Depending on the season that we are living through, some words will strongly resonate with us because of what we are facing or trying to accomplish.
Some words will carry unique energy that is right for us at a certain point in our life.
You can choose your word/s of intention for 2022 but, why stop at that?
Why set intentions only once a year?
What if you set an intention for each one of your precious days?
Imagine that you spend a couple of minutes thinking about the energy, the emotional charge, the needs for that specific day and set a clear intention for the next 12 hours.
During the day, when faced with challenging situations, confrontations, stressors of any kind, that intention will help you to stay grounded in the emotion/state that you have chosen. You affirm yourself with an intention.
What is an intention?
An intention or affirmation is a statement with an emotional intensity behind it, a mantra which you can recite during the day any time you wobble, when you are tired, challenged and when negative beliefs start creeping out of your subconsciuos mind.
Each morning, before you leave your warm bed and set off to start your day, invest a couple of minutes to create your own affirmations.
It is a simple tool, but do not underestimate its powerful effect on your subconscious mind.
How to create your own positive affirmations:
- Make positive statements using the present tense (don’t use never or not)
- Make them short and simple but loaded with feelings
- Associate with the positive feelings generated by the affirmations
- Visualise yourself experiencing what you are affirming
Some examples of my personal affirmations are:
I have plenty to be grateful for
My body is strong and healthy, and my mind is serene
I am calm and in control
I am ready to serve with love and compassion
Now that you have decided on your daily affirmation/s, write it/them down on post-it notes, or set them up on your telephone to come up as reminders throughout the day.
Use them often throughout your day.
Managing your stress response
Although we cannot control what is happening, we can challenge ourselves to change how we respond to any crisis. We can choose to stay grateful, to keep perspective and cultivate calm.
And the habit of intention setting in the morning helps to do just that! It builds your resilience to stress and your ability to stay grounded in any challenging situation.
In turn, this means a better stress response with a more balanced chemical response and better management of cortisol levels and blood sugar regulation.
And this is the exact link between establishing a regular morning intention setting practice and the ability to better manage your blood glucose, your stress levels and also your weight.
Cortisol is secreted whenever we are facing a stressor, it is a hormone that encourages the liver to release glucose in the bloodstream and encourages fat deposition especially around the abdomen area, which is the most challenging type of fat to decrease when we are going through the menopause. And another hormone that is also encouraging fat deposition is insulin which is secreted in our bloodstream when the level of sugar is higher than it should be.
The link with weight around the middle
I am sure that, by now, you are starting to see the vicious circle that leads to fat storage around our mid-section. We feel stress, we secrete cortisol, glucose gets released into the bloodstream, insulin is secreted to deal with that sugar raise, the excess sugar is converted into fat and stored around our central area.
And to add the “cherry to the cake”, research shows that women who do have a higher waist to hip ratio are secreting more cortisol during stressful situations compared to women with a lower waist to hip ratio. This means that the more fat is around our belly, the more we react to any stressful situation by secreting a higher amount of cortisol!
On top of dietary interventions, specific supplements and nutrients to support blood sugar balance and stress, lifestyle interventions to become more resilient to stress are, therefore, an essential piece when it comes to your body shape and health.
That is why even a simple ritual like intention setting is an important tool in your box to train your brain to become less reactive to stressful inputs and modify your biochemistry in your favour.
To become a habit, consistency is key… you might have to use visual clues to remind you to set your daily intention in the morning… for example, you can leave a stack of post-it notes on your bedside tables with a pen ready to be used in the morning when you wake up.
And, as explained before, you might need to set up more visual and auditory clues to remind you to use your affirmations during the day.
You might be a sceptic and still be thinking “Is this really help me to manage my stress and weight?” I get you, I was a sceptic too until I started researching the science behind it and started to feel the beneficial effect on myself.
You have nothing to lose, give it a try and see for yourself what a ritual of intention setting in the morning can bring into your life.
I look forward to hearing about your experience.
With love, energy and care
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