I I started, I thought I just had feelings all the time. They just popped up and I had no control over them. And they do kind of just pop up, but I actually learned I have control over them.
So our feelings are created when we have a thought about something. And we know this because if something's going on and we do not know about it, we don't have a feeling about it. So it's not until we know about it and we have a thought about it that we have a feeling about it. [00:20:00] So our feeling is From whatever we're thinking and you and I could have I mean in our world imagine this We have a lot of differing opinions about everything under the Sun And so what your thought is and what my thought is might be different And so that also means we might have different feelings about it.
So if you're unsure of What or why you are stressed The easiest thing is to just stop eating. You're going to see what comes up because when you have coped with that stress for with, with eating and you stop eating, it's going to all come because you're not, you're not distracting yourself anymore. So then you're going to work through managing whatever comes up.
There's no need to emotionally eat. You're not hungry. You're emotional. Food deals with hunger. Emotions have emotional thought type, uh, [00:21:00] fixes. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna stop eating because it's, we don't need to distract ourself. We're trying right now intentionally to understand what we're thinking, why it's there, what's happening.
And a lot of times you have to stop eating to get this because your brain is like, but I'm happy when I've eaten. And then when you stop eating, the stress comes back. So if you stop eating, it's going to be loud and it's going to, it could be loud and it'll come to your brain and you'll realize like, I want to eat.
And then you say, but we're not going to eat right now. So why, why are you so stressed? What's going on? And I, and I like to say this as a loving friend or, you know, I'm a mom. I don't know if you're a mom, but I'm a mom. And so like, you can see when your kids are stressed and it it's, you're very compassionate to them.
And so that voice that you would use for your kids when they're stressed, use that for yourself, drop into that, [00:22:00] that octave. Oh, sweetheart, why are you stressed? What's going on? Why is that bothering you? Here are all these whys. Why, what, where, whens, right? So, when did that happen? Well, why, why did that bother you?
Well, why, like, they're, they said that, but what does that mean about you? And you just keep asking yourself these questions. What are you making this mean about you? What are you making it mean about your job? Or what are you making it mean about your friendship? What, what does this mean? For me, it usually came to worth.
I thought if someone smarted off to me, uh, they didn't really want me there. I thought that, um, I was always having to prove my worth with my, um, ability. And I'm really pretty good about figuring things out and being super helpful. Helpful is probably, uh, my love language. I love to help, uh, um, Like [00:23:00] my actions and, and do things, acts of service for people.
And so, um, I was trying to prove my worth sometimes with my own love language of acts of service. So, um, if someone did not take my act of service, I sometimes thought they didn't love me. And then I was unlovable and I spiraled down that rabbit hole. Right. And then eventually ended up eating where I felt less, uh.
Um, loved by myself because I was gaining weight when I really wanted to lose weight. And so, learning how to figure out why I was eating, I had to stop the eating so I could hear what my brain was telling me. I just stopped the distraction. You know with your kids, you're like, hold on, look at me, look at me here.
And then the kid stops and they look at you, and then you see their face, they see your face, and then they answer your question. Otherwise, they're looking at their phone or they're looking at the TV and all the things and that's what you do. When you are eating, you are [00:24:00] distracting your brain from dealing with this.
And so stop the eating and then figure out what it is that has your brain, has your heart so stressed so that we can deal with it. So you ask yourself, why is it a problem? What are you afraid will happen? A lot of times it's fear. We're afraid. Or what are you afraid? Well, other people will think or say.
And so those are those three tips. And so stop fearing the feelings. There's no feeling that can harm you. being uncomfortable, manage your stressful situations. Just remove the stress whenever possible. And the third one was deal with your thoughts and feelings. And like I said, to do that, you have to stop eating so that you can look yourself in the eye, hear exactly what your brain has going on so that you can You can address that.
You can figure out why that's a problem for you. [00:25:00] What are you afraid of? What do you think might happen? Um, what are you worried about? That is the three tips. Like I said, it definitely affects our cortisol when you have stress. And this is Stress Awareness Month, so I love that. Um, in our world, we're finally starting to talk so much more about emotional, um, healing and, um, mental health and those types of things.
And so, A lot of times people have very healthy brains, we are, um, just not practiced at, um, looking at our thoughts. And it's not woo woo, it's not any of that kind of thing because you have thousands, literally thousands of thoughts a day and if someone tracked every thought you had, you would realize that some just pass on by and some stay.
stick a little bit, maybe they have a little Velcro and we don't necessarily want them all to stick. They can just, some of them keep [00:26:00] floating on by. So we have to figure out why that particular one stuck sometimes. So if you continue to cope. with overeating. You're going to get what you've always got.
You're going to feel stressed. You're going to worry and have tension that compounds with emotional eating. Emotional overeating. You're going to move further and further from your goal. If you're listening to me, I know that you want weight loss. I know that you're trying to figure this out. And so overeating And to cope with your emotions, it's just going to keep moving you further from your goal.
Living this way forever. It feels heavier. It feels. More stressful and I have answers for you. I gave you so many tips today. I am a weight loss coach. This is what that means. So many still are not familiar with weight loss coaching. And so I help you stop fearing emotions. [00:27:00] I help you get comfortable creating comfort and comfortability in the discomfort.
