Find Your True Health and Wellness: Stress Part 3
Can being busy really be the reason you can’t reach your fitness? Yep. And, really, your blue light from your phone and iPad is seriously hindering your ability to lose weight? Yep. Read on to find out how…
Of the “go to” strategies I’ve shared with you that have changed mine and dozens of my concierge clients, have you chosen yet the one that will help you crush your 2020 goals?
You see, when you find your “go to” strategies for calming yourself and recognizing worry and fret are pointless, you will find your true health and wellness.
Ladies, we all get so “inside our own heads” and can admit we are too focused on ourselves. As Tony Robbins says, “The reason you’re suffering is you’re focused on yourself.”
When you reach the place where you live in the present, tap into your highest potential, and don’t make excuses why you “can’t” get there, I promise you will meet your weight loss, body composition, and confidence goals.
Below are the final four of ten practices to get your wellness back on track. They will help you in the moment and also overall lead to greater perspective. You can always get a consult with me to find others that work for you.
Don’t miss out on our best challenge ever: 30 Day Take Back Your Wellness Challenge where you will receive weekly emails with specific strategies and tips on fitness, food, stress, and sleep for you to do during that week. Sign up here.
7. Give Up Your “Busy” Way of Life
How many times do you hear “I’m so busy,” or say to yourself “I can’t get it all done!?” I know in the gym (now the park or online!) I often find clients who believe the only way they’ll get fit is to move, move, move. I aim to teach my clients sometimes it is not moving when you can really feel your body. In a sense, we have become addicted to movement.
Some scientists believe many are addicted to being busy because when we complete a task it sends a signal to our brain to release dopamine, the pleasure hormone.
There is a difference between being busy and being productive. Productivity can make you feel like you don’t want to stop. Busyness can make you feel like you cannot stop.
Tips:
- • Designate activities where you find the most value and focus on those
- • Designate relaxation at least 2-5 minutes each hour
- • Control your schedule (next month’s blog series!)
8. Significantly Reduce Your Screen Time
Blue light, the type of light emanating from a computer, TV or cell phone is terrible for your wellness. It can have negative and inhibitory effect on sleep onset and quality. It tells our brains that it is still daytime, when it is night and dark outside. Melatonin, your sleep hormone, is reduced with blue light exposure.
Blue light is a way your body senses it’s time to be awake and alert. It is supposed to be greater during the day when we all work, learn, and eat. Yet, at night, our body wants darkness to sleep. We were all hunters and gatherers at one point. Daylight was for work; night was for sleep (or for some, to hunt).
Being “always-on,” with little breaks from devices, places your brain on “over drive” and doesn’t allow it to recover from our normally stressful lives.
Tips:
- • Start small by expanding the time between awakening and your first look at a screen in the morning to 30 minutes.
- • Expand the amount of time between your last glance or longer viewing on a device and bedtime
9. Engage in Full Screen Living
Ever feel like you are constantly distracted? While driving? While texting? While eating? While conversing? Are you really focused on the matter at hand, or the conversation with someone in front of you? Or are you allowing your brain to be constantly shifting from one activity to the other?
I learned about “full screen living” from one of my band of mentors. He raised the idea that if you can focus simply on the task at hand: the conversation, the meal, the project, how much more fulfilling life can be. If our eyes were viewing only that with which we were focused, like a computer screen, we would be better able to experience all five senses: sights, sounds, smells, feel, and taste of every experience.
Don’t fall prey to the Instagram engineer! Don’t get sucked in. Engage in your life, taking in all of the sights, sounds, smell, feeling, and taste. Nothing you see on Instagram will be more fulfilling than what you can see/feel/hear/smell/taste right in front of you!
With all of these distractions and noises our brains get stressed because they are busy translating all of the noise. Stress = weight gain.
Tips:
- • Set limits on social media on your phone. You can program it
- • Focus solely on one thing at a time
- • Pay close attention to your conversations with others. Listen intently to the other person asking two to three follow up questions about the same topic
10. Embrace Silence
Anyone who has worked with me a day knows my mantra: drive in silence. It is the one time of the day you can be assured of silence. And, after all, we are driving a machine and need to be paying careful attention to it.
There is so much background noise in our lives: sirens, people talking, phones, or even simply the voices in our heads. Our brain wasn’t wired for constant attention and commotion. Whether it is 10 minutes per day or two, a silence break will give your mind – and your body – a dose of relaxation where it doesn’t need to do anything yet keep you alive. 😉
Tips:
- • Drive in silence
- • Walk 5-10 minutes through the day without looking at your phone. Texting is not silence
I hope the 10 strategies and the tips to achieve them in this series help you to gain the confidence in your mind, body, and spirit. If you have any questions about how to achieve them even further, schedule a free consult with me.
- About the studio
Alexandria Wellness offers achievable answers for anyone who is tired of chasing fitness and health without a clear plan, someone who has struggled and is not satisfied with their fitness and wellness or someone who is open to maximized healthful longevity and fitness along with healthful weight loss. Adrien and her team offer help with food guidance, body acceptance, sleep and stress issues, and insist you have fun along the way.
Schedule your free 30 minute consult here!
Alexandria Wellness
215 North Payne Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703.299.9333
contact@alexandriawellness.com
