The stress response in weight loss

Hello, lovely ladies and welcome to the 52nd episode.

I have been podcasting and sharing all the gems with you over the last one year. I am so overcome with emotion right now because I know that this podcast is affecting lives all over the world. And I feel so blessed to have been able to be your host on this podcast.

And more than anything, it was scary. It was something that I'd never done before. I was uncertain as to whether I'd be able to carry it on, and being at this stage where I am recording my one year podcast, I am so thankful to that past self of me who was willing to face all of that discomfort, the past self who figured it all out herself.

When I first started, I didn't know how to record a podcast. I didn't know how to have the introduction bit at the beginning or the music bit, or how to edit the podcast or how to put it up on iTunes and Spotify and all the amazing apps that you listen to the podcast on. I didn't know how to do that. And you know what? That didn't stop me.

I said to myself, I'm going to figure it out because these ladies need to hear what I'm talking about. They need to be able to just change the way they're thinking in one tiny little bit of their lives so that they can start feeling better. And this is my purpose in life, and so this is how I am going to be sharing that information with them.

So yes, I figured out how to record the podcast. I even created the music at the beginning of the podcast. I went on garage band and I composed the music myself. I thought why not, just go for it! There were so many thoughts that came up like... It's not going to be professional enough, it's not going to be good enough when you do it yourself, you are going to lose so many people because they're going to think that you're a rookie.

And I just decided to let those thoughts be there and believe that my people, the ladies who are going to listen to this podcast and start putting these things into practice, they won't worry about whether it sounds like the most professional thing in the world.

They won't worry about if I'm using the correct grammar in everything, they won't worry if I have used the wrong word in what I'm saying, they are going to be worried about how can this episode help me change the way I'm thinking right now. And that was my aim. So I am so, so grateful to each and every one of you, amazing listeners who tune in every week.

Especially the ones who are tuning in every week, the ones who are dipping in and out, but then reminding themselves that, yes, I am going to go back and listen to it. The ones who just listened to one now and again, but have made that change in their lives. I want you tom every episode you listen to, go out and try - go out and say to yourself, I'm not just going to listen to this as consuming more and more and more information, and then doing nothing about it.

I want you to go out, listen to it and then make that change in your life. Because when you actually take action on what you've learned in the podcast, that's when you're going to see the changes.

Right? So that is my plea to you today. So. Since kind of starting it all myself, I feel so grateful that I've hired an amazing team to help with it. Someone who helps me with editing it, someone who helps me with putting it on the amazing platforms that you hear it on, and it just feels like it's been such an amazing journey.

So I'm so grateful to my team who helped me with this and help me get it out to you so that it sounds as great as possible. So thank you so much to my amazing team who help me. Now today, I am going to bring you a really useful episode because I wanted the one year episode to be something that you go back and listen to again and again and again.

And this episode is going to be on the stress response in weight loss. So to understand the stress response in weight loss, it's useful to understand what is the stress response? And why do we have it? So we know that our brain evolved to be on the lookout for threats, because we've got that primitive brain, right.

That primitive brain wants us to seek pleasure, avoid pain and stay how we are. So our brain has evolved, and the role of that primitive brain is to ensure our survival. So that in the olden days, like in the caveman and cavewomen days, the reason that we had that primitive brain is to keep us safe. Right?

So it would look out for threats. Like is there a wild animal that's going to come and hunt us? Is there another human that's going to come and steal all of our produce? Is there someone who is going to backstab me so that they can, you know, steal my house, like what is going on? The threats that they had in those days are completely different to the threats that we have now, but our brain has not evolved.

So all those threats that we used to have in those days our brain still thinks that those threats are still there. But because we don't have that same physical stress and that physical threat, every single day, our brain perceives whatever's going on in our everyday life as a threat, as something that's going to threaten our survival.

So let's bring this to weight-loss. How this showed up for me was when I was growing up, when my mum said to me - Am, you need to lose weight, the clothes aren't fitting you in. Let's do something about it. I would perceive that as, oh my gosh, it's threatening my survival, her saying that to me is threatening my survival.

