Tuesday, 12 April 2016

10 (Surprising!) Sources of Stress

The stress that most likely affects you day in and day out is based on your mindset, outlook, and mental habits. This is especially true for women, who tend to chronically multi-talk, compare themselves, self-criticize, and put a huge amount of pressure on themselves to be perfect.

Despite being less obvious, the following sneaky internal sources of stress are often the most potent for destroying your health and fitness, your happiness, and your peace of mind.

1. NEGATIVE BODY IMAGE:
Hating your body, feeling uncomfortable in your body, constantly worrying that people are judging your body, and obsessing over your weight (or diet) are huge areas of non-stop stress for many women.

2. DISMISSING YOUR EMOTIONS:
Many people have been taught to reject, suppress, ignore, or otherwise not deal with their emotions. But emotions are natural and biological, and they need to be felt, and to move through you, in order to appropriately discharge. Dismissed or suppressed feelings also increase exponentially in force and power (like a dam), until you’re living with the constant fear that if/when those floodgate opens, you will surely drown.

3. PEOPLE PLEASING:
Trying to make other people happy is one thing, but trying to make other people happy at the expense of your own happiness is quite another. Chronic people-pleasers tend to feel a lot of pressure to make the people around them happy at any cost. They often take on extra projects, say yes to things they want to say no to, bend over backwards to make other people comfortable, and exhaust themselves or make themselves sick because they spend so little time and attention on their own needs and health.

4. SELF-CRITICISM:
Self-criticism is anything negative you say about yourself. It can come in the form of bonding with girlfriends by bashing your body, telling self-deprecating stories or jokes, attempting to be modest by rejecting compliments, and saying things like “I suck at this,” and “I’m the worst.” Most people would never say something as mean to someone else as the things they to themselves every day.

5. NEGATIVE SELF-TALK:
This is self-criticism that you say to yourself in your own head, and it’s often significantly more dramatic and unkind than anything you would ever dare say out loud. Negative self-talk gets especially dark because there is nobody there to hear and refute your statement, so you’re more likely to accept it as truth. For example if you miss your friend’s birthday, to your friend you might say “Ugh I’m such a bad friend, but…” while to yourself in your own head you say “I’m a horrible person and this is why nobody will ever love me.”

6. BEING INAUTHENTIC:
Pretending to be someone or something you’re not adds a whole other layer of responsibility to your shoulders 24/7, and keeps you from ever being able to let your guard down and live fully in the moment. Being inauthentic also often comes in form of “impostor syndrome,” which is a persistent fear of being found out for not actually being as smart, pretty, or successful as people think you are.

7. KEEPING PEOPLE OUT:
You may think this sounds easier than letting people in, but you actually have to work really hard to create and defend your emotional walls. Also, anyone who has built these kind of walls lives in fear of someone eventually breaking one down or climbing over it. Nobody builds intense emotional walls against other people from a place of peace and serenity.

8. COMPARISON:
Comparing yourself to someone else, favorably or unfavorably, creates stress. Trying to determine who is better or who is “winning” reinforces a scarcity mindset in which there is only one “right” way to have a body or be a person, when in fact we are each completely unique and there is no objectively better or right way of being.

9. BLACK AND WHITE THINKING:
When we’re triggered into a flight-or-flight response, we must make quick snap judgements about whether something is “good” or “bad.” This makes sense evolutionarily, because when you’re in danger in the wild, you don’t have time to weigh the options; you have to make snap decisions! But in real life, we should be able to have access to all the nuanced shades of grey in between. Living with black-and-white thinking (or “all-or-nothing” thinking) reinforces scarcity and danger.

10. PROCRASTINATION:
Putting stuff off leaves it hanging over your head until it’s done. We usually procrastinate in the hopes of enjoying a break from the activity we’re putting off, as though it was an indulgent behavior of self-care, but it actually creates a significant amount of stress and anxiety. Procrastination can include anything from not answering emails right away, hitting snooze, and putting the gym off til after work. Putting these activities off might seem insignificant, but it causes stress to grow exponentially.


{Source: http://jessikneeland.com/21-surprising-sources-of-stress/}

Tuesday, 5 April 2016

The best ways to stay hydrated

When you're working up a sweat, even a small amount of fluid loss can cause your body to work less efficiently and upset the balance
Feeling thirsty, light-headed, tired, head achey, a dry mouth and lips are early signs of dehydration, so read our guide to what’s best to drink for Health and Fitness.

1= Water Water is the perfect hydrator. You should aim to drink at least 1.2 litres of fluid (six to eight 250ml glasses) a day and increase this to 2.5 litres in hot weather, when you lose more fluid through sweat. This fluid can be from a variety of drinks, says the Natural Hydration Council, but water is calorie- and fat-free and easily absorbed by the body. However, if you’re working out for longer than 60 minutes, switch to an isotonic sports drink (see below).

2= Squash or diluted fruit juice If you find water boring, try highly diluted squash or fruit juice, for example, 100ml of fruit juice to one litre of water. ‘Carbohydrates, such as sugar, have to be broken down in the gut, which can slow down the rate at which fluids pass into the bloodstream,’ says nutritionist Dr Emma Derbyshire of the Natural Hydration Council, so don’t be tempted to drink stronger juices. Smoothies are also too sugary to help you hydrate efficiently.

3= Sports drinks A 2008 study found sports drinks don’t necessarily hydrate your body as fast as water, but they do provide a quick energy source. ‘If you’re doing more than 60 minutes of exercise in one session and will do more later in the day, it’s good to use an isotonic drink,’ says Derbyshire. Isotonic drinks help replace lost minerals and provide some carbohydrate as fuel. Only have energy drinks, or ‘hypertonic’ drinks, with a higher level of carbohydrate, after doing very high levels of exercise, to quickly replace muscle glycogen stores.

4= Tea A recent UK study found drinking up to four mugs of black tea with milk a day is just as hydrating as drinking the same quantity of water. However, Derbyshire says the caffeine in tea starts acting as a diuretic (increases fluid loss by causing you to pass more urine) when you exceed around five cups a day, so go easy or switch to herbal teas.

5= Coconut water Fresh coconut water is naturally isotonic, with a 330ml serving containing more potassium than two bananas plus five other naturally occurring electrolytes. It has one-fifth of the sugar found in fruit juice, plus a little fibre. Derbyshire says there are few published studies on its hydrating abilities and it lacks salts, but it could be a good post-exercise hydrator. Try Vita Coco from Waitrose and Tesco; vitacoco.co.uk

6= Soft drinks Carbonated drinks with sugar, like many energy drinks, provide lots of empty calories. They’re also acidic, so can damage your teeth when drunk regularly. Even vitamin-fortified drinks branded as ‘healthy’ can contain as much sugar as a cola.

{Source: http://www.womensfitness.co.uk/article/fitness/186/best-ways-stay-hydrated}