Latest / SAY GRACE | Weight Loss + Health for Overwhelmed Women- Stress, Busy, Consistency, Realistic, Motivation, Starting Over, No Restrictions / Why stress is making weight loss so much harder right now

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Why stress is making weight loss so much harder right now · SAY GRACE | Weight Loss + Health for Overwhelmed Women- Stress, Busy, Consistency, Realistic, Motivation, Starting Over, No Restrictions

0:40
Hey sis, do you find yourself in a nasty cycle of being motivated to start just
0:46
to fall off the wagon by midweek?
0:48
Overwhelm is such a heavy thing amongst women right now and there could be many causes.
0:53
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0:58
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1:06
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1:26
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1:49
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2:03
All right, y'all, I'm noticing so many women struggling in their weight loss lately for this reason.
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Now, I have been in the weight loss space for a long time, and this has always
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been like an issue, right?
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Stress and weight loss has always been an issue.
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Anxiety around your actions in weight loss has always been an issue,
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but I am noticing it now more than ever before.
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And the reason for this struggle is just ongoing anxiety, like survival mode, right?
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Fight or flight, zero chill. You know, we are all just on the go.
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We have too many things to do, not enough time in the day.
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And y'all, I just want to talk today about how.
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Trying to lose weight from a state of dysregulation or a state of constant stress
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is a hundred times harder than otherwise.
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So today we're going to talk about, number one, why it's harder to lose when
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you're in this state, and number two, how to get out of it so that you can see
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your weight loss through, so that you can feel the success that you so desire to feel.
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So we're just going to hop on into it. So I want to talk about the why first,
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right? Like, why is it harder for you to lose weight when you are in a constantly
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stressed or like anxious state?
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And, you know, anxiety, we use that. I use that word a lot here if you're new.
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But anxiety can sometimes we can magnify what it what it means.
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Like we think, oh, I'm not an anxious person.
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But then you go throughout your day, very scattered, very, you know,
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urgent, then stop, then, you know, worried, then not, you know, like that.
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There are so many different definitions of anxiety and how we may think anxiety
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should look versus how it can actually look in people.
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And so I want to say that right off, like, even if you don't feel like you have
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anxiety, if you do feel like you have stress, then you probably have some tendencies
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of anxiety, if that makes sense.
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So when you are stressed, or when you are anxious, okay, Your body releases cortisol.
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Cortisol is your stress hormone.
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It's normal for this to happen. We're thankful that it does.
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That cortisol is what is released when we need to slam on brakes when a car
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pulls out in front of us or go snatch up our kid before they jump off in a pool
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and don't know how to swim.
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We need that hormone.
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But with the lives most of us are living with such high demand,
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high urgency, so many things happening at once.
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Oh my gosh, these phones dinging and distracting us 24-7, right?
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We tend to see this hormone show up a lot more often than it should be, okay?
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And our body and our brain do not know the difference.
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They do not know the difference in you're constantly dinging notifications on
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your phone telling you somebody updated their Facebook status or whatever versus
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is there a bear right behind me?
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Like it is so hard to distinguish the difference as, you know,
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as a body, as a brain, okay?
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And so if we are constantly on guard, constantly ready to attack,
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constantly ready for the next thing to come around the corner,
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then our cortisol is going to be elevated and it's going to stay elevated a
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lot longer than we want it to, right?
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So a lot of us, a lot of my women listen to this or struggling with this, right?
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That elevated cortisol, okay? And so, again, let me just say here,
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like, nothing you could do better for yourself than trying to regulate that
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nervous system to bring that cortisol down, okay?
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To have it stop showing up when it is really not necessary, okay?
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But for the sake of time, we're talking about what, if we are in that state,
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which so many of us are, if we are in that state of constantly elevated cortisol,
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what it can do in regards to your weight loss, okay?
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It can increase your cravings, right? It can make you want to grab that quick
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sugary snack and almost feel like you have no control other than to do it.
