Coaching 4 Health & Wellness

We've looked at weight and nutrition and diet for the past couple months. Let's look a little at well-being.

We'll start with anxiety. Put in a very simple term, anxiety is all about fear. When you have anxiety, at the root is a fear of something. A good example is the "butterflies in the stomach" most of us have gotten before we had to give a talk, or say our line in the school play, etc. What's another term for those "butterflies"? Stage FRIGHT. Meaning we are afraid, or have fear, of getting in front of others.

Let's look at anxiety in more depth over the next few days.

Understanding Anxiety

Anxiety is a protection mechanism that the body uses to alert us to trouble. It puts our body in what's called a "fight or flight mode" and alerts us so we can react. It is also a normal reaction to stress. If you've ever come across a rabbit in the yard you may see them tense up and watch you, to see what you will do. They are in a "fight or flight" mode. They are waiting to see if they need to defend themselves or they need to run like hell. We are the same. When we percieve trouble (in any form) our body does the same thing. We have fear and our body waits to see what we should do about it.

We cannot get rid of anxiety because this is how the human body is made to operate. Anxiety is designed to protect us and help us face challenges. When our body is constantly or too often in this fight or flight mode and as a result we start to experience psychological, physical or emotional stress this is called anxiety disorder.

Too much stress can also lead to weight problems since when we are stressed our body naturally stores fat, or minimally, stops burning fat, just in case we need to "run like hell", we have the energy from the fat to burn. Fortunately most "stress" does not result in our need to run like hell, but our body does not necessarily know that. If we experience constant stress, then our body continues to burn less fat, store more.

This we can control and minimize to the point where it does not disrupt our daily lifestyle. However the first step in controlling anxiety is to understand how it affects us.

Tomorrow, we will look at the different types of anxiety problems.