Podcast: How to Stop Stress Eating so You can Lose Weight Naturally

Transcription of Podcast

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Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena Kerek. Today I want to talk to you about taking responsibility for other people and other people's emotions and why. This is not a good thing when it comes to weight loss and leading a healthy life. Now, before I dive into this topic, I want to invite you to the healthy year, sorry, new year, new me challenge taking place January the 16th.

New year New Me Challenge Jan 16th

Find out about the Challenge here: https://www.drorlena.com/new-year-new-me 

That's next week. Ex super. Well, no, a week. A week on Monday. If you're listening to the podcast, it is next week, but this is a super, super. Challenge that I'm really looking forward. I'm gonna be showing you the exact system that I use with my clients so that you can basically reproduce it if you want to.

So there's not gonna be any secrets. I'm gonna show you how I help people lose weight and how you can lose weight too in a way that is sustainable and doable. And I think those two things, if you know that you've got a system that you can carry on doing that is what is gonna. Help you have momentum and move forwards instead of, oh my goodness, I'm going to starve myself, deprive myself for two or three weeks, or two months or three months, and then get back to normal.

That is not the way we do things in Dr. Orlena world. So come and join up for that. It's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be. Less than an hour a day. Monday to Friday. Some of it's gonna be me talking to you, videos teaching, and some of it's going to be you taking action, doing worksheets. It's going to be fabulous.

How Stress can Lead You to Overeat and not Lose Weight

Make sure you do not miss this. It is you taking action. This is a step in your journey and you can make changes and the small changes add up. So come and join that challenge. It's gonna be fabulous. Okay, coming back to taking responsibility. for other people and other people's emotions. So I have a couple of stories to tell you yesterday, well, as I record this's January the sixth, January the sixth, I live in Spain is King's Day.

Taking Responsibility for Other People’s Problems Can Lead to Stress

And on the day before January the fifth, there's lots of things going on in the town. The kings calm and say, Give out sweets and about three sweets each, and some few nuts and things like that. But it's a bit of an event and obviously there's lots of people there. And we went yesterday, we went to a little beach town just to see the kings coming in their fireworks.

And my four kids were there and I said to them, oh, you can go and queue up for hot chocolate. They had a stand for hot chocolate that they were giving out free. And I said, yep, you can go and queue up, stick together, you'll be absolutely fine. And this is a small place.

My kids know it really, really. Anyhow. We bumped into some friends of ours and there was a group of people and one lady who I never met, and this lady was getting really, really stressed. She was so worried and upset, and she was saying, oh my goodness. It was so stressful. There were so many people, and we had these children, and the children ran away and I didn't know what to do, and I was just really, really stressful.

Now, she wasn't talking to me at this time. I didn't know her. I hadn't been introduced to her, and then she used my children's name. She was like, oh, when Celeste and Sebastian ran. At which point I was like, oh my goodness, those are my children. I'm so sorry that you felt stressed about them, but why on earth were you taking responsibility for my children?

Number one, I've never even met this lady before, but my children were all together and they were totally, totally fine. Now, I'm just telling this story to illustrate a point. My point was that she had all this stress, all this angst about something that was not her responsibility. . Now, if I had been worried about my children, I would've been standing next to them.

They were only a few meters away from us, but it's really easy to take this on and to say, oh my goodness, I'm responsible for this. Now, I don't quite understand why she felt she was responsible for my children. It was just one of those things, but it's really easy to. , bring on that stress. Now the problem with that stress is unless you do something about it, it just kind of stays there and you get more stress and you get more stress.

And frequently this leads to stress eating.

Taking Responsibility For Other People’s Emotions Can Lead to Stress

Now another story, a similar kind of story. I was talking to one of my old friends recently and we were just chatting, catching up over Christmas time, and she was saying that she had been invited to go. With some other people. And really and truly, she did not want to go and she was going just basically because she felt obliged to go.

And that is another really good example of taking responsibility for somebody else, somebody else's emotions, you're saying, well, I don't want to upset them. I don't want to be the person who upsets them, so I'm gonna really put myself out to do something I don't want to. So that. They feel happy about whatever the situation is.

Now, here's how I see that situation, and I know that it is difficult to sometimes go, I am gonna set this boundary, or I am going to say something that I'm going to feel uncomfortable saying, but here's the truth of it. The question you need to ask yourself is, do you want to go? And if the answer is yes, then go and have a fabulous time.

