Changing your stress default
Celeste Davis
Stress can have a huge impact on your immune system. Just like sugar, if your body is busy dealing with negative emotions and thoughts, it won’t have as much energy to put towards cleansing, healing and rebuilding strong. Dealing with stress is something we must do on a moment to moment and day to day basis, with great intention. If you don’t become intentional about managing and eliminating stress, you will go into a default mode and stress will manage (and potentially eliminating You!
Manage and eliminate stress or it will manage and possibly eliminate you!
Sometimes my computer gives me a message about not being able to find the program needed to open a file. It asks me a question with three options: Search the computer, search the web or change my default. I find this similar to the problems I encounter with eating well. This weekend I found I needed to change my default.
This weekend we had a stress event that threw us for a temporary loop. We went for a walk to hash out our feelings about the matter and that helped some but both of us felt we needed an escape – a movie! We went to the video store (ok, we live in a small town, don’t have good cable and yes we rent movies) and walked out with 3 movies. Leaving the video store, I turned to Phil and said “I want chocolate” He said “Me too!” So we walked next door to the market and did not look for anything healthy, we went for 1. Ice Cream – with pralines and chocolate. 2. Chocolate Chips to make Chocolate Chip Brownies and 3. Doritos (good for balance). These are things we NEVER eat or at least very rarely because they really do make us feel lousy. Well, we went home, popped in the movie and got out the ice cream. I started to make brownies but, since I don’t keep refined sugar in the house, scratched that plan. So we put the chocolate chips in mugs, piled up scoops of ice cream and bottoms up! We were about to get loaded.
We both took about 2 bites of the ice cream and it was tooooo sweet, not tastey at all. The chocolate chips were good for about 1 handful, Phil munched a few doritos and then he looked at me and said, “I am taking this stuff to the garbage can”. Good idea, so much for our binge and about $15 bucks into the garbage.
This got us talking again. This is how we used to always deal with stress or stress events. This was our old default BUT it didn’t work any more! Our bodies don’t even recognize that junk-food binge program.
We realized we needed a new default to deal with stress. We walked, yes we talked but apparently not enough because we still wanted food for our oral satisfaction. Maybe we should have run instead of walking but honestly the stress took all our energy and just walking and talking seemed like an effort.
When you detox your body you find that you detox the rest of your life as well, however, there will always be times when situations take you back to default. I guess that is why people in AA have sponsors and meetings available at all times of the day and night.
We are still “in process” on this one. It is always easier to help someone else solve a problem like this than it is to come up with one yourself.
We decided that we are going to keep some healthier, “intentional treats” on hand so if we do want chocolate or something that will increase our serotonin levels and take us to a “happy place”, at least it will be food that won’t make us sick, food we can enjoy! Just not enough to binge every day. Some of our treats are Enjoy Life! Chocolate Chips. We use those to make homemade ice cream, made with Agave Nectar or Chocolate Chip muffins made with Raw Honey, Lara Bars, Ezekiel Tortillas to make sprouted grain chips and fresh salsa.
Healthy Chocolate Chip Muffins made with Raw Honey
We were reminded to keep our forgiveness list cleared and that helped to eliminate some stress. We have not been sick with the flu or colds in 4 years. We value good health and are willing to limit our sugar and manage our stress to accomodate continued good health.
How about you? What is your default for stress? Is it food? Alcohol, tobacco, depression, sleep, shopping, anger? Do you find your default has changed? Do you want to change your default?
Celeste Davis
Improve Your Life By Changing Your Food
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Tags: avoid colds, avoid flu, detox, family health, food, forgiveness, health, healthy chocolate chip muffin recipe, immunity, intentional living, mental health, stress, weightloss, wellness, winter health
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