When my husband used to say to me - I never get any of the dark chocolate because you eat all of it - I used to perceive that as, oh my goodness, that's threatening my survival. When someone else, when I went out with friends said, oh, I don't want dessert. I used to think that, oh, they're judging me because I'm having dessert.

So all of these felt like a threat to my survival. Right? And what I'll tell you is that losing weight is a very vulnerable thing. Of course, you're going to think of it as a threat. So of course, that's going to trigger your stress response because the whole point of the stress response is to take you to safety.

So what actually happens in a stress response? It may be that your pupils dilate, your heart starts pumping faster, your adrenaline is running because the whole point of that stress response is to get you to safety. Right? So it may be that when your pupils are dilated, you're able to scan your surroundings for threat.

When your heart is pumping faster, it's pumping more blood to your muscles so you can run faster. And the adrenaline helps you be in that response where you're running away from the threat, right. And this ties in with trauma. So whenever you have experienced some trauma, that would always trigger that stress response.

And then you react to the stress response and then you keep fuelling that trauma and then you keep reacting to it. So the nervous system functions differently when there is some sort of trauma and it doesn't need to be anything dramatic. It may just be something like when you were a child, you interpreted it in a different way because you didn't have that well-developed brain because remember that prefrontal cortex, which is that human part of our brain develops in the early twenties. So it's like mature in the early twenties.

So you may think about things that have happened in your childhood, and that may be fuelling this kind of trauma response. So a few things for me that happened in my childhood, but that you may be able to relate, helped me understand why I had this trauma response with regards to weight loss.

So for example, when I was in PE, I was always the fat girl, then my shorts were like too tight and I would compare myself to other girls and be like, okay, they don't look like that, but I look like this. Okay. There's something wrong. So that was my interpretation of something that happened back there.

And that's because my child's brain didn't know any better, it was just basically deciding that that was the only thing that was going to keep me safe. So then if I thought that there was something wrong with me, and then I went and ate, that was keeping me safe. So that's what perpetuated it.

And that's what I learned in my childhood that, oh, okay. I'm feeling a negative emotion right now. I know that this food makes it better and it's ensuring my survival because I'm still alive because I ate the food. Okay. Now that's what I'm going to keep doing.

Another thing was people thinking I was a boy because I had a boycut. And one of my teachers once called me a he, because it was a supply teacher, they didn't know me. And then instead of calling me a, she, they called me a he and everyone in the class laughed. And I remember that I felt so much shame. And I remember that I thought that the only way to survive that was to stay quiet rather than speak up because that sounded like it was going to threaten my survival.

Right? I remember when I was in high school and there were boys who didn't want to talk to me because I was fat. They always wanted to be my friend instead of date me, I was always like the one that they would tell all their secrets too. But sometimes I used to fancy a guy and I would think, oh, well, they don't like me because I'm fat. So it kept going back. And I remember once I was meeting up with some friends and there was this guy that I'd been talking to online in a group of friends. And, he'd never seen me before, but like, you know, we were talking online in this group of friends and, we you know, in, teenage days, we kind of liked each other.

And I remember that we met in the town centre and he didn't even come and say hello to me because he said that he wasn't attracted to me because I was too fat. And I remember thinking in those days that, oh, okay, you're only attractive when you are slim. And so every time that I'd become higher in the weight that I wanted to be I remember that it would trigger this stress response in my body, that whenever I was a higher weight than I wanted to be, that means no one's going to like you. So you need to lose the weight to be worthy, to be acceptable. Right? So this is the reason why all of this kind of stayed with me for so long.

There's probably hundreds more reasons, but these are just some of the things that came to me. It could be these subtle things that I interpreted with the child brain that I had. Right? Because I didn't know any better, but now I can look at it and be like, oh, of course that happened because of the child brain that I had at that time.

