How Burnout Kills Your Weight Loss Progress
Hey Angels and Alphas,
Have you had a moment where you just felt you were doing everything right to lose weight? You were eating healthy, getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, and logging your calories. And yet, you didn’t feel like you were getting closer to your weight loss goals. And even worse, you might have even started going back up in weight.
New research on weight loss has come up that has pointed to the fact that your weight loss efforts might be completely sabotaged if you’re dealing with burnout. Whether it’s family, relationship, or workplace stress, burnout essentially keeps you in a state of constant chronic overwhelm, ruining the efficiency of your healthy habits.
And that’s likely because few, if any, weight loss programs incorporate new and healthy ways to deal with stress. If you’re using all your energy to deal with stress, fatigue, and overwhelm, you might not have enough energy left to make healthy choices in regard to your exercise and diet regime.
IF YOU’RE CONSTANTLY DEALING WITH STRESS
Studies have examined the relationship between exhaustion, fatigue, workload, and healthy behaviors. And what they’ve discovered is that the vast majority of people usually feel weary and worn out after an exhausting workday.
They discovered this by asking almost 1,000 people a few questions related to how they react to their workload and whether or not they agree with statements such as “I feel worn out after work.”
These same people were also asked to log their eating behaviors and exercise intensity levels so researchers could measure the potential prevalence of binge eating, stress eating, and percentage of calories from low-quality foods.
They discovered that the higher the workload and exhaustion levels, the higher the probability of people reporting poor eating habits and sedentary behavior. The result? Weight gain.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STRESS AND BURNOUT?
In the 21st century world, stress and fatigue are basically prevalent in a huge variety of career choices and occupations. Whenever big projects with close deadlines appear, and workloads and meetings get stacked on top of each other, there’s simply no way this doesn’t somehow reflect on your health.
But there’s a big difference between just being exhausted after work, when you have the feeling you need to crash on the couch after work… and actually burning out. Burning out involves chronic stress and leads to a number of negative health impacts.
That’s why working to recognize the early signs of burnout can sometimes be the best thing you can do for your weight loss goals. Most people think burnout just feels like high stress levels, but that’s not always the case.
Stress causes us to feel frazzled, irritated, and foggy, but that being said, we’re still able to complete most of our everyday tasks. Burnout happens when you see difficulty completing projects and reaching deadlines, as well as beginning to essentially dread your upcoming workdays.
While people who are stressed get easily irritated, those experiencing burnout will likely feel indifferent or almost numb since they can’t get the energy together to invest a lot of conscious thought into their workday.
The result? Difficulty sleeping, lower sense of accomplishment, more self-doubt, more alcohol, and, not surprisingly, more negative health outcomes. Weight gain being one of them. Especially when cortisol levels in our bodies start to increase.
Burnout and weight gain are two sides of the same coin. When cortisol levels in our bodies spike, those who feel burned out often reach for comfort foods so they can feel better. Food becomes an emotional go-to that relieves them for a short period of time and leaves them to go overboard on calories.
HERE’S WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT
If you feel like you’re starting to tip your way into burnout territory, then it’s definitely time for you to implement more self-care and unwinding strategies throughout your day.
And you might believe that your workplace will not benefit from this, it’s actually a step in the right direction since burnout tanks your productivity and dealing with it in a healthy way will end up bringing you more results at work.
Making exercise a priority, meditating, doing yoga, doing deep breathing, sticking to schedules, and creating a consistent bedtime routine are just some of the things you can do to start alleviating some of that burnout.
Nobody ever said you should be handling stress on your own, too! Talk to someone and get help in putting these new wellness strategies in place.
Even if you’re not feeling burned out, you should know that you shouldn’t wait until you start feeling burned out to begin implementing more self-care practices in your day. They will make a huge difference on your weight loss efforts, your productivity, your focus, and your entire life.
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