You may not have thought of eating for proper nutrition as a stress management strategy, but it is. To keep your body and mind in optimum shape, you need to maintain your health. A healthy body is a resilient body, and resilience is what you want to have when you get hit with a stressful event. If you are resilient, you will bounce back more quickly. If not, you may find yourself struggling to recover.
Eating for stress management includes avoiding the so-called "comfort foods" and sticking to whole foods--fresh fruits and vegetables--and other produce that hasn't been highly processed.
To learn more, download the free ebook, Stressed, Stretched, and Just Plain Overwhelmed: A Guide to Managing Your Stress and Developing a Greater Sense of Work-Life Balance.
You may not have thought of eating for proper nutrition as a stress management strategy, but it is. To keep your body and mind in optimum shape, you need to maintain your health. A healthy body is a resilient body, and resilience is what you want to have when you get hit with a stressful event. If you are resilient, you will bounce back more quickly. If not, you may find yourself struggling to recover.
Eating for stress management includes avoiding the so-called "comfort foods" and sticking to whole foods--fresh fruits and vegetables--and other produce that hasn't been highly processed.
To learn more, download the free ebook, Stressed, Stretched, and Just Plain Overwhelmed: A Guide to Managing Your Stress and Developing a Greater Sense of Work-Life Balance.
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Hi, this is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in transition," the Podcast and YouTube channel, and welcome back for an episode on stress management today. We're going to be talking about the importance of using food to help you manage your stress and not food in the way that you might be thinking because very often when we feel stressed, we feel something of a feeling of being compelled to eat"comfort foods." That's why they're called"comfort foods." Things like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese and big thick gravies on top of our meat and vegetables and none of that stuff is actually good for you even though it may make you feel good in the short term. What I want to suggest to you is that if you want to better manage your stress, you need also better manage your nutrition. Now when I talk about nutrition, I'm talking about whole foods, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits...foods that you can buy from the produce department of your grocery store or at a farmer's market where you can find fresh fruits and vegetables that have been homegrown as opposed to mass produced and shipped from far off places where they've perhaps been treated so that they'll last longer. You want to, to the extent that you can afford to go with organic fruits and vegetables. And the reason you want to do that is that you need the nutrients and vitamins that are in those whole foods. Whole grains, uh, give up sugar and white flour and stick to good nutritious foods that you know in your heart of hearts are better for you than candy and snacks and cake and pie and all the things that make you might maybe make you feel good in the moment. Ice Cream, you know the stuff. So what you need to understand is that when I talk about stress management, I'm talking about keeping your body in optimum physical condition. Now. I talked in the last episode on stress management about the importance uh, the time before last to talk to Melissa Wolf for the last episode. The time before that I talked about the importance of being hydrated, the trillions of cells that are in your body and make up your brain, your nervous system, your digestive system, your respiratory system, your digestive system, all of the various systems, your bloodstream, muscles and tendons and bones. All of that needs to be properly hydrated and that means you need to pay attention to the amount of water that you drink every day. And by attending to your body with enough water, you can build some of the natural resilience that your body needs so that when you experience a stress event, whether it's a good event or a negative event, you are better suited, better able to deal with it and bounce back from it more quickly and being properly fed with the right kinds of nutrition and, and paying attention to the nutrients and vitamins you take into your body. They also contribute to the health and wellbeing of the trillions of cells in your body that need those nutrients, that need those vitamins, the nerve endings that need to be nourished in order for them to stay healthy and in tune. The neurons in your brain need to be properly nourished. These are important components of your, your brain, your body, and ultimately your spirit even. And when you neglect your health by neglecting your nutrition, you are essentially playing Russian roulette with your, your body and your mind. You're taking chances that you won't suffer the consequences. And let's face it, when you're young, your body is naturally more resilient and stronger and able to deal with a lot of things that as we age, we become less able to deal with quite as well. It's a natural process and I'm not buying into this whole idea that you have to get old before your time. In fact, I think we have a growing movement, uh, in our culture where we are defying the norms of what aging even means. We've all seen, um, examples of older people and people into well into their eighties and nineties who were still living vibrant, healthy and satisfying lives. We've also seen however the, the rapid decline of some of our parents and relatives who suddenly hit a point in their lives where they have a health crisis and then they never bounce back. And part of the reason they're not able to bounce back and they continue into a steeper decline is that they haven't taken care of themselves up to the point of that particular event. And we've all seen it, and we could all recognize it. What I think we tend to do is to go into denial that that can happen to us. And the fact of the matter is it can happen to any one of us in any given moment. Your health is something you cannot afford to take for granted. So I want to encourage you to take a serious look this week at what you are taking into your body. I've been journaling what I eat for the last four months. It's made me mindful in a way that I had not always been before and I've even lost some weight as a, as a result of it being mindful, paying attention, watching portions, you know, you can have just about any food that you might want as long as you manage the portions. You, you can't be eating, you know, two or three bowls of ice cream, uh, at a sitting and expect. that at the end of the day you're going to feel as healthy and as energetic as you might like. The more sugar we take in, you know, we might feel an initial rush of energy, but then there's the slump that comes along with it as our insulin level bottoms out. And then we feel like we need another hit of sugar and it becomes a never ending cycle. And it's as addictive as a lot of other addictions, frankly. I've got more and more friends who are moving toward a sugar free lifestyle now. I'm not there yet, but I am certainly monitoring and managing this sugar and my food and what I take in each day. So...If you need a reminder, I would recommend that you take a look at, if you haven't yet downloaded the ebook that I wrote called Stressed, Stretched and Just Plain Overwhelmed. I'll include the link. It's a free ebook; a guide to managing your stress and developing a greater sense of work-life balance and chapter 10 covers the importance of eating for good nutrition. And like I said, you want to stick to whole foods, whole grains, avoid sugar and white flour, avoid anything that's highly processed. For vegetables, if you, if you have to go with frozen or canned, you know for convenience then do what you have to do. I guess that be mindful of the fact that both frozen and canned foods have some of the nutrients that have been leached out of them already and you won't get the full benefit of the nutrients that are in the whole foods that haven't yet been processed. And if you are buying fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, you can manage how you prepare those foods. And that's another important component in managing your health. Now, there are loads of resources that are available online for how to approach good nutrition, how important it is. So don't just take my word for it. Do your research. Find out how you can optimize your body's resilience and manage your stress more effectively by combining hydration with drinking the water that I recommended a few weeks ago with moderate intakes of the proper nutrients and vitamins that you need and see if over the course you won't see an immediate impact. But over the course of a few weeks and months, you will start to feel like a whole new person because you're building up the resilience that your body needs and that helps you to better manage your stress. So if you're looking for a quick fix for your stress, there's, there's really no such thing. It starts with self care and nutrition. Eating well, eating for good health is a part of self care. So that's it for today. I hope you'll subscribe to the YouTube channel and the Podcast"Teachers in Transition." Tell your friends about it. If he's had found this information helpful, send me an email with questions or requests for more information@kittyboyntonatatgmail.com and I hope you'll come back next week for another episode of"Teachers in Transition." Have a great day. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."