And if the answer is no, I don't want to go, and you may have reasons why you don't want to go. It may be you know that you don't want to be away from your family, you don't wanna leave your kids, or whatever the reason is, you perhaps just don't even want to go. Then you have every right to say to them, I'm really sorry, but I don't want to go.

Now, when you say that to them, a couple of things are going to happen. It might be that they totally accept that and go, okay, I do understand that it may be that they're disappointed. That's an emotion that they're feeling. Hey, I'm a little bit disappointed, and that's okay. That is their emotion that is on them, and they.

They'll get over that. Now, the other thing that they could say is, do you know what? I really don't understand this and I'm really gonna start pressuring you to go. And really and truly that is them saying, well, I don't accept your reasons. You need to do this for me. And that is a boundary that is not really acceptable.

That's. Them not understanding. Now you get to pick your friends. I know that's not always a hundred percent true, but really you do get to pick your friends and I put it to you. If you are friends with people who do not understand your reasons for doing something or do not accept your reasons for not doing something like that, then really are those the kind of friends that you want to hang around with?

Because don't you want people who go, well yeah, I am disappointed cause I want to spend some time with you, but actually I totally understand your reasons and that's perfectly. We're in a group of people, we're gonna go away anyhow. So those are the things that are going to come up. And yes, it's not very comfortable going through that experience, but after that experience, you are going to be so much better off for several reasons.

Setting Boundaries Can Be Tough but their are Many Rewards

Number one, you realize that actually setting boundaries and stopping taking. Responsibility for things that are not, your responsibility is so much better. If you just focus on what is your responsibility. Oh my goodness, life is much easier. And the long term outcome of all of this is, say the worst happens and you stop being friends with those people.

Well, you've got other friends who really are going to support. And you are gonna spend time with those people. So it's like choosing a good outcome or a good outcome, but it sometimes feels uncomfortable to go through that process. Now there is obviously a third. Sort of sample of, Hey, I feel stressed. I feel stressed about the things that are my responsibility.

So I feel stressed about my children. I feel stressed about my work. I feel stressed about all of these things, and that is a big thing that we really focus on in the Healthy You Healthy Family Program. Why? Because. . If you are overly stressed, number one, it's not good for your health. And number two, it leads you to stress eating.

If you do not address that stress, you're going to, if, and you deal with that stress by turning to food for comfort, it is that is going to be, that's going to come back and come back and come back. So really, it's important to focus. On the stress and to figure out how you can change that stress. Now, there's lots of different ways that you can do this or lots of different layers.

Peel Back Layer One of Stress. How You Think

I would say it's a bit like an onion, and there's one, you know, layer and another layer and another layer. So let's have a look at some of the layers. Now, the first thing we need to have a look at is how you are thinking about something. Now, one of the things about stress is we have an expect. of a situation that we want to happen.

So we are feeling stressed because we really want this outcome, and yet we don't know how to control that outcome, or we do know how to control that outcome. And it takes a lot of effort to to do that. But really mostly we are stressing about something because we feel out of control. We feel that we don't have control over the outcome.

So it could be that you've had a telephone call that someone is unwell and you feel stressed about it. You feel upset about it, but you feel you can't change it. Or it might be. Oh my goodness. I just feel like there's so much stuff going on in my life that I feel stressed about that, and it's really the way that we think about things.

We are thinking about how do we think about something. . And if we have this idea of I'm not in control and I can't do this and nothing I do makes any difference, that makes us really unhappy and uncomfortable. And there are other ways of thinking about this. So for example, I'm going to do everything that I can do to achieve this outcome within reason.

And I'm gonna set boundaries. I'm gonna do this. So if we're thinking about work, I'm setting my boundaries, I'm doing my work. When I'm doing my work, I'm really doing my. And I'm gonna either get this outcome or not get this outcome. Another example that comes up is children. Children can be very, very frustrating and we expect our children to behave really well, and yet they don't.

And then we feel stressed about that now. Yes, we are responsible for our children's behavior in that we have to look after our children and we have to make sure they're safe. What we can't do is a hundred percent control their behavior. What we can do is control our behavior and how we parent and say, okay, this is a long-term thing.

Yes, I can see this expectation. One example that I think is really interesting is when we take our children to grandparents and we have this expectation that our children are gonna behave super, super well for grandparents, there's almost this unspoken expectation you have to behave in the way that I think my mother or father wants you to behave.

And yet it never happens like this. Our children carry on behaving as children. And so to reframe that and think, oh my goodness. My children are behaving in age appropriate ways. This is what children do, and children have been doing this for centuries. Parents have been complaining about children for absolutely centuries, so it's not anything new.

