Deadline Stress: Three Brain Boosters to Beat It!

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author stress, brain boosts, chocolate, Coffee benefits, Deadline Stress, meditation, peace within, stress

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© 2015 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM.  World Rights Reserved.

 It’s the dread Deadline Stress again!  With your deadline looming, you’re sitting at your computer or iPad or with your yellow pad, and the words aren’t coming.  You know your topic and everything about the piece.  But the moments are slipping away, and still the words aren’t getting into the article.  You’re really stuck!

Most advice about writers’ block is all about using your thoughts to control your thoughts. But that won’t work when your brain is stuck, and you can’t grasp your thoughts in order to control your thoughts!  Your brain is depleted right now.

So don’t use your mind!  Use these physical brain boosts to get yourself going.  Here are three of my favorites:

 

• The Shoulder Shift. Roll your shoulders up and forward, then around, slowly, stretching, for one minute.  Watch the clock.  No cheating.  Now roll the shoulders up and back and around, slowly, stretching, for one minute.  Notice the warming in your ankles and feet.  You have now opened up the circulation to the whole body, and you’ll feel it in the brain in one minute.  Notice a warming sensation flowing up the back of your neck.  This is energy, and it’s recharging your energy-starved brain.  You may notice your mood changing already, with positive emotions rising.  Cool, huh?
• The Chocolate Churnover. Earlier, were you craving chocolate?  Now is a great time to munch an ounce of dark chocolate to help your brain. The antioxidants and theobromine in the chocolate will lift your energy and metabolism.  Stimulating the tongue and mouth, by eating, lifts the energy of both the Fire- and Earth Meridians.  The bitter flavor in the chocolate stimulates the Fire Meridian, and the sweetness energizes the Earth Meridian.  If you heat your chocolate in almond- or dairy milk, the warm drink will raise the energy of the entire digestive system, which stimulates brain function, increasing clarity.  Also, the potassium in either form of milk will assist brain optimization.  Now you have churned your whole energy system, and it is pumping in support of you.
• The Latte Lift. If you love lattes, try this trick first.  Get your favorite latte and set a timer for 20 minutes.  Drink your delicious liquid, and lie down or relax in your recliner for those 20 minutes. You get a break, and as you’re rising again, the antioxidants and caffeine (or in tea lattes, L-Theanine, theobromine, and theophylline) are just hitting your  blood-brain barrier.  Now you’re rested and refreshed, yet your blood, oxygen, and energy are flowing well.

 

Now, your brain has what it needs, and your words will be flowing. You no longer have to dread Deadline Stress!  Play around with these brain boosting techniques and make them part of your regular writing practice.  You never need to be stuck again.  Now you’ll be beating all those deadlines and soaring as the writer you are meant to be.

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Energy – Peace – Meditation

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author.  She also is an ordained minister and has a natural healing practice. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br),and Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office.  Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com.   
• Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com.

Stress Eating: Six Top Tips to Beat It

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black tea, cortisol, ghrelin, Kebba Buckley Button, leptin, stress, stress eating, UpBeat Living, Vitamin C

© 2015 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM. World Rights Reserved.

 

© Jaimie Duplass – Fotolia

Recently, I published an article called, Stress is Contagious! Four Top Tips to Not Catch It ( http://wp.me/pw4HM-mM ) . It obviously contained a number of quick strategies for dealing with stress. In response, a favorite writer commented that she is prone to eating when stressed, but she didn’t know why.

 

Inspired by her comment, today, our topic is why we eat when stressed, and what we can do about it.

 

When you are stressed, you eat ice cream, chocolate, and sweets.  You know why?  Because “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts”!

~ Unknown

 

Dealing with stress in a better way is the key to breaking the cycle of stress eating.

~ Deepak Chopra

 

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you actually dehydrated? Try drinking a cup or two of filtered water. It will fill your stomach, volumize your blood and make you feel less hungry. It will also buffer stress chemistry affecting the stomach. Is your craving gone now?
• Are you craving a particular sort of food? In oriental medicine, different flavors express a need from different emotions. Below are some simple ones. Of course you may be craving a combination of flavors, but ponder if you are:
  • Craving salt: fear
  • Craving sugar: worry/too much thinking
  • Craving spicy: sadness/depression/gloom/grief
  • Craving sour: anger
  • Craving bitter: joy/unhappiness

 

There are two key hormones that work together to regulate appetite: ghrelin and leptin. Leptin decreases appetite and ghrelin increases appetite. Leptin levels are lower when you’re thin. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? So why does anyone get not-thin? Because apparently we override our leptin signals. Ghrelin tells you you’re hungry. It’s mainly released in the stomach. So when you say to yourself, “my stomach is hungry”, that is exactly where the main signal is coming from. Also, the stress hormone, cortisol, makes you hungry. So yes, stress can make you hungry.

 

So what to do?

 

1. Read your body’s signals. Eat when you’re hungry, not when you’re worried, fearful, angry, sad, or stuck in monkey brain. Practice being aware.
2. Eat the flavor you crave, to help those meridians, or energies, in the body.
3. But stop when you are no longer hungry! Don’t keep eating until the whole wheel of brie, or pan of brownies, is gone. Your leptin is trying to tell you when you’re full!
4. Slowly drink black tea. According to a study in the journal Psychopharmacology, those who drank black tea had a 47% drop in their cortisol levels.
5. Take Vitamin C. Studies show 1000 milligrams (one gram) of Vitamin C daily also combats cortisol as well as stress symptoms. Feel free to take smaller doses several times a day.
6. Go back to the stress-repelling strategies in the previous article ( http://wp.me/pw4HM-mM ), and try adopting one or more as regular habits.

 

Feel better now, with these alternatives? You do not have to be controlled by stress eating! As you try working these tips into your lifestyle, let me know what you find works best for you! Now that’s Upbeat Living!

 

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Energy – Peace – Meditation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office. Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com.
• For an appointment or to ask Kebba to speak for your group: calendar@kebba.com .