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Like you're just like, I have to have, you know, this Snickers bar or whatever it is, right?
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It can also make you feel like you're hungrier.
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So either you have like a larger appetite when you eat or you feel like you
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are eating all the time, right? Right.
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Elevated cortisol can do that for you. Thank you. Thank you, cortisol, right?
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It also will promote fat storage around your belly, around that midsection,
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around the section that like we all really want to be the flattest, right?
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If you have elevated cortisol, you're going to carry fat there, okay?
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It also can increase fluid retention, okay?
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And so this, a lot of my ladies, they'll have a stressful week and I'll be like,
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don't you get on that scale?
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Do not get on that scale because even if your week was stressful and you tried
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to stay on point with your action steps, like the scale may not tell you what
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you want it to tell you because you're just holding a little bit of water, right?
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So these things, think about that.
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Think about when you have had a really good week of thinking you're eating right
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and doing well for weight loss and then you get on the scale and it's up or it hasn't changed.
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That's very defeating, right? It can make you not want to keep trying for your weight loss.
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It can make you go binge, you know, out of your emotions.
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It can make you just say, screw it. Like, I'm not going to try this anymore, right?
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Or think about trying to lose weight, but constantly fighting these like carb
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or sugar cravings that you feel like, gosh, these used to not be here.
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It used to not be so bad, right? or trying to lose weight when you are feeling hungry 24-7.
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Like these things, obviously we don't want the elevated cortisol,
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but then we definitely don't want what comes alongside of it,
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which is all of these things that are directly related to either your mindset or your consumption or,
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in regards to your weight loss, right?
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Another thing that stress or anxiety can do is it can create discomfort.
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Obviously, like if we're constantly stressed, we're not in a state of comfort.
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We're not in a state of like flow, a state of zen, a state of like,
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oh, I'm just here and I'm happy to be here, right?
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Like we're clearly not there. We're ruminating. We're reeling.
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We're thinking about it. We're stressing, you know, we're overplay,
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like playing a scenario over and over and over again in our head, right?
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When we're stressed or when we have a lot of anxiety or we're just thinking
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like, what's the next thing I have to do?
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You know, before you're even finished with the thing you're doing,
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you're like, okay, and I got to get to this next thing because I'm so stressed.
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I have so much going on, right?
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So this is, again, not a place that our brain and body likes to live comfortably.
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Like that is not how we were designed. We were not designed to be going 100
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miles an hour in our brain 24-7, right?
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But so many of us, especially us moms, we are just, We have slowly found ourselves
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adapting that way because there is so much to carry, right?
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And so when we find ourselves in that discomfort.
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Our body, because it is not the way we were designed, because it is not what
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our body or our brain wants to be doing, it is going to try to find anything
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that's not what we're doing.
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As an escape, okay? This is why a lot of the same women, I talk about this a
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lot, but this is why a lot of the same women who come to me saying,
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Constance, I'm so overwhelmed. I'm so stressed out.
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You know, I can't, I can't stick to anything.
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I've got my, my schedule's so busy. Oh my gosh, I'm in such demand at work.
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They are the same ones that also have the extremely high cell phone usage every
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single day because they are dealing with their stress at work and then trying
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to numb out with their phone.
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Dealing with their stress at home, and then trying to numb out with their phone.
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They're doing it in pockets, like two minutes here, five minutes there.
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And then at night, it's like they're real big wind down where they sit there
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and scroll for an hour. You know what I mean?
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And that is not by accident. That is because our brain is saying, we have to escape.
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I cannot live in fight or flight 24-7. We have got to escape, right?
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And so it is looking for the escape. And that's why a lot of us,
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if you pay attention, pay attention to yourself.
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If you have felt a lot of stress or a lot of anxiety, I am almost betting that
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you have either sought out more distraction this week or you actually caught
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yourself in a lot more distraction,
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meaning, you know, the scrolling or just mindless eating, right?
