Better Than a Glass of Wine?

People are stressed out.  You get home from work, you’re tired – physically and emotionally, but you’re also kinda wired from the stress.  So what do you do…

Stress eat some crap that really doesn’t make you feel great?

Knock back a glass or three of wine?

It turns out there’s something that’s actually more effective for stress, for down-regulating your nervous system, and relaxing…

It’s coloring books.

I first heard about coloring for stress relief from my friend Georgie Fear, RD, who one of her specialties is helping clients with emotional eating.

Then I started seeing articles like this one:

Why Coloring Could Be The New Alternative To Meditation

Where they talk about the clinical background of coloring, and even just that people like doing it.

We know what doesn’t work

So we already know that you aren’t any less stressed after an hour of scrolling through social media, and that TV is basically just putting it off and tuning it out.

We all love eating desert, when we’re at a nice resturaunt and savoring a really amazing piece of chocolate cake.  But if it’s after work and we’re just cramming some crappy junk food in our mouth to stress eat, it really isn’t that enjoyable and we don’t really feel any less stressed out afterwards.

Same thing with a glass of great wine.  Out on the back porch watching the sunset it’s great.  But after work drinking a glass of wine to de-stress from the day isn’t nearly as cool.

Stuff That Does Work + What’s Cool About Coloring

There are dozens of things you could do to chill out, get out of work mode, and de-stress: You could go for a walk, you could meditate, you could do some breathing drills (I actually really like the pranayama app for that), you could do some light stretching, tai chi, easy relaxing yoga (not handstand practice for instagram).  There are tons of things you could do…

But coloring is just so easy and fun =)

Coloring is probably the simplest, easiest, and most chill thing you could do.

And you might find it works even better for you — either after work, or any time you’re stressed.

When in doubt — always go with the easiest, simplest, quickest to implement solution =)

Hit us up on the Facebook Group, and let us know if you’ve tried coloring and how you like it:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/joshhillisbackstage/

By Josh Hillis