It's just parenting is tough and our expectations of children is different from what actually happens. So the way we think about whatever the situation is is super, super important.

Peel Back Layer 2 of Stress. Our Underlying Emotions

Now another layer is how we feel about things. And one of the things about how we feel is, number one, we all feel things in different ways.

So if I feel stressed, I might feel stressed like a palpitation in my heart, or I might feel it around like a tightening around my neck. So one thing to really understand about emotions is how do you feel that? Because when you can start to feel, recognize that you can feel that emotion, then you can start to take steps to do something different than turn to food or whatever your normal response is.

And one thing I really encourage my clients do and everybody to do really when we are thinking about emotions is understand that we do have control over our emotions. Now emotions are a little bit like Pandora's box in that when the, when that emotion has been released, . You can't suddenly change it.

You can learn how to change it, but it doesn't happen instantly. This is like a muscle, it's like going to the gym and really getting to the grips with, okay, I feel stress, I feel disappointed. Yes, I can reduce that, and I can reduce that and reduce that, but it's very difficult for me to instantly turn.

The more I can recognize it, the more control I have over how I can feel my emotions. And one really powerful tool is meditation. Meditation will really help you focus on positive emotions or even just stopping the emotion and going okay, it's like a break fire. You know, when in hot countries they go and burn bits of.

The, the woods so that the, if the fire spreads, it stops there. And meditation, I think is a little bit like that. If you put meditation into your day, it stops the stress from getting out of control. It doesn't a hundred percent get rid of it, but it really helps you dampen things down so that you're not constantly triggering super stress all the time.

So that's layer number two is emotions.

Peel Back Layer 3 of Stress. Our Actions

And layer number three is really our actions and what we do. So what things can you do when you start to feel stressed? And some of these things are going to be what I call emergency things. And some of these things are going to be things that you do all the time.

So for example, I exercise a lot because I know that it helps me reduce my. It's just something, well, one, I enjoy doing it, which is why I do it. But I also know it has huge great benefits for me. I love swimming in the sea, and there's something just so amazing. It's almost like my brain gets turned off when I go to the sea, but I also like cycling and I do a little bit of running and I do walking and I do yoga.

Not much, but a little bit. So all of these things add up and they're all really good at reducing. So there are those things that you do as part of your routine. Now, I suspect you're saying, oh my goodness, I just, I don't have time to do all of these things. And the answer is, yes, you do. You just have to work them into your routine so that they are easy and you don't have to think about them, and it can be done, I promise you.

So there are things that you do. routinely, but there are also things that you can do when you notice emergency things, when you notice that you are beginning to get stressed, and this is different for different people. So a lot of the things that you do for emergency things can also be the things that you do long-term.

So for example, movement, when I'm feeling stressed, I might jump and do star jumps. I'm only doing two or three minutes, but I'm just moving my. . It might be that you want to listen to some music and change the way that you feel. It might be that you want to go and do an emergency meditation. It might be that you have something else going out into the countryside, going for a walk, doing something totally different.

There's so many things that you can do. In fact, I have something that I call a pamper pan, which is a long list of different things that people find useful for decreasing stress, and it's different for different people. Now I say, I love swimming. You might hate swimming. And that's fine. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't have to be exactly the same thing. It can be what you really enjoy doing. And so in a nutshell, this is how we manage stress. And going back to the beginning of the conversation when I'm talking about taking responsibility for other people's things that aren't really your responsibility, that is really how you think about things.

That is layer number one and saying, okay, it's fine. I'm taking responsibility for my emotions and the things that are really my responsibility and somebody else is taking responsibility for themselves for other things. So three layers, how you think about things, your emotions, understanding your emotions, recognizing your emotions so that you can start to change your emotions.

And number three is, So you can totally, totally fix stress and you can change it. If you are a stress eater right now, you can totally change it and you can totally stop stress eating. And on that note, if you are a stress eater and you realize that stress eating is your big thing, come to the healthy, the new me, sorry, new year, new me challenge.

And we will be talking more about this and we'll be talking more about emotional eating. Okay? Have a fabulous day and I look forward to seeing you soon. Bye-bye.

Written By Dr Orlena 

Dr Orlena Kerek (MBChB from the University of Bristol, UK) trained as a pediatric doctor. She is now a family health coach. She helps busy mums who want to feel amazing by eating healthy food, enjoy a healthy life.