Written by: Rita May, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Feeling overwhelmed and overloaded often leads to overeating or stress-eating. To decrease overwhelm most people focus on managing their time to get more done but managing our energy instead can be more beneficial. This is what Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz explore in their book The Power of Full Engagement.
They don’t tell us to avoid stress. They recommend we seek an optimal amount of stress and balance it out with recovery. Too much stress or energy expenditure without sufficient recovery leads to burnout and breakdown.
However, too much recovery without sufficient stress leads to atrophy and weakness. The same process occurs not only with our physical, but our emotional, mental and spiritual energy.
To be fully engaged, we need to be physically energised, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned to a purpose that is bigger than our self-interest.
Here are some great ideas from the book that can help you optimise your energy and consequently reduce overwhelm and stress-eating too.
The power of rest and recovery
Throughout the day, your energy level naturally cycles up and down.
You most likely are familiar with the 24-hour circadian rhythm, which wakes you up in the morning and makes you feel tired at night.
However, you may not have heard of the 90-minute ultradian rhythm, which influences bodily systems; the flow of hormones, heart rate, brain wave activities and muscle tension in your body.
When you're at the beginning of the ultradian cycle, you feel energetic, you can focus deeply and get a lot done. However, somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes, the body begins to crave a period of rest and recovery.
What are the signs? A desire to yawn and stretch, hunger pangs, increased tension, difficulty concentrating, an inclination to procrastinate or fantasize, and a higher incidence of mistakes.
Nowadays, it's popular to try to "hack" this cycle to get more done by resting less. Attempting to work 8-12 hours without a break is not uncommon in highly competitive workplaces.
Consequences of overriding our natural energy cycles
You use caffeine and sugary snacks to summon the energy to work longer or faster.
You don’t understand why you have intense cravings for high-energy (usually not so healthy) foods in the afternoon.
Now you know the reason. You actually crave a break and recovery and while you eat you can have a small break.
Also, by overriding these natural cycles, we activate the fight-or-flight response and flood our bodies with stress hormones that are designed to help us handle emergencies.
The stress hormone, cortisol, increases hunger due to the imbalance of ghrelin and leptin hormones, leading to overeating.
Numerous studies show that cortisol also affects food preferences, i.e. increases cravings for foods high in sugar or fat, or both.
After a “linear day”, i.e. when you ignored the natural cycles of your energy, had several cups of coffee and ate too many sugary snacks to stay alert during the day, you feel like you need alcohol and food to disengage and release stress in the evening, and sleeping pills to be able to fall asleep at night.
You wake up tired and you repeat the same activities the next day, getting more and more tired every day.
The stress hormones released to help you override the natural cycles over time cause symptoms such as hyperactivity, aggressiveness, impatience, irritability, anger, self-absorption, insensitivity to others, headaches, back pain, gastrointestinal disorders, and in extreme cases heart attacks.
Humans, like all biological organisms, need to rest and recover to perform at their best. Taking a break isn’t a sign of laziness or weakness ‒ it’s a recognition of a fundamental human need. Paying attention to your natural energy cycle will help you perform at your best consistently over time.
Not enough stress in other areas of your life
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the authors define full engagement, i.e. peak performance in every area of your life, when you are physically energised, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned to a purpose that is bigger than your self-interest.
They also emphasise that “the key to expanding capacity is both to push beyond one’s ordinary limits and to regularly seek recovery, which is when growth actually occurs”.
If your life is similar to what I described in the previous section, you may be pushing yourself too hard in some dimensions and not hard enough in others.
You are most likely not spending enough energy to build capacity at the physical and spiritual level (resulting in being unfit, anxious, and losing your passion or even burning out).
In the other two dimensions—mental and emotional— you are subjecting yourself to excessive stress without sufficient intermittent recovery. The result is that you feel overwhelmed and eat and/or drink to release stress.
Finding balance
The solution isn’t simply to keep pushing. What you need is to change channels in order to periodically renew mentally and emotionally and challenge yourself physically and spiritually.
Physical capacity can be increased by adopting healthy eating, breathing, exercise and sleeping habits. Recovery breaks every 90 to 120 minutes sustain full engagement.
“Spiritual energy is sustained by balancing a commitment to a purpose beyond ourselves with adequate self-care.”
“Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling and affirming serves as a source of emotional renewal and recovery.” The capacity of the key positive emotional muscles, such as patience, empathy and confidence, can be increased by pushing past our current limits followed by recovery.
The mental energy that best serves full engagement is realistic optimism – seeing the world as it is, but always working positively towards a desired outcome or solution. The key supporting mental muscles are mental preparation, visualisation, positive self-talk, effective time management and creativity.
If Churchill could find time to paint during a world war, you can find time in your busy schedule to rest and recover too. Doing something you enjoy can make your life more enjoyable and productive at the same time! So take some time for yourself guilt-free.
If you need help, check out this free training about my 6-step strategy to stop emotional and stress-eating and book a free 60-minute call here so we can find solutions to your specific problems.
Rita May, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Rita May is a scientist turned Emotional Eating and Health Coach. She helps driven professionals and entrepreneurs who are successful in other areas of their life but struggle with their weight because of emotions and stress-eating.
Her coaching method is based on three pillars: the science of nutrition, psychology, and a bit of spirituality.
She doesn’t believe in the one-diet-fits-all approach. Instead of giving you a diet plan, she helps you choose a way of eating that you enjoy because that’s the one you will be able to sustain in the long term.
However, nourishing your body is not enough. Our well-being is also affected by stress, relaxation, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, joy, self-awareness, our personal history, and so much more.
Using her Mindfulness to Food Freedom method and How to stop eating your feelings workbook, she helps her clients eliminate emotional and stress-related overeating or binge eating. She designed her Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss program to help busy professionals and entrepreneurs lose weight and improve their health with just a little time investment per week so they can focus on their work, business, and family.