If that all makes sense to you. I stop coping. I help you stop coping with food so that your stress is not a food problem. It's a brain problem. Deal with your thoughts and your feelings. Stop this cycle. And then you can become empowered to handle whatever life will throw at you. Those are the things I do.
I help you deal with your emotions. I help you find new coping tools. I help you look at your thoughts and see that that one little thought that you don't even really believe is what the problem was. You don't need 500 more diets that tell you how to get into a deficit to bully your way thin. I need you to just listen to your brain.
I need you probably to let me listen to your brain, so that together we can [00:28:00] figure out why it is fearing or why it is worrying. What has it stressed? What is that little thought that's sticking to you like Velcro, so that we can unstick it and you can move past it. It seems so simple, so easy. And as I say that, if you can do this, do it, definitely do this for yourself.
But what happens is, and I'm not saying like, Oh, and the people that work with me just cannot, but I have a coach myself. I definitely get coached. And so when you have someone else listening to what your thoughts are, what you've just believed forever, somebody will be able to stop you and be like, Why do you believe in that one?
I had, um, a thought. Here you go. I'll share one of mine. So I had a thought that, um, when I overate, um, that it was wrong and I shouldn't have done it. And then it would usually bring up the feelings of like [00:29:00] guilt or shame because I still am working on some weight loss too. And so my coach asked me why did I choose to feel guilt or shame.
Why didn't I just feel something else? And I said, well, what else would I feel if I am wanting to lose weight? And I was overeating and she said well, how does guilt and shame serve you? Well, it was creating me Um, I was binging more or I was overeating again and again And so that wasn't working for me I would feel so terrible because I overate and so then I would overeat again to stop feeling so terrible And so when I dealt with I had to separate myself for a moment.
And so when I thought about, well, if this was somebody else, how would I want them to feel when they overate? And I would want them to feel like they were human and that they made a mistake. And this is the perfect mistake to make because now they can learn [00:30:00] from it. And so. When I started thinking things like that, my brain started feeling like I was acceptable.
I started feeling like this was normal and understandable. And I felt curious about what the next thing I could do was. I felt reassured. That's what it was that this was just another step in my journey. And so it did not create more overeating like it had every other time before. And so those are the kinds of things like I couldn't access that in the moment and I'm a coach.
So sometimes, you know, we definitely need to have someone else listening in to what our thoughts are. And that's exactly what I do. I do that with my clients. I listen and I just ask them questions and they're finding the answers. I'm not, Implanting thoughts into your head and so like I'll share mine sometimes But you're gonna find thoughts that are working for you.
And then [00:31:00] in this process, you're gonna find ones that are not So that's what mindset coaching is. I'm not giving you calories to follow. I'm not giving you restrictions or Plans on how to do things. And so I teach four basics. Um, pay attention to your water and your sleep. Those are the easiest right off the bat, get to where you're doing water consistently, 64 ounces or more.
You're sleeping seven to nine hours regularly, and then make a plan of what you're going to eat and only eat. I mean, of stuff you like eating, not, not like, Oh, diet foods, right? Stuff you really like eating and then only eat it. When you're hungry. So you're going to stop when you're no longer hungry.
Those are the only rules and everything else I work with is what prevents you from doing it. So like it can be so simple and yet people will still have a hard time. And it's because of these pesky thoughts, those Velcro thoughts. [00:32:00] So, um, that's what I do. I help people figure out those thoughts, everything that holds them back from those four super simple basics.
So weight loss coaching, it's, it's a, it's a, Time to find another way and, and the coaching is the answer. So if you come work with me together, we will solve this. I promise together we will solve this. It takes you doing the work and me listening to your brain so we can do this together. I want you to check out, uh, some freebies that I have.
I have a next step quiz that is amazing to give you some answers and the freebies I was taught are the four basics I was talking about. That's in a. Um, a quick five day quiz, uh, course, a free five day course if you want to see that. So I'm going to have you go to, um, where all my special offers and links are and it's coachingkara.
com forward slash link tree. Uh, the link will be in, um, my bio if you're watching this live and it's in my show notes [00:33:00] when you watch this on my blog or. Listen on my podcast. So I come with a new episode every single week. If you have something that you think you would benefit specifically from, Ah, send me a DM.
I would love to do something just for you. If you know that this has been, um, very insightful, and you are just ready to either get some questions answered, or you know you're ready, To take that step to start losing weight in this way, that is going to be the most lasting weight loss you've ever had.
When you're dealing with solving the actual issues, it's going to be lasting weight loss. Go to that coachingcara. com forward slash link tree and you can schedule a time, we can talk and see your next steps together. I'll see ya. See you next week. You take care and celebrate your wins because I am celebrating you every day.
Thank you for [00:34:00] listening to the concierge weight loss podcast. Like what you heard today, leave a review or share with a friend and check out the next step quiz where you'll find what has held you back from lasting weight loss and what to do next. You will find the link to this and many other helpful podcasts and videos in the show notes.
I can't wait to see you there.
