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Is stress keeping you overweight? Is that even a real thing? Well today, I want to talk to you about how stress could be exactly what’s holding up your weight loss. I’m going to tell you about the physiological effects of stress, but also the spiritual. And I’m going to try to sell you really hard. That piece is actually your secret weapon to weight loss. So here’s what happens physiologically when you experience stress. First of all, what causes stress, stress is any time that your mind or your body. Since is that something is a threat. That it’s dangerous. And you know, years ago when our primitive lives, when we were being chased by animals that wanted to eat us. It was our physical safety being threatened. But now in today’s world, stress is like a to-do list that’s a mile long. Running late somewhere, or maybe not knowing the answer to something in a meeting. So our bodies experience this stress response. Once we experience a stress response, we have an increase in our cortisol, which then releases sugar into our blood, our blood sugar increases, which is great because that’s quick energy that we can tend to the threat, fight it or get away.
Anytime there’s an increase in your blood sugar we also have an increase in insulin. That’s exactly how this was all supposed to work out. This whole process is designed to have a calm at the end that once the threat is over, that we return to a calm state. And that’s just not what’s happening in the majority of women’s lives. Is that we’re living in these chronic states of stress. Which means that we have chronically high cortisol levels. We’re also living chronically high insulin levels.
And that’s the piece that you really want to pay attention to because when our insulin is elevated, we’re in fat storage mode. Did you know that? That when you’re in a stressed state, your body is storing fat. It’s not accessing fat. What it’s doing is increasing your cravings to have food that provides quick energy. Those high sugar, high salty, high fat foods. So you will increase your cravings for those foods. But even if you don’t give in and eat those foods, you will still be blocking your fat burning because of the insulin levels. Now the other reason you have these cravings is because our brains recognize, and probably through experience that these foods, these high sugary, high, fat, high salt foods, especially in that combination feel good. See, they act on the reward center of our brain so that it releases that dopamine and it does calm us. That is why we stress because eating food is so effective for calming our stress response because of the dopamine release.
The other thing that you should know that’s working against you, is that when you are in a chronically stressed state with chronically high cortisol, is that you are breaking down proteins for energy. And so that muscle that you’re trying to work so hard for at the gym will be broken down. And we really want to preserve our muscle mass, especially the older that we get. The reason I was really interested in doing this podcast is because I just this explanation for two different clients, they had two different situations.
The first one was a client who said, oh my gosh, Denise, I make everything from scratch. I eat lots of natural ingredients, but I just can’t seem to lose weight. She thought the quality of her food would mean that she would be at a healthy weight. But you can see living in so much stress was inhibiting her from actually using those clean ingredients that she was eating. Another client of mine was introduced to this work. And she really was enjoying looking at her stress response. And so when we were making her plans for the following week, she said, okay, now I’m going to eat really, really, really clean and I’m going to pay attention to my diet, essentially.
And I just paused her and reminded her that she can eat as clean as she wants, but until she really learns how to calm herself recognize her stress states and be able to work through that. No matter how clean she eats it will not have that great effect on her weight. More important for her was to spend her energy on learning how to coach herself. And I have a podcast on that, it’s episode 16 where you can learn how to coach yourself and become your own weight loss coach. Putting your effort into learning will get you farther than making an amazing diet plan that’s full of clean ingredients this week. So hope that helps you understand physiologically what’s happening. But what’s happening in the spiritual sense? And I want to tell you what Jesus reveals in the surrender Novena about stress. He says, Oh, how I suffer when I see you so agitated. And let’s just, you know, substitute the word agitated for stressed, unsettled, worried. He says, Satan tries to do exactly this. To agitate you, you guys to stress you out. And then Jesus goes on to say, And to remove you from my protection. What? We’re not under the Lord’s protection when we’re stressed and worried. He goes on to say: “To remove you from my protection and throw you into the jaws of human initiative.” Which just essentially means you’re taking on the world by yourself. Instead of allowing the Lord to do his job and trust that he knows the way things should go. When we’re stressed and worried it’s because things aren’t going the way we think they should go and I’m going to put myself in this category.
Anytime I’m worried about something it’s because I think it needs to go a certain way. I’m trying to play God. And sometimes a large part of the time my stress and worry is about myself. And the way I think I should be the way I think my body should look. We’re judging ourselves, circumstances, and other people as being bad or good right or wrong. And believing that things need to be according to our judgments is what’s causing us stress and agitation. And so when we believe those things and we believe that our ways are the best ways; Guess who are not trusting? Guess who’s protection we’re not under? Guess who can’t guide us? Guess whose strength we can’t access? And that’s why life and this whole weight loss struggle? Feels like a struggle. It feels hard.
That’s why it’s so important for us to learn how to not be stressed. How to learn how to return to peace, how to learn, how to return to calm. And that podcast, episode, episode 16, that teaches you how to be your own weight loss coach. Is how you do that. Because essentially the only reason we’re stressed is because we have certain glasses on, we have certain thoughts. The world has to be the way I think it should be. I have to be the way I think it should be. They have to be the way I think they should be. And so when we can recognize the glasses or the thoughts that we’re having, the glasses that we’re wearing are causing us to have a stress response. We can learn how to take those glasses off and put on new glasses that help us be calm; that help us be peaceful; that helps us trust; that helps us surrender.
Because the Lord says this on day one of the surrender Novena, “I say to you in truth that every act is true, blind complete surrender to me produces the effect that you desire and we’ll resolve all difficult situations.” So when we truly surrender, the Lord is so funny about the surrender Novena. He’s like, don’t offer me your worries disguised as a prayer because in the surrender Novena he says, this is day 2, “To surrender to me does not mean to fret, to be upset or to lose hope, nor does it mean offering me a worried prayer asking me to follow you and change your worry into prayer.”
Over and over and over He says, “ Trust me”, and you guys that’s so hard to do. It is so hard to do because we have these human minds in these human brains and we have this culture and the society and the families that we grew up with, we just have so many beliefs that can throw us off from being under his protection. And so I cannot say to you enough how being able to return to calm and return to peace allows you full access to being guided by him and full access to his strength.
So I hope I have done a really good job in convincing you that peace is your secret weight loss weapon. And another secret weapon in your weight loss journey is knowing what’s actually holding back your weight loss and from all the women that I’ve worked with, I have found that there are three things that actually hold up weight loss, once you’re over 40. And I will be revealing those three things in my workshop: Weight Loss Over 40, What’s really holding you back? And I promise you, it’s not a diet. It’s not having enough willpower and it’s not exercise. So go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com and get your spot today. I’ll see you there.