Body image can be defined as how you picture yourself in your mind and how you feel about the way you look. It also includes your beliefs and perceptions of your own body and your actions in relation to the way you look.

I am a big advocate of body positivity and believe that everyone should feel comfortable in their own skin and be confident about the way they look and feel about themselves.

It is important that one makes conscious efforts to boost their body image. You can do that by:

• Surrounding yourselves with positive people, who make you feel good, happy and confident
• Reprogramming your mind to remove your self-limiting beliefs through meditation
• Being mindful of the ways you speak about your body
• Focusing more on the functionality of your body and being grateful for having a healthy body that can do so much for you. This will help you develop a very different relationship with your body
• Engaging in enjoyable activities that makes you feel good about yourselves
• Being involved in activities to bring happiness and joy to others, which will make you feel good and confident about yourself
• Focusing enough on what makes you unique and beautiful inside and out rather than thinking about the lack thereof.

I am also an advocate of a healthy body!

The other end of the spectrum is to keep yourself healthy and active. One must take measures to protect their immediate health and their long-term wellbeing. It is important to feel positive about your body but at the same time feel confident that you are taking best care of yourself by maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

You can truly appreciate your body and also strive to achieve a healthy life. Body positivity does not need to clash with one’s goals to live a healthy lifestyle.

Ways to achieve a healthy lifestyle;

1. Follow a healthy eating plan | Think Healthy Eating Not Weight Loss

Its important to focus on healthy eating rather than thinking about losing weight. Be aware that it’s just as important to enjoy your food and feel good about your change of eating habits.

• Eat regular healthy balanced meals. Getting the right balance of nutrients can help with improving your health and mood.

• Eat a rainbow diet. Add colour to your diet with a large variety of colorful fruit and vegetables. A minimum of 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables should be consumed per day, with an emphasis on non-starchy vegetables.

• Eat lean protein with every meal. Eating protein from a variety of sources is an important part of a balanced diet. Variety is especially important for vegans and vegetarians, because plant proteins don’t contain all of the essential amino acids needed by the body. Good sources of protein include nuts, seeds, eggs, legumes, lentils and oily fish.
• Opt for good quality fats such as avocado, nuts, seeds, extra virgin olive oil and decrease the intake of saturated fats and trans fats (typically found in processed foods) as this can help reduce your risk of many health conditions.
• Focus on whole foods which are plant-based foods and an important source of fiber and phytonutrients. Whole foods include whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, fruits and vegetables.
• Getting back to the basics is important. Instead of snacking constantly during the day, do your best to eat three regular meals. Cook or have your food cooked using wholesome, natural ingredients and then eat with others in a relaxed manner. It is not only a question of what you eat, but how you eat that counts.

2. Stay physically active

Engaging in physical activity regularly is an important pillar of healthy living. Exercise releases hormones such as dopamine, which helps alleviate stress and makes you feel better. Exercise has many health benefits such as improving cardiovascular health, managing stress, lowering blood pressure, maintaining bone health and reducing the risk of many diseases such as type 2 diabetes and osteoarthritis.

Make exercise a part of your daily routine and enjoy its benefits. Focus on activities you enjoy such as walking, running, dancing, yoga, gardening or playing with your kids.

3. Manage Stress

Finding ways to reduce stress is another strategy that can help you stay healthy, given the connection between stress and a variety of disorders. There are many ways to bust stress. Try, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, playing on weekends, and taking vacations.

Conclusion: You can feel confident about your body and also strive to stay healthy and active. Nurturing your body and mind is the key to your health, wellness and happiness!

People who deal with a lot of stress understand the implications of it. You know what it does to your mental and emotional health, how it affects your physical health, and what the repercussions are. You are fully aware that it can lead to feeling overwhelmed and like you can’t handle your daily life, that it can lead to burnout and work issues, and cause problems with your relationships and personal life.

If this sounds like you, don’t just make it a daily habit where you go through cycles of extreme stress. Find a better way to manage it, something that is healthy and has other benefits, such as writing about your stress.

Here are some ways to write out your stress and worry to finally take control of your life and stop living in constant worry.

Benefits of Journaling for Stress

Journaling is one of the best ways you can deal with stress. It provides so many benefits for you, from allowing you to do a brain dump (see below), to helping you understand where your stress is coming from. If you find out later that you have stress that comes in goes, going to previous journal entries in a stress journal helps you see what similarities there were, to figure out your main stress triggers.

And even more simply, it gives you a way to vent your worries and frustrations without worrying about burdening someone else with them.

Try a Brain Dump

The brain dump provides a really easy way to get all those thoughts, worries, concerns, and idea out of your head and onto paper. Through this process, you really de-stress a lot, even coming up with worries you didn’t realize you had. It starts helping you find clarity in your thoughts and worries, and helps de-clutter your mind.

All you need to do for a brain dump is write whatever comes to mind on a piece of paper. This is often referred to as ‘stream of consciousness’ journaling, because you are just writing whatever comes to mind, without being concerned about organizing your thoughts. If your mind switches to a new subject, so does your journaling! Just keep writing until you feel like all the main thoughts are out on the paper.

