De-Stress Your Life: Easy, Sustainable Steps to Lifestyle Rituals that Drain Stress and Generate Energy and Calm

By Deborah Rankin

Who thinks about what you need?

When you are hard-working and capable, sometimes it seems everyone you know-employer, clients, employees, family, and friends-needs things from you. You face demands that leave you exhausted and too busy to enjoy life, much less find time to exercise and follow a healthy diet.

For dra

• Language: English
• Publisher: Healthy Habits Communications LLC
• Release date: Oct 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735897219

Book preview

Foreword

PUT YOUR OWN OXYGEN MASK ON FIRST, BEFORE ASSISTING OTHERS.

—every flight attendant on every airplane

This book will help you discover and implement an exciting truth: when you take care of yourself, life is easier. You enjoy what you do, and you have energy and presence to share abundantly with those around you.

The opposite is also true. When you neglect your needs and push yourself to the limit for days, weeks, and months, you risk an advanced state of depression and exhaustion known as burnout. Entrepreneurs, small business owners, and creative artists are prone to burnout because of the long hours and intense pace at which they work, compounded by their great personal responsibility and passion. Passion—the juice that drives great achievement and innovation—also makes burnout more likely because those with passion care so much about how things turn out.

I expect you are reading this book because you want to be healthy. Have you asked yourself why health is important to you? Do you want to live longer? Or do you hope to achieve certain numbers (for example, bench press a certain weight, complete a distance event in a certain time, or better your LDL cholesterol, blood sugar, or blood pressure)? Are you motivated to lose weight for an appearance you feel will make you more attractive to others? These are all respectable, worthwhile goals. But let us look deeper.

What’s so great about living longer, if it’s not a meaningful, satisfying life?

The important thing to you is not how many years in your life, but how much life in your years!

—advertising quote in the 1947 Chicago Daily Tribune

Numbers such as strength, speed, cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, and weight are important. What then? What kind of life do you live with your good numbers?

Chances are, you are already attractive enough. I know people of all weights and shapes who are in loving relationships. I also know thin, fit people who feel lonely and unattached. It is easy to judge yourself according to images from advertising and social media and conclude that eat less or exercise more + lose weight = be happier. Yet evidence suggests that close friends, strong social connections, and meaningful work contribute more to your health and happiness than an arbitrary number on a scale.

When I close my eyes and picture what health and wellness look like for me, here’s what I see:

My friends plan an adventure bike trip to Austria. I am strong and fit enough to go, and enjoy it.

I chaperone my son’s field trip to Boston and tread the Freedom Trail for hours with seven middle-school boys. At the end of the day, I sprint after two escapees with enough speed to catch them, and herd them back to the bus.

When I visit my three granddaughters, I push their stroller uphill to a park, and then climb the BIG SLIDE. At their house, I can walk up and down a steep flight of stairs a dozen times a day with a twenty-pound toddler in each arm.

I accept an exciting new job that requires frequent travel. Because I am healthy and strong, I can leave the house at 6:00 a.m., drag a suitcase through several airports, stand all day at a trade show, meet clients for dinner, then get up the next day and do it all over again.

I rely on stress-reducing strategies, support of friends, and journaling to balance my emotions as I settle complex affairs after my father’s death. This helps my siblings, and keeps our family intact.

My goal is to help you to discover and internalize one thing from reading this book: a healthy lifestyle is not a curse or punishment you must endure.

Rather, it is a wellspring of pleasant energy, deep peace, and rich experience that makes all parts of your life more satisfying and meaningful.

I decided to write De-Stress Your Life: Turn Chaos Into Calm after watching clients, friends, and family members I care about take on rigid diet regimes that made them give up whole food groups and follow a difficult, joyless schedule. I saw them spend hard-earned money on supplements and electronic gadgets they used for a while, then abandoned. I noticed they worked so hard they had little energy to enjoy the assets they earned.

I know, based on my personal journey, my training as a registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN) with an advanced degree in nutrition, and my work as a health coach, that there is a better way!

When you eat well, sleep well, and move your body, you tap into a huge reservoir of peace, calmness, and energy. Journaling, deep connections with others, time in nature, and purpose in work release tension and add joy. When you choose healthy habits, your sense of contentment and satisfaction expands. Resilience and a broader perspective cushion you during life’s rough patches.