Right? The trauma could actually be quite dramatic as well. So if someone has said to you, okay, because you are this weight, I am not going to marry you or because you are not slim, fair or you're not tall enough or whatever. Like I know in the, South Asian culture, there's a lot of that.

Like, you could experience trauma from ancestral and cultural types of trauma. Right? And it could be because if you're not a certain way, then you're not going to get married. You can't be fat, you can't be dark. You can't be too tall or too short. You can't be too successful because then your husband may feel inadequate.

Like there's so many things that I didn't get told personally, but that I experienced in the community and it was really interesting that that can just stick with you. So this can happen even if it hasn't affected you directly, but it just may be how your belief system developed while you were growing, right?

So this will help you understand your own stress response, and basically how to help calm down that stress response. So I wanted to bring up the different types of stress response, and most people have heard of fight or flight, but there's two others as well. And I want to talk about them and give you a few examples and see how you can start noticing your own patterns.

And what I want you to think about is when you start noticing your own patterns, I want you to have compassion for yourself. It's not your fault that you are experiencing this. It's just your nervous system trying to figure out how to cope with the stress response. And when you've had this stress response in the past, it's always done it a certain way and that's always ensured your survival, right?

So it's going to keep doing it unless, you become aware of it, except that it's there and then decide how you want to act in the next moment. Right?

So let's start with the first one, the fight. So, first of all, let me just describe what all four are. So one's fight, one's flight, one's freeze and one's fawn.

So let's start off with the first one fight. So that's when you're trying to kind of fight the threat. Whenever I think of fight or flight. I always look at my own family and I always remember my son Veeray and his stress response is definitely fight in the majority of times. So when I tell him off, he will shout back at me, when he is very tired or hungry he will have the biggest tantrum, he'll kick and scream, he'll hit, you know, things like that. And that's because his stress response is 'I have to fight this threat away'. Right? So what he tends to do is he gets angry. He gets aggressive. He thinks that the only way for me to survive is for me to act out the stress response. So that may showup for you with when you think someone is saying something to you, you get very angry, you might get defensive back at them. Look, I noticed that sometimes my stress response is fight. When Rick says something to me and my wall goes up and I get very angry and I get defensive. So that may be a stress response for you.

I remember when one of my aunties would always comment on when I had put on weight, but never when I'd lost weight. So I remember sometimes I would get very angry on the inside. I may not show it, but that is that fight stress. Right? And it may not be you outwardly showing it either. It may be you fighting against your own self, right? So it may be you getting very angry at yourself. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have let myself get to this stage. There's something wrong with me. And kind of constantly, you know, saying these negative thoughts to yourself. So it may be that the anger or this fight response may be directed inwards, where you're annoyed at yourself as opposed to outwards.

Okay. So the next one is the flight response. So this is when you are often trying to run away or fleeing from the experience because that's what keeps you. So this often shows up with people who are very perfectionistic and this is what they've always done to feel safe. Right? So you may, overbusy yourself.

You may have, a very fast brain with lots of thoughts running around. You may find it quite hard to calm that brain down. And you think that you can outrun those thoughts by actually being perfect. So it may show up for you if you want your protocol to be perfect. It may show up for you if you want to run away from feeling a certain way, because that's the only way to be safe.

It may show up for you if you don't do it fully perfectly, then you interpret it as a failure. And then that means that you're not good enough, so you need to run away from that not good enough feeling because that will take you out of the tribe. Right?

So what tends to happen is people who are in the flight response, they don't want to try other things because they need it to be right the first time. And if they're not right, then that's threatening their survival. So then they might go into the all or nothing thinking and just be like, okay, let me just eat all the things because I didn't get it right the first time. That is part of the flight response. So what people who are in this response often do is run away from it because it's too hard to be in it. Right?

Okay. Moving on to the next one. It's the freeze response where like, let me just stay in this because I don't know what else to do.

