Can’t Lose Weight? Get Healthy First. Top 10 Stress Busting Strategies

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. In each episode I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more so you can look and feel better fast. If you'd rather watch the video, hey, I did put on my makeup and do my hair, so check it out on my YouTube channel.

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You to suspicious texts, emails and deep fake videos. Learn more@mcafee.com online protection what's the one thing you think of when I say stress? Yeah, it stresses you out just thinking about it, doesn't it? If you're constantly stressed out, it's taking a serious toll on your health and your weight. You probably know that if you've been dieting non stop and still can't seem to drop the pounds. So stick around for my top 10 ways to de Stress and Tee up the Weight Loss. Hey, I'm JJ Virgin and if you want to stay in touch for tips that will help you lose weight and keep it off, let's stay connected. Hit the like button on this video and subscribe to the channel and you'll be all set. In this video, we're going to focus on another reason other than your diet that you can't lose weight. If you figured out your hidden food intolerances and lowered your sugar impact and you're still stuck, there are a bunch of reasons other than your diet. Your body may be hanging onto the weight. Now weight is really just another metric like blood pressure, blood sugar and waist size that indicates that you may have inadvertently damaged your metabolism and you have to heal it to lose weight. After all, you have to get healthy so that your body naturally loses weight. You don't lose weight to get healthy and there are a bunch of factors including toxins, poor sleep over exercise, and gut issues that can wreak havoc on your metabolism and make you whole. Hold onto fat despite your best efforts. So check out the other videos that I've done on this because you've got to look at all of these things if you want to give yourself the best chance of losing weight and making sure it doesn't come back. Now you do this by identifying the core issues and healing them. And for so many of us, especially over the past two years, let's get honest, it's been stressful. It could be financial pressure, caring for a family member or dealing with your own health issues, homeschooling your kids, or really just the uncertainty right now, it takes a toll and many of us are feeling it. I know I am. Just because it's common though, doesn't mean it's good for you. You could be doing everything else right, but if you're not handling stress well, it will take you down. Now you probably already know stress can make you Gain weight. But that's not all. It can also make you age faster. It can make you lose your sex drive. And if that's not enough, there's more. It lowers your immune system. It breaks down muscle, which lowers your metabolism. It can raise your blood sugar, which can lead to inflammation and insulin resistance. It makes your gut leaky, which can lead to food intolerance. And it wreaks havoc on your hormones. Now, we're built to handle some stress. In fact, we need it. Going to the gym and working out, that puts stress on your body. It does it so that you rebuild and you get stronger, right? But what we don't need is this excess chronic stress that puts us into this survival mode where your body thinks either you're being chased by a wild animal and chased and chased and chased or you're going to starve. And so it cranks up the stress hormones. Now, the main one it cranks up is cortisol. And when chronic stress knocks cortisol out of whack, you're going to feel it. You'll feel it in your sleep, you'll feel it in your mood. You'll get irritable and impatient. You'll get hungry. And by the way, when you get hungry, it ain't for salmon and brussels sprouts, is it? You want the carbs. And all of this results in weight loss resistance. You can't seem to shake the weight, especially around your belly, no matter how good your diet is. So if stress is interfering with your sleep, your moods, or your appetite, don't stress. I'm going to give you some simple tools and tips you can use to get fast results. Now, I'm guessing that you may not be able to get rid of the source of stress. However, you can change your perception of it, which really is the biggest part of it anyway. That's what impacts you, is the perception of that stress. You can also do certain strategies that help your body hand handle it better. Now, I'm going to share my top 10. Not so that you do them all. That would just stress you out more, right? Start with 1 or 2 and then build on that. So here's some quick, easy ways to hang onto your zen.

Ready?

Okay. My top 10 stress busting strategies for fat loss. Number one. Now, you knew I'd talk about forks, right? Eat by the plate. See, the problem is stress messes with your blood sugar. And when you eat protein, fat and fiber together, you can counteract that. This is fantastic because you know that protein, fat and fiber help keep blood sugar Balanced and help keep you more satiated. I've got 50 loaded smoothie recipes in my smoothie guide. This is a great way for you to break your fast every morning and get that protein, fat and fiber. So you start the day with with great blood sugar balance. Super important. Next one, something that I do every single day along with that loaded smoothie, I do green tea. Now, if you don't already drink green tea, you really want to get in on this. Here's why. Green tea, first of all, and when I say iced green tea, everyone always thinks I said ice cream tea. No, I'm saying iced green tea makes you feel good and it does a ton of great things for you. It's good for heart disease, it's good for obesity. But what it really does is go into your gut microbiome and help you become more insulin sensitive. Also, it's got this amazing amino acid called L theanine that can help you de stress, help reduce blood pressure and help reduce anxiety. And if you're going, wait a minute, I'm trying to get away from the caffeine, you can get the decaf green tea if you're caffeine sensitive. So give yourself some ice cream tea. I do 32 ounces a day. All right, next one. Exercise. Now, it's not just any exercise here. There's a few types that are really going to help you. The first is HIIT training, High intensity interval training, which trains your nervous system how to handle stress better. You go all out and recover. All out and recover. I'll give you an example. Let's say you go for a little walk, then you sprint, then you walk, then you sprint. So your easy heart, Easy heart, easy, hard. It's the fastest way to get fit. But again, it also teaches your body how to handle some stress and recover. Handle some stress and recover. Next one. And I'm proud to say that I am a yogi. This is a recent thing. A couple years ago you would have heard me say I can't stand yoga, but I made a commitment to it. And yoga is great because it helps balance your nervous system. So add in some yoga. And then third one is walking after a meal. Now, I'm not talking like an hour power walk. This can be 10 to 20 minutes of brisk walking. But when you walk after a meal, you lower your blood sugar response to that meal. And remember, stress can raise blood sugar, so this helps counteract it. All right, ready to love me? Number four, chocolate. And let's face it, when you're stressed, what do you want. Again, it's not salmon. You want chocolate. Right. So why is that?

