Stress triggers are everywhere. They are at your office, in your home, on the highway and popping up on your telephone. During your medical weight loss program these pesky little stress triggers will continue to plague you, and now you’ll be trying to focus energy on your health, which can easily become another stress trigger just waiting to be activated.
Managing stress is essential to a healthy lifestyle. But before you can manage your stress you have to know what is stressing you out to begin with. So many people deal with stressors day in and day out to the point they don’t even realize the way these external stimuli are affecting them. Take your medical weight loss program as an opportunity to take a step back and evaluate the way that your relationships, career choices and other lifestyle factors are affecting your stress levels. You may be surprised to realize the impact seemingly irrelevant aspects of your day are having on you and your stress levels.
Stress triggers come in all shapes and sizes, but will often fall into at least one of the following categories:
- Emotional stressors: This includes things like grief, relationship anxiety and fear. Ingrained personality traits like pessimism, perfectionism or feeling helpless can further encourage emotional stressors.
- Family stressors: This type of stress comes from interpersonal relations with family members, as well as from within the dynamic of your family relationships, themselves. Caring for an ill parent, raising a family or communicating with a sibling may all provoke certain degrees of stress.
- Social stressors: Social situations can be incredibly stress provoking. Speaking in public, starting a new career and forming friendships as an adult are all potential stress triggers.
- Economic stressors: Many people worry about money. Financial stressors are often difficult to cope with and can cause prolonged stress, especially if there is a dire economic need.
- Career stressors: Stress concerning your career may come from dissatisfaction with a position, longing for promotion or change, or even from the physical demands of your position itself, which includes inactivity and weight gain from sitting at a desk all day.
These are some of the most common stressors. In other situations, stress may come from one’s environment, chronic pain or disease. Understanding what stressors are impacting you, and how they are affecting you, can have a big impact on your weight loss program. The more you know about how your body reacts to certain triggers, the better you’ll be able to efficiently manage stress and focus on losing weight.
