In another article I related a story from my own life. I told my 
readers about a time I came home from work with a lot of stress. 
And that night my family was a source of even more stress. And 
that night I wound up bingeing on ice cream. It was delicious, 
and made me feel better, but it was a bit of a set back on my 
diet. 

Stress can lead to carbohydrate cravings. The reason has a lot 
to do with the hormones seratonin and cortisol, but that's not 
the focus of this article. This article will focus on how to 
cope with stress. 

There are two main ways to approach stress, and both are 
important if you hope to maintain a low carb diet. 

First, it is best to avoid stress if you can. And that can mean 
making major changes to your life and lifestyle. It can mean 
making serious changes to your most stressful relationships. 
It can mean changing jobs. It can mean moving closer to work to 
avoid traffic. These are big changes that take courage, but they 
can pay big dividends to your health. 

We will not cover stress avoidance techniques in this article. 
I will deal with that topic in detail in my book, and may cover 
it in a future issue of my newsletter. 

Second, we can cope with stress when it's already with us--the 
stress we can't avoid for whatever reason. We will look a little 
bit at how to cope with stress in this article. Coping with 
stress is a large issue, so we will deal with only a couple of 
sub topics and save the rest for later. 

I want primarily to share with you some of the insights from 
Robert Sapolsky's book "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers". 

Robert Sapolsky is perhaps the most renowned stress researcher 
in the world today. He operates out of Stanford University and 
has done a lot of fieldwork with baboons in Africa. 

By coping effectively with stress you will improve your odds of 
staying away from carbohydrates and sticking to your low carb 
diet. 


Dealing With Stress -- First, Choose Your Parents Well! 

Sapolsky's number one piece of advice for coping with stress 
is this: Choose your parents carefully. 

It turns out that much of the difference among the ways people 
handle stress has to do with who their parents are or were. 
That's because much of our ability for coping with stress has 
to do with our genes and our early upbringing. 

Some people are naturally more type-A, and much of this is 
determined by genes (though fortunately our natural personalities
aren't quite etched in stone and can be changed to some degree.) 
These type-A people will usually suffer more from stress than 
those born with other personality types. 

Also, infants who are handled affectionately more often early in 
life will have better responses to stress than those who weren't 
handled as often or as lovingly. 

Now this doesn't seem like terribly useful advice--and Sapolsky 
points this out. His advice is intended primarily with tongue 
in cheek. You can't choose your parents, you can't change your 
genes, and you can't affect your early childhood anymore. 

But, in spite of all this, you can actually use this advice to 
some degree. 

First, you can decide that you will treat your own children with 
ample affection early in their lives. Among other benefits this 
will give them a greater ability to handle stress well in their 
lives. You can in effect decide to help your young children and 
grandchildren to "choose their parents well." 

And if your children decide later in life that they want to try 
to maintain a low carb diet, you can be proud that you have made 
it easier for them to stick to their diets. 

Second, although your natural personality is largely determined 
by genes, it is not entirely determined by genes. In fact, it 
can still be determined, to some degree, by conscious effort 
on your part to change it. If you can identify that you have 
a type-A coping strategy, you can take note of this and take 
measures to counteract this aspect of your personality. In 
other words, you can re-invent yourself to some degree. 

Affirmations and visualization exercises -- basically the things 
taught by Tony Robbins and others -- can help you develop a new 
outlook on life, and new coping strategies as well. I share many 
of these techniques in my book. 


Life Management -- Be In Control 

Here is another piece of advice from Robert Sapolsky: Get 
Control of Your Life! 

When you feel out of control, you will feel more stressed, and 
will be more likely to eat sweets and starches. 

Here's an illustration from Sapolsky. 

It used to be that most hospitals required painkillers, such as 
morphine, to be administered by nurses. This approach created a 
lot of stress for patients. After it had been a while since the 
last dose, the patient would start to become agitated. It was 
partly that they felt pain, but partly that they felt an intense 
general anxiety. 

Patients would start pestering the nurses. "Is it time yet? Is 
it time yet?" 

Then a discovery was made. When control was put into the hands 
of the patients, so that they could administer the drug as often 
as they liked, something surprising happened. Patients actually 
used less of the painkiller when they self-administered than 
when they relied on the nurse. 

Why was that? 

Sapolsky proposes that the issue was control. When there is 
control there is less worry about not getting the drug when you 
need it. There is less worry about having to go through intense 
pain without any remedy. The worry actually made the pain worse. 
When there was a sense of control the patients dealt with the 
pain more easily. 

The general lesson is this: Increasing control can reduce 
stress. 

So that leads to another question. How can you increase your 
sense of control over your life? I can't go into too much 
detail here, but here are some suggestions: 

 · Simplify your life 
 · Get Organized 
 · Live Within Your Means (cut expenses, or increase income, 
   or both) 


Other Methods of Dealing With Stress 

These are just the first two of Sapolsky's suggestions. I didn't 
go into as much detail as you might have liked, but it should 
point you in the right direction. 

Let me just list the rest of Sapolsky's stress management 
suggestions, with a promise to spend more time discussing them 
in the future -- either in my book, or in the newsletter. 

1. Outlook management -- To manage stress effectively you have 
   to maintain self-esteem. To do this you should look at events 
   differently depending on whether they are positive or 
   negative. Basically, if they are positive events, it is 
   good to feel like you are responsible for the event. If 
   it is negative, it is best to attribute the event to 
   factors outside of your control. 

   Also, you've also heard the saying "hope for the best and 
   prepare for the worst"? Well it turns out that this is great 
   advice, but for best stress management you should strive for 
   about 70-80% hope for the best and only 20-30% prepare for 
   the worst. 

2. Have outlets for your stress -- For me these include chess, 
   strength training, and hot baths. Aerobic exercise is also 
   important, and has other positive consequences for those 
   trying to lose weight. Special breathing techniques, 
   stretching, and meditation exercises have also proven 
   useful for coping with stress. 

3. Get social support-- Now this is actually trickier than it 
   might appear. Getting social support doesn't just mean having 
   close friends and family. People who are close to you can 
   actually cause more stress than they alleviate. 


If someone helps you with financial stress, but intentionally or 
inadvertently attaches emotional strings that create more stress 
in the process, you might very well be better off without the 
help. 

You need people around you who are not judgmental, and whom 
you enjoy. You might actually have to try to get some distance 
between yourself and some of your more judgmental and otherwise 
stress-producing friends and family members. And a discussion 
of this point merits at least a full chapter of a book. 


Conclusion 

If you have had trouble sticking to a low carb diet, my bet is 
that a major reason for this is that you have had a lot of 
stress in your life. 

One very effective way to make yourself feel better for a while 
is to eat a bag of cookies. Or a bag of potato chips. Or a few 
slices of Pizza. Or three cream-filled, chocolate-covered 
doughnuts. Or some pumpkin pie. Or macaroni and cheese, or... 

You get the point, I'm sure. 

This is why it is essential to learn how to avoid stress, when 
possible, and to cope with it when you can't avoid it.