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Or anything, or even like even silly things. Sometimes I do this.
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I'm like, you know, there are a handful of things I know I need to get done
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today. And I'll find myself like cleaning out the pantry.
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You know, like that is not on my list of things I have to get done today.
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But I'm like, I don't want to deal with those things I do have to get done today.
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So let me find something to distract me, right?
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And so for a lot of women, food is a distraction, okay? Food is the escape.
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It makes you feel better. It gives you something to do.
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Like, you know, it increases those feel-good hormones, right, when we're eating them.
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So it provides you with that temporary relief from the overwhelm of the day, right? Right.
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And what makes it even worse, unfortunately, is that, again,
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our brain likes patterns.
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So the longer we've been doing this, the more we've been doing this,
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the more often we are going to do this, right?
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So like if you were taught as a little girl, oh, you had a bad day, let's go get ice cream.
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You know, that is a connecting point of ice cream makes us feel better.
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So when we have a bad day, we need ice cream, right?
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So if you take it back that far, you have trained your brain on this type of
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pattern, on this type of habit, okay?
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And so again, it makes it the knee-jerk reaction for how to cope, for how to handle.
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And unfortunately, right, that does not help us with our weight loss,
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especially if we are living a high stress, high anxiety lifestyle, okay?
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And so another, we're going to get to how to, you know, help with these things,
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but I want to kind of knock out the causes and how they affect us first.
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Another way that stress and anxiety can affect our weight loss is oftentimes
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when we're stressed, right, or we have anxiety, we don't sleep well,
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or we don't sleep as deep,
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or, you know, we go to bed later because we're up trying to get all the things done.
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I know I keep referring to my circadian rhythm podcast from about a year ago,
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and I'll try to link that in the description for this time just for you to refer
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back to, but it is such a good one on understanding like why that matters,
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why staying up late and then maybe even waking up later or whatever,
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why that can really affect our health overall,
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but our weight loss for sure.
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And so when we are not getting.
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Solid sleep, when our sleep is poor, whether that is from, again,
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not sleeping as long, sleeping as deep, just sleeping well in general, right?
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It affects our hunger hormones. It affects a hormone called ghrelin,
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which is our hunger, like one of our hunger signals, right?
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And that hormone is increased, meaning we truly feel hungrier, right, than otherwise.
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And it also decreases a hunger hormone called leptin.
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And leptin is in charge of telling us we're full.
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So literally just crappy sleep tells us, girl, you more hungry and you less full.
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Just that alone, just that alone. Right. And so, yeah, you're going to have
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an increase in appetite.
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Like you're going to realize, oh, man, fuller. I should have been full way later than you would.
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And it lowers your willpower. You are quite literally just not as likely to
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pass up the cupcakes at work if you got crappy sleep last night.
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Like it is what it is. And y'all, this one really breaks my heart because I
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will have clients that, you know, have like young kids or they've had,
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you know, they had a late night with their son's ball practice or ball game
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or that, you know, they didn't get in till midnight and they're so tired,
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but they've been so motivated all week.
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And then it's like they wake up that next day on you know running on four or
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five hours of sleep really tired really you know whatever and and they then
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get to work or do whatever and kind of,
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fall off the bandwagon, so to speak. And they are so hard on themselves and
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will not think about the true facts of it being, you know,
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their stress and then their crappy sleep last night.
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Like they think, oh, this is telling a story about me. This is who I am. I always fail.
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I'm always, you know, going to give in. I'm like, they immediately go to that
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terrible thinking when really it was just a bad night's sleep or a week full
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of bad night's sleep, right?
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And so it's just really important to be reminded of this and to know this,
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that no, it's not just a you thing, it's a whole body hormone thing, okay?
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And the best thing you can do for yourself is, no, ma'am, it's not to hit the
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gym after work to burn off the cupcake, right?
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That is not the best thing you can do for yourself after not going to bed till
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after midnight and being up at 5 a.m.