What?

Well, one of the things that stress does, when cortisol comes up, serotonin gets booped down. And when serotonin is down, not only you're irritable and anxious, you don't sleep well, which adds to the stress, but also makes you crave sugar. So here's what's amazing. You can do this with dark chocolate. Now, remember, with dark chocolate, you're getting the low or no sugar, high cacao count, no milk. Right? It is dark chocolate. And the flavonoids in dark chocolate boost brain function and lower stress hormones, so they help you stay calm and more focused. Sounds almost too good to be true. Right? Just make sure. Again, high cacao count, low or no sugar. All right, next one. Lavender. So the essential oil lavender reduces blood pressure and heart rate. And studies show that lavender is a natural, natural antidepressant that stabilizes your mood, relieves pain, and can even prevent seizures and migraines. In fact, when my son Grant was in the hospital with a severe traumatic brain injury, one of the first things that we did was get lavender. I was actually rubbing the essential oil on his cuts, but we were diffusing it in his room as well. And it was one of the first things that I saw him respond to. So if you're feeling a little overwhelmed, diffuse, infuse some lavender, and put a little bit in your bath every night. Number six. So along with becoming a yogi last year I also became a meditator. So last year I found Dr. Joe Dispenza, and I've now been to four of his events. And I'm happy to say that took a while, but I have really dialed in the meditation. I'm going to share something that happened that I have a running joke with him about. In fact, I sent him the book, the no thing diet, the nothing diet, because I told him when we were sitting at dinner one night, I said, you know, I have lost five pounds meditating. Now, remember, think what you're doing when you're meditating, right? You go to one of his retreats, you meditate 35 hours a week. So by meditating, what's happening? I'm calming down my nervous system, lowering stress hormones. And that's why I always say you gotta look beyond the diet. And if this isn't part of your routine, I would hope highly recommend prioritizing this one. It has been a game changer for me. All right? Supplements, the right nutrients can make a world of Difference. One of the things I like to do every night is I take my magnesium body calm. I take three every night before bed. So that's important. So not only is magnesium great for just body aches and calming down your body and great for your nervous system, but remember, remember, it's also critical for being able to absorb vitamin and use vitamin D. Okay, next one. One of the things that stress does is it depletes vitamin C and the B vitamins. So these are super key critical to supplement here and then omega 3s. Remember omega 3 fish oils. They're so good for your mood, but they also help your hormone receptors work better as well and they help reduce inflammation. Okay, we are on to number eight. And number eight is find reasons to laugh more. I mean, when you think about it, you hear laughter is the best medicine. It really is because it helps release endorphins that help you feel good. So if you're going, I got nothing to laugh about. Well, my buddy Dr. Tony Yoon's got YouTube videos that are a great place to start. So grab a couple of those. Check them out next. You knew I was going to say this. Now, one of the challenges with sleep or with stress is that it depletes sleep. It makes it really hard for you to sleep, but it's so important. One of the first things you can do to start healing your adrenals is get more sleep. And the thing with sleep is that you really want to focus on seven to nine hours of quality sleep every single night. It is going to give you so much benefit. It helps you become more insulin sensitive. Sensitive. It helps keep ghrelin suppressed so you're not hungry. And again, a big challenge with this is often when you're stressed, you're lowering serotonin, which you need to make melatonin, and you don't sleep well. So if that is you, because that is me, I use my sleep candy every single night. All right. And finally, number 10, your mindset. So if for you, this falls into the. Okay, but what am I supposed to do about that? Jj, remember that a lot of stress is really just your perception of the stress. And there are things that you can do to change it. Now, I talked about meditation and I talked about doing high intensity interval training. Here's another one. Gratitude. If you begin to practice gratitude by keeping a gratitude journal and each morning, I mean, this is so simple, costs nothing, takes no time. Pull that journal out, write at least three things that you are grateful for. You're going to be blown away. I dare you. Double dare you to do this for a week. You are going to be blown away by the difference that you do. In fact, this was the number one thing I did when my son Grant was in the hospital and things were really grim and really bleak and it made a massive difference. All right, now I've just given you 10 strategies I use regularly, and you don't need to start all of them at once. Okay? Let's get real though. Stress is not going away, so we've got to build in those strategies to be able to handle it better. We've got to get resilient. So I want you to take all of these and go, which one or two am I going to start with? Then once you've done that, continue to build on them so that you get the Zen you want and you drop the pounds that you all right, don't forget to subscribe and like so that you keep all the healthy lifestyle intel coming your way. And in the next video, we're going to tackle how overdoing exercise is actually keeping weight on you, not helping you take it off, huh? So if you can't lose weight and you know what's not your diet, stick with me as we go through the rest of the list to help you get to the bottom of all of it. See you there. For more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojay.com thanks again for being with me this week.

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