High levels of stress can be one of the reasons why you can't reach certain goals like waking up early, exercising or even body changes. Changing some habits and adding some other habits can be the key to reducing stress levels and seeing the changes that you are longing for.
Stress is an inescapable element of the modern age, due to all the stimuli we are in everyday, social media, podcasts, and the environment we live in can be causing an unhealthy release of cortisol.
Cortisol is a secreted during situations perceived as stressful, there is a healthy pattern, this characterized by a rapid increase of cortisol immediately after morning awakening, peaking about 30 minutes, this helps us to get ready for the day, the it's followed by steadily declings levels thereafter then reaching the lowest levels in the evening, to helps us get ready to go to bed.
Stress constitutes a key process for ensuring survival, this is triggered during specific situations. Emotional Regulation can help to help relax and address triggers of stress, but when this fails it has been shown to lead to chronic stress, anxiety, depresion, chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases.
So how do you manage stress and reduce cortisol levels?
1. Change your diet habits
We know that eating healthy can help to have a healthy and happy life. When wanting to reduce stress levels, having good eating habits helps prevent the effects of stress, like tummy problems, fatigue and reducing the internal inflammation. So consider this:
Prefere cereals and grains high in fiber.
Avoid having trans fats .
Avoid alcohol binge intake.
Prefer vegetable protein like beans, soy, lentils, garbanzo beans.
Prefer lean meats, fatty fishes and birds.
Eating raw oils, like canola, olive, avocado, grape.
2. MOVE MORE
Exercising daily can help you not only reduce stress levels, but to sleep better, have better cardiovascular health. The best recommendation is to do the activity you like the most, but the most beneficial in many aspect are:
Weight LIfting
Strength exercises like calisthenics.
Jump Rope
Walking more than 30 minutes a day apart from what you usually walk on the daily.
3. Relaxing physical activity
There are specific exercises that can help even more to reduce the cortisol levels in a more natural form, the contempt of this is to be aware when doing these exercises.
YOGA: A physical movement in the form of postures included and integrated with yogic breathing and elements of relaxation. The purpose is to create physical flexibility, reduce pain and unpleasant stimuli and reduce negative thoughts and emotions to calm the mind and body, thereby improving well-being.The physical benefits are wide that go from physical to mental health such as anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease, cancer and respiratory symptoms. It is also reported to reduce muscular-skeletal problems and physical symptoms through increasing the awareness of the physical body.
TAI CHI: Is an internal Chinese martial art practiced for both its defense training, its health benefits and meditation. There is good evidence of benefits for depression, cardiac and stroke rehabilitation and dementia
4. Awareness
Awareness exercises like mindfulness and Meditation can be great to be more present, be aware of the environment, emotions, how and what your body is feeling, acknowledge them and focus on the present as an awareness.
MINDFULNESS: This practice involves being more present at the moment by acknowledging the here and now, rather than focussing on the past or future. Being present may include being aware of our surroundings and the environment, or of what we are eating and drinking and physical sensations. You can do this with every activity on the day, an be aware.
MEDITATION: A practice that an individual uses like mindfulness, focusing on a particular object, thought or activity, this to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.
Practice makes perfect, even tho is important to be mindful most of the time, depending on the lifestyle of the person, being mindful can’t be done, that is why they might prefer to do this on a specific time table and place. So choose the one that you can do in the daily, try first with one activity or 5 minutes, then add more activities and time till you create your perfect habit.
5. Sleeping correctly
We encounter many coaches, influencer saying that sleeping less is the reason for their success, incurring to sleep less and less. When sleeping is a process that helps replenish our resources, recover our muscles, rest and trigger the body's natural hormonal processes. Sleeping well helps you rest our brain but in addition to them it helps to:
Have quicker reflexes
Better focus
Better memory
Have a healthy heart
Regulate blood sugar
Restore Immune system
Better athletic performance
Maintaining healthy weight
IMprove Moods
STRESS RELIEF
6. Therapy
Psychological Therapy a technique that can help you to talk, find the problem, fin the best strategies to reduce and prevent stress, an help with emotional regulation.
As well as their long term therapy, there is short term and long term therapy, this will depend on the personal reason.
Don’t be scare, going to therapy with a professional helps you get to know yourself better and find the best tool to solve day-to-day problems and your emotional management.
The best TIP is to find the source of your stress and find the best treatment for you, change habits, be more aware, therapy, moving more or even all of them.