So this can sometimes show up with hiding out or not wanting to look at your thoughts or thinking. I don't know what to say. So you may ask yourself, why am I not losing weight? And you know the answer. But you freeze and you stay in this state that you're in because it's just safe. When I stay the way I am, the primitive brain thinks, okay, I'm actually getting more and more food so I'm just going to stay where I am.

And it may show up with you wanting to numb out. So over Netflix-ing, over drinking, keeping yourself away from other people. So how this sometimes shows up for me is when I am in this stress response and I think that I've done something wrong, I don't reach out to my peers in my business coaching.

I've paid a lot of money to be in this mastermind and I noticed that when I'm in the freeze response, I create safety for myself through isolating myself, hiding out, not dealing with the things that are going on for me. So I've noticed that that is part of my freeze response.

So what is it for you? How does it show up for you?

And the last one is the fawn stress. So, this is when you are giving up your own needs for the needs of others. So this may show up as, oh, I'm not going to allocate this time for myself because it will be taking this time away from my kids. And then when you're thinking that, you actually feel kind of a little bit annoyed or a little bit resentful a little bit like, victimy.

So whenever you're in the fawn stress response, you may be doing a lot of people pleasing. I need to please others so that I can feel worthy about myself. When others approve of me, that's the only time I can approve of myself. But then you end up feeling annoyed that you're doing so much for others, and you're not getting the results that you want in your own life.

It may show up with over apologising. So if someone says something to you, so say someone says, oh, are you going to eat that? You're like, oh no, no, I'm so sorry. I was just going to have it, and I'm just going to have it now. That kind of thing. Right? You may notice that you're doing a lot of this when what people think of you is more important than your own opinion of you when external feedback is more important than your internal self concept of yourself.

And you may notice that you've got this when you're not actually having some boundaries. So it may be, especially with your kids or your family, like in our south Asian culture, it's very talked about that you have to be a well-rounded person. So you've got to be a good wife, you've got to be a good mom. You've got to be a good daughter, a good daughter-in-law. You've got to be, you know, really kind to others. And the more you do for others, the better. And sometimes that can come out of, uh, I have to do it instead of I choose to do it. Right?

So in your food journey, it may show up with things like, oh, I better eat that otherwise they will, they'll be offended. Oh, it'd be rude to say no. Oh, my husband bought it for me so if I don't eat it, he'll get upset. Oh, my children bake these cakes so I have to have one. But then when you're thinking these thoughts, you end up blaming the other person for your results. Right?

And what I want you to think about is what is your main one that you go to?

Is it the fight? Is it the flight? Is it the freeze or is it the fawn? Most people generally like have one or the other, but sometimes it can be a mix of all. It could be a combination, even in one situation, it could be a combination of getting annoyed at yourself and wanting to run. So a combination of the fight and the flight.

So when you start noticing that, oh, this could be a stress response. This could be me just being in a stress response because my primitive brain is actually meant to ensure my survival, and this is my body's and my nervous system's way of trying to ensure my survival, then that can decrease a lot of the, "I'm doing it wrong, there's something wrong with me." Right, because there's nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all wrong with you. You've just got a well-functioning human brain. Right?

So when you notice that, okay, this could be happening. The first thing you want to do is start being aware of it. So just noticing or even just naming it. Oh, this is, this is my stress response. And the second thing is just allowing it to be there and not trying to run away. Because when you are aware of it and you're able to talk about it and be like, oh, okay. Yeah, it's there. This is just because I'm having a stress response. It decreases all of the drama you have about it when you just allow it to be there instead of trying to run away from it, that's when you can help neutralise it and it doesn't have to be a big deal.

And then the next thing you do is decide how do I want to react now? How do I want to act knowing that this stress response is there? And when you can start changing what your normal stress response reaction is then, so what I mean by that is what is your reaction to having a stress response?

Then you can start normalising it for yourself. And the way to do that is to have compassion for yourself. To know that this is completely normal, nothing has gone wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. And that this is completely fine. Right? So I wanted to end this, episode by talking about what my stress response is and how it shows up in each of the four ways.