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Or whatever, ever go in 100 miles an hour between then and now.
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You may think that and you may feel like, oh, I'll win some sort of prize if I push through and I go.
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But actually, your body would probably be better served by you either getting
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home, getting dinner on the table a lot sooner so you can get in bed a lot sooner
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or baby, come home and take a nap during your gym time.
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Truly, truly on those nights that you just feel like you could not get in bed
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on time or you really didn't get very good sleep.
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Okay, the next thing is survival mode or stress or anxiety or whatever just
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makes it harder to think period, right?
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Like when we have a million things going through our brain, it is so hard to
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be like confident in any decision that you're getting ready to make, right?
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A lot of times, I mean, I know y'all have been there. I know I've been there
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where it's like I have to make some decisions, but I've also had a lot on my
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plate. And so sometimes the decision is made out of just the fact that I've
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got to get this decision off my plate.
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It may not even be the right one, you know, but I'm just like,
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okay, I got to stop thinking about this because I've got a million other things
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to think about right now, you know.
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And so with that being said, any decision, even an easy decision,
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can feel a hundred times harder just because we're so consumed with things in other areas, right?
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And so this obviously lowers our tolerance and it lowers our bandwidth,
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meaning we give up more easily in other areas. Okay, so like if you had a big decision at work and...
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You know, either way it goes, somebody's going to be mad at you.
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And, you know, depending on which way it goes, could be very different outcomes.
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You know, like it's a very heavy decision.
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Also, you know, you have a teenager who's dealing with a lot and you've been
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wearing a lot of her emotions or, you know, carrying a lot of that burden.
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And also, you know, your husband got a job offer and he's sitting there trying
18:26
to discern whether he needs to take it or not.
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And you're over here, like, what's that going to do to my lifestyle?
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And, you know, all the things, right? You are a lot less likely.
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Sister, to get to the Mexican restaurant at 1.30 because you hungry because
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you had to work that late and, you know, you couldn't get away from the office.
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And now you're starving and you're going to meet your friend at the Mexican restaurant.
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You are a lot less likely to pick like the salad or, you know,
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just two soft tacos, please,
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or no chips, you know, like you're, you're a lot less likely to make those decisions
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than you would, you know, those positive nutrition and weight loss related decisions
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than you would have been if today was like, oh,
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we are living in la la land. It's been such a great day at work.
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My kids are having a great day. My husband's having a great day.
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We're all just, there's no, there's no stress. There's no burden, you know?
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And so sometimes we have women come in and they're just like,
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they are under a lot of stress, a lot of pressure, a lot is going on.
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And I'm like, what possessed you to think that this was the time to also add
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weight loss to your plate?
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You know, it can be done. It.
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But you have to not only be committed to your weight loss strategies,
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even more than that, you have to be committed to calming that system,
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to learning how to shut it down when you walk out of the office,
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to learning how to stop the distractions that will constantly interrupt you
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if you allow them, right?
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Like you have got to learn how to regulate yourself.
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If you are also going to want to try to lose weight during a season that is,
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you know, a little higher stress, right?
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And it is possible. It is possible. Okay. And so these are just,
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you know, four little areas that I, that I wanted to talk about.
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There are, there are many, many, more that we could talk about.
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You know, the connection between stress and anxiety and survival mode and fight
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or flight and then inability to stick to your weight loss is,
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oh my gosh, they are just so,
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so closely aligned. It is absolutely insane.
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But I want to talk a little bit about, because I know, I know at this point,
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if you're listening and you've heard some of these things, you're like,
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okay, yeah, that's me. That's me. That's me. You know, whatever.
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And so I want to talk about some, some ways to come up against it, right?
20:57
Because in your irrational brain, you could be telling yourself,
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well, I just need to be more disciplined, right?
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Okay. I need to go to bed earlier because constant set I need to so that I can
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get up and work out at 5 a.m. No, no.
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Like, because that's you saying you need to be more disciplined, right?