Have a Worry or Stress Journal

While you can journal in any type of journal you have, you might want a worry journal that is used specially for relieving your stress. This is something you will write in when you are dealing with a lot of stress or just trying to work through something. It helps to keep your thoughts organized, and makes it easier to go back and find a specific journal entry when you need to.

Talk About Your Anxiety or Depression

You can also write about other mental health issues you are experiencing, such as how your depression or anxiety is affected. This is good to keep together with your anxiety or worry journal, since they are frequently connected.

If you have clinical depression, you know the depressive episodes will come and go. However, you might not realise the link between depression and stress or understand all your triggers until you start detailing the experience in your journal.

Track Your Different Triggers

Keeping track of triggers is one of the biggest benefits of journaling for stress, burnout, and overwhelm. You need to know why you are dealing with these experiences, not just when. The more detailed you are in each journal entry, the more you will start to see similar patterns. It might be the same time of week, before or after payday, related to people in your life or personal relationships, and many other things.

Write in the Journal Throughout the Day

When you are writing in a journal to help with stress and overwhelm, try to write during different times of the day. While morning or nighttime journaling is also really useful, for this purpose, you might need to have it available more often than other people using their journal.

If you have a stressful event in the middle of the day, you need to have that journal nearby so you can write about it, then go on with your day.

Everyone experiences a certain level of stress at work, which can’t always be prevented. You have projects to take care of, a team to manage, and a lot of work to get done. Unexpected things can happen and curve balls come from every corner on some days.

While you aren’t able to prevent the sources of your work stress, there are some ways to relieve your stress and still manage work and your other responsibilities without it affecting you too much.

Improve Your Work Relationships

A lot of the stress you experience at work can be relieved just by working harder on your work relationships and friendships. When everyone gets along, people tend to support each other, help each other, and work together much more efficiently. Even if your work stress isn’t directly related to the people you work with, this can still be really beneficial for you.

Here are some tips for working on your work relationships:

Reach out to someone you have never talked to – Is there someone you work with who you haven’t had a conversation with or who is new at your company, why not talk to them? Reach out to them and introduce yourself, ask them some questions about themselves, and just strike up casual conversation.

Ask someone to lunch – The workplace is a great way to foster new friendships as well, which can be done during your breaks. Ask someone you work with if they want to join you for lunch, whether it is a close work friend or just an acquaintance you want to get to know a little better.

Offer to lend a helping hand – It is a great idea to try to help others with difficult projects or anything you are personally skilled at. When you notice a co-worker has a lot of work to get done or needs a little assistance, offer your help in a non-judgmental, but helpful way.

Find Out What Your Stressors Are – If you want to truly get rid of your work-related stress, you need to figure out what the biggest stressors are. This might be the vending machine if you are stressed about losing weight, or having too much work piled on that you think you can’t manage on your own, or maybe you have had issues with someone you work with.

There are so many possibilities, that it is impossible to assume the work-related stress is the same for everyone. Take a week to write down in a journal or notebook every time you feel stressed, what you were thinking about at the time, and what the situation was.

Were you on your lunch break?

Did you just talk to someone at work?

Was it in the morning or afternoon?

Was there issues with a client or customer?

All of these details are important to figure out what is causing you the most stress at work.

Give Yourself Time to Recharge

No matter what you do for a living, whether you work in an office, outside, or even at home, you need time to recharge. Think about what your biggest stressors are, and get away from them at least a little bit every day.

If you work from home, your stress might be that you feel like whenever you are at home, you should be working. To recharge, you need to close your laptop, turn off your phone, and get into the mindset of taking a break or being done for the day. You need to understand the difference between working and taking time for yourself.

Have a Flexible Schedule

If you try to micro-manage yourself and plan every single minute of every day, you are going to get overwhelmed and burned out with work very quickly. The stress that comes from having your entire day scheduled and planned out can be rough on you, even if you are think you are doing a good thing.

Having a schedule and a plan is great for productivity, but if you are too strict with your schedule, it can create problems. Remember to have a flexible schedule and alternatives for any moments when you need to get something else done or just take a little more time for yourself.

something you will write in when you are dealing with a lot of stress or just trying to work through something. It helps to keep your thoughts organized, and makes it easier to go back and find a specific journal entry when you need to.

Talk About Your Anxiety or Depression

You can also write about other mental health issues you are experiencing, such as how your depression or anxiety is affected. This is good to keep together with your anxiety or worry journal, since they are frequently connected.

If you have clinical depression, you know the depressive episodes will come and go. However, you might not realise the link between depression and stress or understand all your triggers until you start detailing the experience in your journal.

Track Your Different Triggers

Keeping track of triggers is one of the biggest benefits of journaling for stress, burnout, and overwhelm. You need to know why you are dealing with these experiences, not just when. The more detailed you are in each journal entry, the more you will start to see similar patterns. It might be the same time of week, before or after payday, related to people in your life or personal relationships, and many other things.

Write in the Journal Throughout the Day

When you are writing in a journal to help with stress and overwhelm, try to write during different times of the day. While morning or nighttime journaling is also really useful, for this purpose, you might need to have it available more often than other people using their journal.

If you have a stressful event in the middle of the day, you need to have that journal nearby so you can write about it, then go on with your day.