How Stress Reduction Can Achieve Permanent Weight Loss
Written by Christine Sutherland on July 29th, 2008There are some 17 lifestyle factors that are crucial to permanent weight loss and stress is one of the most important, as well as being one that is far too common!
The big lie about weight loss, which diet companies try to suck people into believing, is that weight loss requires dieting. In fact the opposite is true. Dieting ends up adding 6 lbs per year per dieter, and dieting fails for nearly 100% of people. No, dieting is not the answer, but lifestyle factors, including stress reduction, are in most cases the only answer you’ll need.
Why am I picking on stress? Well stress produces cortisol, an important hormone which has all kinds of benefits. But too much stress leads to too much cortisol, and then we start seeing damage to the whole body, including to our metabolism. If we want permanet weight reduction, we must ensure that our cortisol levels aren’t out of whack due to too much stress.
If you have persistent stress in your life, if you have an anxiety disorder or panic, or if you suffer from frequent fear or worry, then you are at risk of physical damage, and you most likely have a reduced matabolic rate. The best thing you can possibly do is to seek help to eliminate excess stress.
Never self-diagnose anxiety because you could end up not discovering an important underlying illness such as a thyroid problem. Thyroid disorders are notorious for causing the whole array of symptoms of anxiety, so of course you’ll want to see your doctor before starting any program to help your stress levels!
However the most commonly-recommended treatments for anxiety should be regarded as out of date because they are painfully slow to get any benefit from, and in most cases don’t work at all, wasting time and money. CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) is a notorious example.
It’s also quite common for people to use alcohol or other drugs to try to soothe their stress or anxiety, even when they know this isn’t good for them. An effective therapist will ask questions about drug use and help you to put in place strategies that work a whole lot better!
When you’re seeking an effective therapist or an effective program, realise that you won’t see client testimonials very often, if at all. An ethical therapist will not generally ask clients for testimonials, and will not generally use them. Instead, they will be able to point you to actual scientific research.
If you see lots of testimonials, then you can rest assured that there is no validated research, and that the program is most likely untested in any meaningful way.
The “placebo effect” is at work in any intervention or therapy and so there’ll always be people who improve with that therapy. But there are so few of them that the therapy may still be useless for 99% of the population! At least if you’re swayed only by valid studies, you can rest assured that the placebo effect has been accounted for!
In order to eliminate your stress or anxiety, you need a technique which will quickly “mess up” your typical reaction to thoughts or situations that used to distress you. BMSA (Brief, Multi-Sensory Activation) is a very modern and effective treatment that accomplishes exactly that, often immediately.
For example, you might have the thought of making a telephone call, and feel highly anxious about that. Utilising BMSA techniques, you could quite deliberately try to get anxious about making that call, but simply be unable to do so. Instead, you would find to your surprise that you felt quite calm.
The beauty of dealing with stress is that you don’t just get to improve your metabolic rate on one level, but on several, so you get an exponential benefit. For example when your stress levels are reduced, your mood improves (reducing depression) and your sleep also improves. A high mood and quality sleep both impact positively on your metabolic rate, further helping you to achieve permanent weight loss.
So what are you waiting for! Get that stress sorted today!
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