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That is usually the first response from people. Like, they think,
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I just need to get a better schedule down.
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Or I just need to, you know, my husband needs to pick up the kids from school
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instead of me. Or I need to go into work an hour earlier and get started on my charting.
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Or, you know, but truly, it's more than that.
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You need to get to the root. Like you need to get, you need to get to a point
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of understanding why some weeks or most weeks you spiral the way you do and
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what is truly causing that.
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Okay. And like that, that could be, oh my gosh, it could be past trauma.
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It could truly be your inability to like say no, or like your,
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your obsession with people pleasing or your obsession with striving or like
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your inability to just have a quiet brain.
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Like there's a, there's a million reasons why this, this could be the case,
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but you need to get to the root. Okay.
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And so I really want to encourage you to think about that.
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Like just after you turn this podcast off today, like think about what is at
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the root of the fact that I have zero chill.
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Even when there is, you know, slower days in my life or I have,
22:28
you know, some time to calm down, why am I always trying to find the next thing
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to stress about or worry about or think about?
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This is some deep work that I have had to do over the past several years as
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I've been working on my own, you know, regulation.
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And it's kind of wild. Like we won't dive into it today, but like,
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you know, it started from childhood from just like natural occurrences that
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happened so often that I just started to think they were normal, right?
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And then it's also blended a little bit with like people pleasing and wanting
23:00
to perform, like wanting to feel that, you know, oh, good girl,
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you did awesome kind of praise from people.
23:09
And that eventually turned into the inability to be still because I thought
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I had to be in motion for me to matter, for me to...
23:20
Things done for me to be productive, right? For me to be productive,
23:23
I had to constantly be going 100 miles an hour.
23:26
And it is wild to just see how slowing down, taking things, you know,
23:31
one by one, instead of having 100 tabs open at once, has actually allowed me to be more productive.
23:37
Than ever before when I was, you know, trying to multitask across all different wavelengths.
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So Anyway, here are some things that I feel like you could really benefit from.
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Okay, I've got five things here that I feel like you could really benefit from
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that would then, okay, obviously help with your stress and in turn help with
23:56
your weight loss, right? The first one is learning to say no.
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Okay, this one hurts everybody's feelings, but learn to say no.
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And I want you to think about it real hard as you approach your day.
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You may think like, oh, I don't have a problem with that. but do you?
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Because I don't, I would have said that about myself years ago.
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Like I would say, I don't have a problem with that. I'm cool.
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I'm okay with telling people how it is.
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But that is different than being okay with saying, I could handle that, but I'm not going to.
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You know what I mean? Because again, I'm a people pleaser. I'm a striver.
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I want you to see that I can do everything.
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And so saying no to something would mean for me that, oh, you may think I can't do this, right?
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That's not it. It's just, I'm not going to, you know?
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And so learning how to say no, stop signing up for the class parties during
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your busiest week of work, you know?
24:49
Stop saying yes to going to Sunday dinner, even though it wrecks your whole.
24:55
Routine, your family's frustrated, nobody gets any rest because y'all have ball
24:59
day on Saturday too, like stop saying yes to that.
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You know, like thinking about things in your weeks, months, even days,
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that if you had just said no and exchanged that pocket of time that you wasted or spent,
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you know, what kind of peace could you have found?
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What else could have been accomplished that would have felt a little more aligned
25:23
and a little more comfortable in your body so that you weren't,
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you know, leaving Sunday dinner frustrated about what your mother-in-law said
25:30
about your kids, whatever, you know, like,
25:32
because you would have been in a home, girl, you would have been taking a nap
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watching, you know, Love is Blind or whatever.
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So you would have had, you know, the trickle effect, the domino effect of the
25:44
yes sometimes is where we need to start. Okay.
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Also being intentional about reducing stress. So I've talked a lot about stressful things here today.
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Now, some things we cannot control, right?
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Like there are things in our lives that are cuckoo crazy and causing a lot of
26:04
stress and we cannot control it.
