WORK AND STRESS CAN LEAD US TO FIND COMFORT IN FOOD BUT IF YOU WANT TO LOSE THE LOVE HANDLES, YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT YOUR BODY THE WAY A GENERAL WOULD LOOK AT A BATTLE — YOU NEED A PLAN AND YOU NEED TO STICK TO IT

Looking for Mr or Ms Right is harder now than before. With employers demanding more time from employees, the pressure is on people to clock up extra hours at the office, thus leaving little time for love and more time for comfort foods.

Relationship guru and author of Men Are From Mars Women Are from Venus, John Gray, says that women love chocolate for a reason.

He claims that chocolate produces the same stress-relieving hormones as a loving touch. If you are not getting the latter, you tend to overdose on the former.

Whilst men tend to relieve stress through alcohol or food, many women relieve the burden on their shoulders by eating dark chocolate and watching re-runs of Sex And The City.

You may think that this over-indulgence is a secret but I’m afraid to enlighten you — your body never lies. Where you store body fat tells a lot about the foods you eat and the imbalances in your hormones.

An over-consumption of sugars and foods that turn into sugar quickly cause havoc with the body’s ability to balance our insulin levels and this in turn can lead to an increase in body fat on your love handles.

The development of a muffin-top is enough to deflate your self-confidence and increase your stress levels further.

Stress in your body can be caused in many ways. It is not only the demands of work that can raise stress levels but dehydration or consumption of foods that our body is sensitive to are also factors.

Elevated stress levels lead our bodies to secrete a stress hormone called cortisol. Cortisol can lead to a body-fat accumulation around your bellybutton. During consultations with clients, it emerges that many people are on a cortisol-insulin see-saw.

SWEETS

When you are stressed, you eat more sweets. This in turn causes you more stress as you don’t like how your body shape changes in response to eating sweets and so you eat sweets again. Acknowledging your conditioned response to stress and making suitable changes is one of the best ways to help you change your body shape.

When you change your responses, you are changing the way you think. Your mind is like a general in an army, and that army is your body. No army will achieve success without a leader, and that leader is a general with a plan.
If you lack confidence in the way you look and you want to change, you must first change your mindset to exercise and nutrition. All generals have a plan before they go into battle. They know where the battle ground will be and how big the obstacles are before them.

WANE

We are near the end of January which means the initial rush to health clubs, exercise classes and running clubs is starting to wane. All great battles have been decided by generals with great plans. If your plan is to be wearing a little black number for Valentine’s Day, you need to organise your training and nutrition.

If you have difficulty in knowing what foods to eat or exercises to do you need to seek the help of a qualified coach in these areas.

At this time of year, newspapers, TV and radio programmes focus on the fat-loss market. I am always entertained to see celebrity exercise DVDs — no different than Jane Fonda’s from 20 years ago — overweight TV presenters and fitness experts on weight-loss shows. The methods they use are outdated.

A healthy mind will lead to a healthy body so make a plan, stick to it, and don’t be afraid to tweak it and seek the advice of people who have fought similar battles before.

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