Chronic stress is the root of all lifestyle disease. It’s these exact diseases that lead us to the doctors office where you’re given a pharmaceutical option to fix you overnight and a comment that weight loss could help as well. It’s not as if you haven’t been looking for the weight loss solution for decades. You may even feel like you’re eating healthy but not losing weight.

When it comes to reaching your ideal weight and the bonus of health, the solution we’re most familiar with is diet and exercise. If this isn’t working for you and you're tired of the relentless dieting cycle, let's flip what you’re working for.

There’s no need to throw in the towel and try to convince yourself that becoming healthier isn’t for you, it’s the most essential. It’s time to discover a new path that overcomes the negative effects of stress and lets you finally break the gridlock you’ve had with the scale.

It’s not uncommon for you to be in a state of low level stress all day. While you may not think it’s a big deal, your parasympathetic system does. Even when you’re functioning at a low stress level there are vital processes in your body that don't happen. Specifically for weight loss a critical process that will suffer from a lack of support is digestion.

When your body is stress activated you're not able to assimilate nutrients, eliminate toxins, process energy, or store fat in the way God designed your body to work. This is why traditional weight loss plans often feel like an uphill battle for results. This is why I encourage clients to focus on the controllables.

I don’t know about you, but in my life weight loss and happiness were tied together. I always assumed that if I had one the other would be right there. And when weight loss didn’t happen it stole my right for happiness. Since one in four American women are on an antidepressant there’s a chance quite a few of those women are tying their happiness to weight loss.

This is why I’m so passionate about sharing the tools that gave me a healthier lifestyle, and let weight loss be the happy side effect. I’ve found that chronic stress is an area that’s been overlooked by my clients and has a huge rate of return as improvements are made.

Let’s look at the first controllable, happiness.

How many times have you blamed the difficult situations in life for your level of happiness?

The truth is happiness isn’t about the circumstance around us, it’s the thought inside of you that shapes how you feel. Looking at the equation of circumstance + thought = feeling, you can ask yourself what piece of the formula is in your control to change.

Thought is the piece that is under your control.

So, your task for finding the feeling you want…is to change the thought you’re thinking. Stick with me and I’ll show you how to do this.

Renowned neuroscientist Joe Dispenza shares that 90% of our thoughts are repetitive, with 50% of what we retell ourselves everyday being outright lies. Therefore everyday we’re reliving a miserable life that isn’t at all true in an effort to avoid change.

If you’re willing to embrace the mission of changing your thoughts to decrease stress and find happiness there is a 100% chance you’ll be uncomfortable. Your body would rather be uncomfortable than change. But you have the power to choose over and over to be the boss of you. And when you do, not only is happiness there for you, more of your efforts will be reflected on the scale.

After years of trying all the standard diet actions I learned I was leaving one IMPORTANT action out of every plan I'd tried.

It was MINDSET!

And if you’ve been shorting yourself on sleep, permission to change is going to come from you. I've currated the FREE "Body Bliss Blueprint" Guide just for you. Your mindset holds the key to a blissful life.

👉🏻 Click here to get your copy.

In my logo I attempt to capture one of Budda’s sayings that is a lesson I feel like we all encounter…

So how do you become consistent with making the better choice when it comes to your reaction to the first arrow? The tool I want to share with you for this comes down to one simple question. This question is best shown in the following story.

A British rowing team had not won a gold medal since 1912, honestly they didn’t have a good rowing program. Then something changed. In anticipation of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the team developed a guiding star strategy that changed everything.

They developed a one-question response to every single decision they made. This one question allowed them to measure every situation, decision, and obstacle - and to not get derailed where most people do. For them the question was,”will it make the boat go faster?”

Example: if they were invited to a late party, will it make the boat go faster, if no, don’t go. Tempted to eat doughnuts, will it make the boat go faster, if no, don’t eat them.

With this single guiding star question, they quickly escalated their skills,training and conditioning. They also destroyed their competition and won gold!

Motivation comes from getting to the core of why better health is the desire and having the strength and resolve to follow through with the actions that align with your desire.

The reason this single guiding star question worked for the rowing team is the same reason it will work for you. It boils down to a performance concept known as “implementation intentions,” which is a strategy to plan for the worst - so you can perform your best.

For you, asking the guiding star question has you mentally rehearsing the outcome allowing you to overcome the tendency to stop when something becomes uncomfortable or difficult. What makes this idea so powerful is that by default you’re visualizing the process and the achievement of your desired goal.

For me, my question is "will this make me happy." This isn’t a ‘happy in the moment’ kind of happy but happy in 15 minutes or 15 days. It allows me to catch myself in difficult situations and stop before a binge starts that would leave me very unhappy in 15 minutes. It’s a filter that works for all areas of my life. And it’s a tool that takes practice.

If you know it’s not ok for your health to stay the same (or even get worse) and you know you need to do something different, you’re not alone.

Change can be challenging and even scary, especially on your own. But staying stuck year after year is scary. Reducing high and low stress is just one of the transformative pillars of my Balanced Body Breakthrough program.

This low-investment, high-reward program can be amplified even more when you add in Consistency Coaching. I'm open to talking one-on-one with you to see if this kind of support is how you start a healthy lifestyle. Here’s my calendar to find a time that works for you for my no-charge 45-minute “Unlock your Wellness” virtual session.