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But there are also some things that we can stop ruminating on.
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And we like that as part of this whole thing is realizing, hey,
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we actually don't have any of the control.
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So can we just release the control and release the obsession over the topic
26:20
that we, again, have no control over, right?
26:24
A lot of times I notice people's stress is really just them obsessing over something
26:29
that, again, is just a wait and see kind of thing. And it sucks and it's not
26:33
fair and we don't like it.
26:35
But could you just, at the retreat, I told our ladies, because,
26:39
When we were at the retreat, we were there during a weekend where there was bad weather.
26:44
And so everybody was a little nervous about ice on the roads and things like this getting home.
26:48
And so when we, I mean, we had people obviously watching the weather.
26:52
And so it was nothing for our ladies that had done all this,
26:56
you know, paid this money, taken this time off, you know, gotten their kids situated.
26:59
You know, they come to this retreat to fill their cups.
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They did not need to be worrying about the weather, you know, like that.
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We had people for that, you know. And so I would tell them constantly,
27:10
yes, the weather could go bad.
27:14
We could, you know, get ice on the roads. Like we could, you know,
27:17
have to end this thing early, which we did.
27:21
But worrying about it now when the weather is two days away from now is not going to help us.
27:26
Sitting here checking the weather every hour, hoping that you get to figure out what is coming.
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First of all, you're not going to. Okay. And second of all, all it's going to
27:35
do is distract you and ruin you from this moment.
27:39
Okay. So can you take that worry, that lack of control, that,
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you know, a little bit of fear, I'm sure.
27:46
Can you take it and can you put it up on the top shelf?
27:50
It's still there. It is still something that we can, you know,
27:54
revisit and come back to.
27:57
But we don't have to hold it this entire time that we are at this retreat because
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it does nothing for us except wreck our body and wreck our brains.
28:07
Okay, so can we put some of these stressors in your lives on the shelf?
28:13
Again, not like craziest stuff, like not, I mean, not craziest stuff,
28:17
but just like I've heard a lot of my current clients, like they're debating
28:21
whether their children need to be medicated for ADHD, right?
28:25
Or should they move schools for their children? Or, you know,
28:29
it is, oh, we just had cheer trials.
28:31
Like, is my daughter going to make cheer trials with the rest of her friends?
28:34
Like just stuff like this that is, again, not into the world kind of things,
28:38
but they are stressors that kind of ruminate inside of us if we let them.
28:44
And the thing is, is we're not going to know. We are not going to know if your
28:48
daughter's going to make the cheer team until we get the names of the people
28:51
that made the cheer team, right?
28:53
And so there is absolutely no benefit to sitting there and letting it consume
28:58
your brain. So can you just put it on the shelf for now, right?
29:02
So thinking about things in your day-to-day, in your weeks to come,
29:05
like, yes, I acknowledge that this is a stressor.
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I acknowledge that I don't love this information or this activity that I have
29:13
to do or, you This decision that's coming my way, I do not like it.
29:19
I acknowledge that I do not like it, but I'm going to put it up on the shelf,
29:22
so that it reduces my overall stress as I continue about my day,
29:27
probably facing more stressors, right?
29:30
Another thing you can do is, again, be intentional with your sleep.
29:34
And y'all, I know this is easier said than done, but sometimes it's not.
29:38
Sometimes you could really be getting to sleep sooner, but you were choosing
29:42
to take that phone to bed with you, okay?
29:44
You were choosing to stay up late and read that book, okay?
29:48
You were choosing to, you know, press play on that next episode, right?
29:52
So just being intentional with that, treating your sleep as sacred because it is.
29:58
If you continue days upon days upon weeks upon weeks upon months upon years
30:05
to have a crappy sleep pattern,
30:08
and I'm talking from the time you are winding down to get ready to get into
30:14
the bed to even how you sleep, right?
30:16
Like do you sleep with the TV on? Is there lights on? You know,
30:19
Like all the way till you wake up the next morning.