I wrote this book for hard-working, successful people who achieve at work, take care of their family or pets at home, and give time and energy to community organizations. I wrote to people who get it done, for in my career as a registered dietitian and health coach I’ve noticed that those who go all-out for work and service often neglect to care for themselves. Everything else seems more urgent. Many people set health aside for when there’s time.

I wrote to tell you this is the time. You have time now to adopt and maintain small daily changes that will deliver phenomenal gifts like clear thinking, renewed vigor, and a more positive mindset.

Now, take a moment to think about what health means to you. How does a calm and healthy you look and act? See it. Notice details. To define what health means to you, it might help to take a look at my free infographic:

https://stressrelief.deborahrankinrd.com/mywhyforhealth

Write down in this space your why—the reasons you want less stress and more health:

___________________

___________________

___________________

Then if you are able, recline on your back on the floor with your legs extended up a wall. Put your arms out to your sides in a T shape. Take five deep breaths, counting to four on both the inhale and the exhale. Rest. In your mind, watch images of yourself living like the healthy and peaceful self you wrote about above.

Then turn the page and join me in discovering practical strategies that will help you de-stress your life and turn chaos into calm. Together, let’s build the behaviors that increase your strength, energy, and joy.

How to Use This Book

Each chapter of this book follows the same format.

First, I write about an important health habit and the evidence that shows how and why this behavior is an anchor of good health.

Next comes a discussion of practical tips and strategies. I call this the Make It Happen section. Readers of my blog (https://www.deborahrankinrd.com) who answered a survey about what they wanted in this book came out loud and clear in their request for practical how-to ideas. I heard you! This section is here because of you. Make It Happen is designed to be a ready reference you can turn to time and again. When you need help or encouragement, flip back to a chapter and find practical ideas to help you get back on track, or a new idea to try. Because I know your life is busy and hectic, Make It Happen gives three versions of recommendations, each designed to meet your needs depending on the type of day you are having:

A Slammed Day is one in which you don’t have a moment to spare. You rush from one thing to another and deal with multiple challenges and crises. You put out fires.

A Typical Day has a full schedule, but you manage it well because it’s familiar and you know what to expect.

A Light Day is either a day off, or a work day with much flexibility and unscheduled time.

Your life varies, so I provide three variations of practical tips to help you respond to shifting demands with flexibility and creativity.

The third section of each chapter is a personal essay from an accomplished, busy person who faced a challenge in healthy living and dealt with it in a positive way. We are all inspired by real people who face tough challenges. I am honored by the generosity of those who shared their stories so you and I might benefit from their wisdom and experience. Each essay concludes with a brief biographical sketch of the writer, with links or contact information for those you may wish to follow.

The fourth section of each chapter is a blank page titled Key Take Aways and Action Steps. I urge you to make the most of this page. The real value of this book depends on what you do with the information you gain. Write down ideas that caught your attention, and commit to an action.

A good format to follow is:

I will do _______ (what) with my ______(how),

starting ____________ (when).

Please use this page. Even though it seems simple, it is quite important. Writing something down leads to deeper thinking and forges a link between ideas and actions. Your brain doesn’t have to work so hard to remember an idea if you write it down. Writing something in longhand helps your brain process the concept and prioritize what you act on.

I placed the ten chapters of this book in a sequence built from a foundation of basic health habits that progress toward more complex skills. However, feel free to read the chapters in any order you wish. Because they follow the same general format, each chapter stands on its own. Use this book for inspiration and practical ideas that add healthy habits in your life, one step at a time. In doing so, you will de-stress your life and replace chaos with calm.

Food, Part 1

ONE CANNOT THINK WELL, LOVE WELL, SLEEP WELL, IF ONE HAS NOT DINED WELL.

—Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own

One of the first things you learned as a baby was how to feed yourself. Before you could run from danger, get dressed for the day, or use a toilet, you held a bottle or sippy cup between your hands and gulped cool, soothing water or milk. You picked up Cheerios with your thumb and forefinger and put them in your mouth. You kept close to your mother, who offered nourishing breast milk. You made feeding your top priority.

And now, as an adult, what priority do you give to your meals?

Even if you love to eat and struggle with eating too much, it’s very likely that you skip breakfast, or grab a sugared coffee concoction from a drive-through on the way to work, lunch on a Diet Coke and packaged peanut butter crackers while you work, then arrive home exhausted and hungry after a long day to face a barren fridge with nothing there for dinner. You might eat take-out for dinner with Netflix for company, or pick up bags of