So my normal, my usual is to avoid, runaway. So my, my main stress response is flight. Because I find it too uncomfortable to deal with what I'm dealing with right now. And this may show up with my house becoming more cluttered, me not sticking to my protocol as much, me not doing the things that I used to do previously, like my self care, because I'm thinking it's just easier just to run away from life in general.

So I start noticing, oh, okay. This is how it's showing up for me. And even though flight is my usual, I often have some of the fight as well. And I normally have that when I think that something's unfair in the world and this stemmed from me learning as a child, I needed to act in a certain way to keep up with my brother because he's older than me.

And I had a few older male cousins and to keep up with them, I needed to fight back because they often, I often joke about how they, you know, used to always tease me and all of that, but the way my brain dealt with that was fighting back to them. I often do that in my life as well.

So if I feel like something's threatening my survival, I might actually like put my wall up, get defensive and fight back. Um, and also it stemmed from learning I needed to, like when my parents taught me that boys and girls are equal and should be treated fairly and things like that, when my brother got something and I didn't get it I would be like, I might fight back. They're like, why is it unequal? It shouldn't be like that. And that actually brought up a lot of fighting against the system when I was a doctor, a lot of fighting against, relationships, when I thought that they should be doing thing a certain way and they didn't.

So it was that fight stress response for me. And for me, the fight response is often talking to myself badly and being really critical of myself. And so when I can just notice that, oh yeah, this is just my stress response. This is just my primitive brain, trying to keep me safe. That's when I can just be aware of it.

I can allow it to be there without changing it. And then I can decide, how do I want to act now?

The freeze for me shows up with numbing with like social media. Because I don't want to deal with this right now, so I won't do anything and I'll just stay where I am. And that's something that I'm trying to work on at the moment, because I could end up scrolling for like ages.

And I noticed that what I was doing in the mornings was going to my phone straight away instead of allowing myself to do my thought download and my exercise and, you know, actually have some time with myself rather than rushing to the phone to get those dopamine hits. Right? So that's something I'm working on at the moment.

Another thing I wanted to add is this will be an ongoing process. It's never going to be fully done, but even as a coach who's been working on this for a long time, I always will still find things that I want to continue working on because this isn't about being at the end place. This is about learning and accepting yourself and then deciding how you want to show up during the journey.

Right? Because it's not going to be better there than over here. You know, when you've achieved the result that you want, it's still going to be 50 50. Right. You're still going to have 50% positive emotion and 50% negative emotion, but it would just be a different vibe of it. Right.

And fawn, and for me, this is a huge one. So I used to be a huge people pleaser, but I've really worked on this one and now it isn't as much of an issue for me. It still shows up with me kind of wanting to please Rick or please my mum mainly. I have noticed that I am still working on this as well, and I have worked on it. So like I'm okay now saying to Rick - nah, I'm actually tired, I don't really want to watch the film. Or saying to my mum - yeah, mum, I made the food. I tried it out, but it didn't work out how it was meant to oh well I'm human, right? Because I'm so used to my mum being an amazing cook and making amazing things and you know, things like that.

What I'm able to notice is that when I don't need to people please, the ones around me, that really helps with, well, it starts with me being aware of it that I'm wanting to people please, allowing it to be there and then deciding with compassion. How do I want to act in this moment now?

So in summary, there are four types of stress response.

These are fight flight, freeze and fawn, and this is the way your brain has over time learnt how to keep you safe. And this is entwined in every single area of your life. And so when you can start being aware of what your stress responses are and when you can allow them to be there without judging yourself and having that compassion for yourself, that of course this is going to be there. Nothing has gone wrong. Then you can decide what do I want to do about it?

Okay. So this is an episode that you want to go back and listen to again and again and again, and just allow that this is going to be a process, you want to be aware of it, allow it to be there and then decide what you want to do from a place of compassion.

Okay. Lovely ladies. I hope you found this useful. I will speak to you next week. Bye!