30:22
Like if that is a consistent crappy cycle, then no wonder you have hormone issues,
30:30
you know, health issues, like continuous sleep issues.
30:34
Like we have got to get the good sleep.
30:39
And so, yes, I know there are some of us, we can't, we can't control it.
30:43
Like your babies wake you up, you know, you're, you got hot flashes,
30:46
you're waking up in the middle of the night. Like, I know all this, but...
30:50
Can you be more intentional and treat it as something sacred and just see what happens, right?
30:57
Because that resting state, even before you fall into sleep, matters.
31:02
And if you are looking at a screen at 11.05 and expecting yourself to fall into
31:09
this deep, peaceful sleep by 11.15, baby, it ain't happening.
31:14
Your body has got to wind down. You have got to give it what it needs to get
31:19
into that, you know, intentional deep sleep.
31:23
Another one that, I mean, y'all will hear me talk about this till the cows come
31:26
home, but it's to learn how to regulate your nervous system.
31:29
Quite literally has changed my life. I mean, 100%.
31:33
We will talk a little bit about this in the consistency over chaos week.
31:38
There are so many different routes, so many different avenues.
31:41
And like I talked about it here where like the first one is to just breathe.
31:44
Like when you are in the midst of the stressful, anxiety, overwhelming state,
31:49
like the worst thing you can do is just like freak out, right?
31:52
The best thing you can do is step away and take a few deep breaths, right?
31:56
And so really, again, making that intentional as well.
32:00
Like what can I do to help regulate my nervous system?
32:04
Like what am I willing to do and try to implement day by day?
32:08
And can I show up with that consistently and see what happens?
32:12
It's not going to be an overnight thing.
32:14
It's not like Tylenol. Like you take it and then all of a sudden you feel better, right?
32:18
I take a few deep breaths and then all of a sudden I'm magically healed. Like, no, that's not it.
32:24
But you are retraining your entire system for its way of response, right?
32:31
In these situations so that you get to look back a year from now,
32:33
just the way that I do currently get to look back and say, oh my God,
32:38
the way I handled this situation would have been completely different a year ago.
32:42
It is absolutely insane that I'm like comfortable, cool, and calm right now.
32:48
You know, like that's the win. You build upon those practices until you were
32:52
able to look back and see how you've become such a new and different person,
32:57
right, in how you handle stress and anxiety.
33:00
And then the last one is simply slow down. And again, this is one of those things
33:04
that also relates back to that nervous system.
33:06
I think it's so funny. It's so funny.
33:10
Like around here, y'all, I used to just be, and I still am sometimes,
33:13
don't get me wrong, but I used to just buzz all the time.
33:17
Like I would be going a hundred miles an hour, like just get out of my way.
33:21
I'm trying to do the dishes. I'm trying to fold the laundry.
33:23
I'm trying to cook dinner.
33:24
I'm trying to answer this text, like I was just going so fast inside my brain
33:31
and inside my body, right?
33:34
And so it's so funny how now, sometimes I just know that Jess is like, what you doing?
33:42
You know, because I just will just like wander around, like I'll just meander,
33:46
you know, and it's not that I have less to do.
33:49
It's not that I have less on my plate, right? It is that I'm so freaking intentional
33:55
about moving slower physically and mentally.
34:01
I have just noticed that if I let my legs move slower, right,
34:06
if I am more intentional about moving.
34:09
My, my every move, then my brain also slows down. And let me tell you where
34:14
this really, really struck with me.
34:17
And that was, I guess it was about this springtime or maybe summertime last year.
34:23
Y'all, when I washed the dishes, I washed them like a bat out of hell. Okay.
34:30
So I would like scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, rinse,
34:34
rinse, pour, rinse, rinse, Like I was just going a hundred miles an hour doing the dishes.
34:39
And in a matter of, I must have been doing like recipe remake preparation.
