Holly Mosier

Until you get my book, Stress Less, Weigh Less, use these sections, Reduce Stress, Revamp Your Eating and Exercising Efficiently, to get started on your way to peace of mind and the body of your dreams right away.

Because unrelenting stress has such a great impact on our quality of life as well as our appetites, I believe we must learn to manage it before making any changes to our diet and exercise. Until we get our stress under control, even the best weight-loss plans fail.

Why? Because one of the ways the body reacts to stress is by secreting an overabundance of stress hormones, including cortisol. These stress hormones cause actual physiological cravings as the body seeks comfort through food. That is why we tend to only stay on “diets” for a few months, then fail. It is not that we are weak-minded or just lack willpower. Under the constant onslaught of overabundant stress hormones, our bodies push us to eat foods that counterbalance the effects of these stress hormones coursing through our bodies. And research has found that most people’s stress-induced cravings are for certain foods: high-fat, high-sodium, high-sugar foods—the worst foods for dieters!

So until we learn to manage stress, we will remain caught in the never-ending cycle of yo-yo dieting. How many times have we jumped from diet to diet, only to fall off the wagon and regain the weight? Not only does the saying “stress kills” relate to physical maladies; it literally kills our ability to modify our eating.

I have found after years of study and experimentation that the secret to real weight loss, permanent weight loss, is to first get stress under control.

So let’s get started. It’s easier than you might think.

REDUCE STRESS TO WEIGH LESS

Our state of mind governs our appetites to a great extent. It is now well known that unmitigated stress spikes very real cravings for sugary, high fat, high sodium foods. We eat this junk to soothe ourselves, then our blood sugar tanks, sparking us into a feeding frenzy. And the cycle continues.

To combat this diet killer, we need to learn how to manage and reduce our stress. And we need stress reduction tools that are practical and time efficient! Let’s face it. When the dog is barking, you’re busy getting ready for work and the kids off to school, and you are late for your morning work meeting, you need tools that are quick, efficient and work right now. Tools that can be done in the car. And my book is full of easy, practical stress reduction tools that work in our harried Western life styles.

While you are waiting for my book to arrive, I am going to share one of my “go to” stress reduction tools with you. I call it the “Four-Count Breath.” It is quick, easy and effective when you need a quick “ahhhh” anywhere, any time.

Four-Count Breath

Breathe in through your nose while slowly counting to four, then exhale through your nose to the count of four. Focus on the breath with your mind. Listen to the sound of it. If possible, close your eyes. Let the breath be smooth, with no gasping or catching, kind of like a wave flowing in and then drifting away from the shore.

After just three or four of these breaths, you will begin to notice a difference. After you start to feel the evenness in your breath, you can add brief breath retention. Inhale to the count of four, then retain the breath in for a count of one or two seconds. Exhale to the count of four, then retain the breath out for one or two counts. Stop if you feel any difficulty. If retention enhances your stress relief, you can slowly increase the duration.

I find breath retention extremely relaxing. I start by retaining the breath for a single count. Then, slowly, easily, I build the retention to three or four counts, sometimes even six counts or more. If it becomes a struggle, I simply go back to retaining for a single count, or perhaps none.

There you go – you’ve just completed my first stress management tool from my book, the Four-Count Breath. It works, doesn’t it?

While the Four-Count Breath is one of my quick and easy stress busting tools, there is a caveat. I have found that if you habitually have too many things on your plate, and you are completely overloaded and overwhelmed by too many things to do and not enough time to do them, even the simplest of stress reduction tools won’t provide a long-term benefit. That is why we must “Opt-Out”.

Opt-Out as a lifestyle

As you now know, the Four-Count Breath is one of the many easy stress management techniques in my book. But no matter how many stress-management tools you have at your disposal, I have learned they do not compensate for a schedule with too many things to do and not enough time in which to do them.

If you chronically schedule too many activities in your typical day and you’re too busy to take a little downtime for yourself, employing stress-management techniques will not ameliorate the stress. You will constantly be battling an appetite brought on by the stress hormones. That’s what happened to me.

What to do? “Opt out” as a lifestyle. Don’t do things just because everyone else is doing them. Evaluate activities, choose what works for your life, and do only those things. Learn to say no to demands, requests, invitations, and activities that leave you with no time for yourself. Until I learned to say no—and mean it—I was always overloaded by stress. You’ll soon find that you are a much nicer, more present, more productive person in each instance where you choose to commit and say yes. You’ll bring a greater benefit to yourself and others when you are not constantly operating from a state of depletion.

Purposely build buffers of time into your daily schedule so you can proceed through your day in a calm and composed manner. You’ll find yourself reformed as a human, and you won’t be battling all those cravings brought on by the stress of overscheduling.

Opting out and the Four-Count Breath are two of my primary tools to keep stress under control. Use these until you get my book. You’ll find that after getting your stress under control, you’ll be quickly primed and ready to revamp those eating habits so the weight starts sliding off. I share a few of my pointers on eating in the next section, Revamp Your Eating to get you started.