1. Until you master the stress that causes you to eat unhealthily and to want to be a slug you will not be able to remain on a diet or exercise program
2. Realize that the enthusiastic people who teach dieting and exercise –are often enthusiastic because they have found a way to reduce their stress in their lives by teaching dieting and exercise

Many people engage in unhealthy eating and exercise habits not just because it feels good to do so.  They often do so as a way of relieving stress.  In fact a significant number of people (who are non-enthusiasts) fall off a diet or an exercise regime just after they’ve had the stress of a “close encounter of the worst kind.”

Why is that? It’s because after you have just had a stressful encounter with someone that made you want to tear their or your hair out, you not only feel frustrated, you feel deprived of feeling good. And when you feel both frustrated and deprived of feeling good one of the last things you want to do is deprive yourself of the comfort of comfort food or to start exercising when getting started is the most difficult thing about it.

To counter the phenomenon of “high maintenance” (easy to upset, difficult to please) people making it difficult to maintain a healthy diet and exercise program, do the following:

1. Take out a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle of the page
2. On the top of the left side write, “Energy Drainers,” on the top of the right side write,  “Energy Givers”
3. List on the left side without censoring (no one else will see it) all the people that drag you down and suck the energy out of you
4. Then list on the right side the names of all the people that lift you up and give you energy
5. Now make a commitment for 30 days to cut your losses or at least minimize your contact with people on the left side and to increase your contact with (and thank) the people on the right side
6. Continue that commitment

There are of course many other things that stress us on a daily basis, some foreseen and some unforeseen.  If you agree with that, then you may also agree that finding a way to pause, calm and re-center yourself when you’re stressed instead of reacting with unhealthy behavior would be a big help in staying on track with healthy eating and exercising programs.

To help you not give into an impulse and fall off your diet or exercise routine, try the Six Step Pause :

Step 1 – Physical Awareness – when you’re feeling stressed, think to yourself, “I am physically feeling __________ (what) in my _______________ (where in your body).”

Step 2 – Emotional Awareness – “And emotionally I feel _______________ (Angry? Frustrated? Scared? Sad? Disappointed? Hurt? Upset?) and how _____________ (fill in the emotion you just named) is ________________________ (somewhat, very, extremely).”

Step 3 – Impulse Awareness – “And feeling ________________ (name the physical feeling), and ____________________ (name the emotional feeling) and feeling it _________________ (name the level of intensity), makes me want to _________________ name the impulse.”

Step 4 – Consequence Awareness – “If I act on that impulse the most likely immediate consequence will be ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_________________________ and longer term consequence will be ________________________ .

Step 5 – Solution Awareness – “A better thing for me to do instead would be to _____________________ (fill in alternate behavior such as count to ten, wait 24 hours, think of what I want the outcome to be immediately and in the long term and what I need to achieve those).

Step 6 – Benefit Awareness – “If I try that solution the benefit to me immediately will be __________________ (for example, “I won’t make things worse” or “I won’t do more things that I’ll regret and then have to apologize to people for”) and in the long term will be _______________________ (for example, “I’ll be on my way to making things better” or “I’ll have more respect for myself and gain more from others”).

If you are a person for whom positive affirmations or self-talk do not work (I am such a person), imagine doing the above exercise with someone who cares or cared about you (I imagine my deceased parents and deceased mentors going through the Six Steps with me).

(BTW this is a great routine to get into with your children to help them master stress and for them to internalize a way of pausing, calming and centering themselves later on in life.)

The second reason regarding enthusiastic diet and exercise instructors is important, because it is true what you think when you’re comparing yourselves to these health enthusiasts, i.e. “That’s easy for them to say, because they have self-discipline.  But it’ll never work for me, because I don’t.”  But before you use that as an excuse to fall off your diet and exercise routines, realize that what they have self-discipline in is something they enjoy, have made them a healthy living from and feel a boost from their enthusiastic (and s0metime “cult like”) following.

However, you don’t have to look very far to think of athletes (and maybe some of these diet and exercise gurus) who are highly disciplined in their diet and exercise, but not very disciplined in their financial and “other” affairs.

All of this means you shouldn’t shoot the message just because you can’t relate to the messenger.

Start by circling all of the items that apply to you.

1. I find myself less eager to go back to work or to resume my chores after a weekend.
2. I feel less and less patient and/or sympathetic listening to other people’s problems.
3. I ask more “closed-ended questions to discourage dialogue with friends and co-workers than “open-ended” ones to encourage it.
4. I try to get away from people as soon as I can.
5. My dedication to work, exercise, diet, and friendships is waning.
6. I am falling further behind in many of the responsibilities in my life.
7. I am losing my sense of humor.
8. I find it more and more difficult to see people socially.
9. I feel tired most of the time.
10. I don’t seem to have much fun anymore.
11. I feel trapped.
12. I know what will make me feel better, but I just can’t push myself to do it and I’ll “Yes, but” any suggestions that people make.

Now, add up the number of items you circled, and check your score below:

• 0 to 3: More exhausted than stressed out
• 4 to 6: Beginning to stress out
• 7 to 9: Possibly stressed out
• 10 to 12: Probably stressed out

What Causes Stress?

Stress develops when you have more pressure on you than you are able to handle. By itself, stress is not necessarily bad or harmful. In fact, some stress may be necessary to help get you motivated and mobilized.

It’s when stress turns into distress that you begin to really suffer. Distress occurs when you shift from focusing on a goal in your life to the goal of alleviating the distress in any way you can regardless of the negative consequences it might cause. Rather than proactively preventing problems, you begin to react to the circumstances around you.

While such reactions help you feel better for the moment, they don’t improve your life in the long run. For instance, you may procrastinate doing something because you believe you’ll be able to handle it next week. But the more you procrastinate, the more difficult it is to eventually do what you’re putting off.

To make matters worse, the more you fall behind, the more you lower your confidence and other people’s confidence in you.  As their respect and esteem for you falls, so too does your self-respect and self-esteem.

The less confident and worthwhile you feel, the less pressure it takes to feel stress and then distress in the first place, thus repeating the cycle each time you experience these feelings.

Coping With Stress

Once stress becomes distress, it’s like trying to stop a 747 taxiing down the runway. It’s much easier to stop it before it moves too far.

You are most motivated to deal with stress when you’re faced with the negative consequences of a hasty, impulsive action that you took to deal with distress. The next time this happens, resist the temptation to beat up on yourself. Instead, take out an index card and write down, “If had this stressful situation to deal with again, what I would have done differently is – - -.”

Put the index card in your purse or wallet and commit to acting differently when you’re faced with stress. You may not actually change your behavior during your next stressful situation, but sooner or later you will. In fact, just reacting to the current situation in this constructive fashion will help you feel better immediately.  Over time you will discover that the best antidote to stress and prevention of distress is taking the actions that you have written down on your index card.