Your big meeting at work didn’t go exactly as planned and you fought traffic all the way home. Your neck is tense and your shoulders somewhere up around your ears. Once you hit your driveway you slam through the front door, head straight into the kitchen, pull a bag of potato chips out of the cabinet, rip it open, grab the remote and plop down on the couch.
All you want is a few minutes respite from the stress of your day. For awhile those chips seem to allow you to relax. You sit there in some sort of trance in front of the television, a comforting rhythm to reaching in for a handful of chips, putting them you’re your mouth, and chewing. Without realizing it, you’ve finished half the bag and haven’t even had your evening meal. Thirsty now from all that salt, you make a second trip into the kitchen and slug a can of soda down.
Stress is a manageable fact of life
Even for those of us who don’t have high stress jobs, money worries, or perfectly behaved children experience stress. There’s actually something called “good stress.” Yes, it is possible to be stressed out because your son has done so well in school that he now must choose between three top universities. And many can relate to the stress being able to finally take that dream vacation.
Our bodies experience stress because, over the eons, stress contributed to our ability to survive – and it still does. However, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were perhaps better at managing stress than we are today. One reason for this is that their life-style included periods of rest and relaxation built into their everyday lives. Sure, they were out there on the hunt or gathering veggies – and that definitely could be pretty stressful. Especially if what you were hunting decided to attack or veggies hard to find. But the end of our predecessor’s day included enjoying the family around the cooking fire, maybe spending time with friends telling stories.
The hunter-gatherer’s daily diet also contributed to their ability to manage stress – there were no bag of chips or soda pop around to serve as a poor substitute for effective stress management.
Watch the video to learn more about how quantum jumping feeds the mind
Nutrition plays an important role in stress management
As a matter-of-fact, appropriate nutrition is often an overlooked component of successful stress management. For one, it only makes sense that eating a healthy diet promotes good health. For instance, the salt in those chips can increase blood pressure, deplete your adrenal glands (they’re responsible for producing a wide variety of hormones that keep your body functioning), and can cause emotional instability.
Eating something that can cause emotional instability doesn’t sound like a logical thing to do if you’re trying to manage your stress. Those potato chips may seem to reduce your stress – but, in fact, they are actually contributing to your stress.
Well-balanced nutrition is very important to those of us looking to manage our stress levels successfully. Unfortunately, a good portion of the everyday diet of most people also includes certain foods and drinks that actually act as powerful stimulants. A basic characteristic of a stimulant is that it can make us feel less stressed for short periods of time – but most usually these stimulants, along with other harmful substances in the food many of us eat every day, are quite harmful in the long haul.
What we eat can makes us sick, or inhibit our bodies from functioning correctly.
Sickness and less than optimal health cause us to experience stress. It is a sad state of affairs but, for many of us, our main food groups could be stated as: Caffeine, Alcohol, Sugar, and Fat. We’ve already discovered why salt isn’t the answer to managing stress.
Let’s take a quick look at the others.
Caffeine
Caffeine releases a hormone called adrenaline. You could say that it is adrenaline’s job to increase our level of stress. Remember, stress has its place. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors certainly appreciated a good shot of adrenaline when running from a predator. Similarly, if you’re crossing the street and all of the sudden see a car racing towards you, there’s nothing like a little adrenaline to motivate you to run as fast as you can.
Taken in moderation, caffeine can increase our level of alertness, which is why that morning cup can be such an important part of our day. However, too much caffeine has the same damaging effects on our body as long term stress.
Alcohol
Instead of reaching for that soda after work, many of us substitute alcohol. Alcohol is similar to caffeine. In moderation some forms of alcohol can actually be useful. For instance, red wine can benefit the cardiovascular system.
On the other hand, because alcohol stimulates the secretion of adrenaline, it can cause a variety of problems. Drinking too much, too often can result in insomnia, nervous tension, cause irritability, and reduce the ability of the liver to get rid of toxins – none of which could be considered as a means to manage stress. It is quite the opposite: too much alcohol increases our level of stress.
Sugar
Who hasn’t grabbed a candy bar out of the vending machine mid-afternoon in an attempt to rev up and face the rest of the work day? Sugar does provide a very short term boost of energy. But, like salt, too much sugar can exhaust the adrenal glands. The result is a short burst of energy, usually followed by a severe dip in energy level. Too much sugar in our diet promotes irritability, poor concentration, and even depression. Again, doesn’t sound too promising when it comes to managing stress.
Fat
Most salty and sugary foods also contain high levels of fat. Recent scientific research seems to indicate that eating fat actually does have a profound effect on our mood – it can make people feel “happier” in the short term. It makes sense that if we are stressed, eating something that makes us feel happier can be seen to reduce stress.
Unfortunately, the long term results of eating too much fat are nothing to be happy about. Simply put, eating too much fat makes us too fat. This contributes to a multitude of health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease – neither of which reduces stress on our minds or our bodies. Additionally, becoming overweight or obese increases our stress due to emotional and physical reactions. Obesity can cause us to become depressed because of our physical appearance, as well as the physical limitations of being overweight.
Not all fats are “bad” fats – in particular saturated fats should be avoided.
Feel like you’re stuck in the “Caffeine, Alcohol, Sugar, and Fat” Food Pyramid?
If you are caught up in the trap of the “Caffeine, Alcohol, Sugar, and Fat” food pyramid it is likely that you are not only experiencing high levels of stress – but that you are convinced you don’t have what it takes to get the monkey off your back. You want to manage your stress, but don’t believe you can.
If this is the case, quantum jumping techniques can be just the ticket because quantum jumping methods allow you to experience another “you” who has not only freed themselves from this destructive pattern of eating – but who incorporate healthy, successful stress management techniques in their daily life.