34:47
I feel like I had something else going on. It was just like several weeks of
34:53
a lot of cooking and a lot of prepping.
34:57
I cut my finger with our Cutco knives multiple times.
35:03
And I mean multiple times. Like one time I probably needed stitches.
35:07
I had a girlfriend who gave me like some tape to like tape my finger up,
35:11
like, or glue, sorry, glue to glue my finger up. Like, I mean, multiple times.
35:16
It wasn't just like a little cut. It was like gashed open, blood gushing.
35:23
And it got to the point where it was happening so often that Jess was like,
35:28
I do not want you touching knives. Yeah.
35:33
I do not want you touching knives, you know.
35:37
If you need chicken cut, let me know. If you need your vegetables cut, let me know.
35:42
And this was over a couple months, you know,
35:45
where he at night would make me let him cut the things because I had gotten
35:51
so bad about cutting so fast and then also trying to hand wash those knives
35:56
so fast that I was cutting my fingers left and right, okay?
35:59
And so something, because I was also on my like, you know, nervous system journey at that point.
36:06
And so one day I just kind of connected the two and I'm like,
36:09
oh my gosh, like here I am trying to find so much peace internally,
36:14
but externally I'm moving so ridiculously fast that I am truly injuring myself.
36:21
And it was just such a light bulb moment for me. And so ever since then,
36:25
I am so intentional about,
36:28
again, trying to externally move slower so that internally, I don't feel like
36:35
I have to catch up, if that makes sense.
36:38
And it has been a life changer for me, right?
36:40
So even in my days where like, I still have the same things on my to-do list.
36:44
Again, I'm not telling y'all that I just dramatically like cut all these things off my to-do list.
36:49
Yes, I said no, but I've been working on saying no for many a years at this point.
36:54
And so it's not like everything has changed, you know?
36:57
And so I'm actually being pregnant. I'm really curious, like,
37:00
how is this going to look when the baby gets here?
37:03
Because I was notorious for that with both my girls.
37:06
I would fly around, change their diaper, put their clothes on,
37:08
pack their diaper bag, give them some food.
37:10
Like we just, it was, we were fast around here. And I'm like,
37:13
what's it going to look like with this new baby?
37:15
It better be slower, you know, so we can really soak it in.
37:18
So anyway, slowing down.
37:20
Okay, so thinking about that. And if that sounds like you, what can you do today that would help that?
37:26
Can you walk from your car?
37:29
To your office door at a slower pace. Yeah, you may be late.
37:34
Y'all, I stay late. I stay running late everywhere I go, but it'd be okay.
37:38
10 more seconds, you'd be okay, right?
37:42
Can you drive in the slow lane instead of acting like you've got places to go,
37:47
people to see, you ain't got one minute to spare, right?
37:50
Can you be like me and slow it down cooking dinner and actually enjoy the process
37:55
of the preparation instead of acting like you don't even have enough time to
37:59
read all the instructions,
38:01
you know, just thinking about how this could present to yourself today,
38:04
right now, right now, you know, because again, it's these little changes that
38:09
add up to be a huge shift in how you're handling your day to day.
38:15
So anyway, I hope this episode was informative. I hope you understand a little
38:21
bit more now, like some of you guys who are not understanding why I can't lose
38:25
weight, but you also have very, very, you know, overwhelming and demanding lives right now.
38:29
I hope you are able to at least connect those dots and give yourself the grace, right?
38:37
Realize that maybe some of these other things I've mentioned today needs to
38:41
be the focus first so that you can actually make the healthy choice at lunchtime.
38:47
You know, like I just, it's so often overlooked in it.
38:51
And I really wanted to kind of bring that to you guys in a whole episode today.
38:54
So, as always, especially as we are heading into reducing that anxiety,
39:00
reducing that stress, slowing down, you know, making our sleep sacred,
39:04
I want to remind you guys to remember to say grace.
39:09
Thank you for listening to today's episode of Say Grace Podcast.