We often use the terms “worry,” “stress” and “anxiety” interchangeably, but they aren’t the same. Each has unique     1     and features. Identifying which one is     2     us will help us better address it. Registered psychologist Kristin Buhr, a director at the North Shore Stress & Anxiety Clinic in North Vancouver and co-author of The Worry Workbook,     3     the differences.

Worry is a negative thought you have about an uncertainty in life. Worries tend to focus on the assumption that something negative will come from future events or from the results of     4     that happened in the past.

Stress involves your reaction to pressures placed on you. You feel overwhelmed because life is demanding too much of your limited time, energy or some other personal resource. While worries are thoughts, stress is a feeling.

Anxiety is your mental and physiological response to a perceived threat. It’s like the body’s smoke detector—it     5     danger and signals your body to run to deal with it. While worry takes place only in the mind, anxiety can have physical effects, like speeding up your pulse rate. Worry, however,     6     anxiety when your mind perceives imagined uncertainties as real threats.

While worry, stress and anxiety are normal, intense and     7     anxiety can become a problem. You might have a behavioral     8     if, for instance, you have regular sleep issues or you’re skipping out on your accustomed activities. Excessive anxiety can be focused on a fear of something specific, like social gatherings (known as social anxiety) or a host of experiences (known as generalized anxiety disorder).

The best way to avoid risk is getting it all out. Telling a friend or family member what’s worrying you, or even saying it aloud to yourself or writing it down, can allow you to see the     9    . “It’s a little easier to challenge worries—to recognize that if there is a negative outcome. It’s more of a struggle than a horror—when your worries are on paper or said out loud, rather than     10     around in your head,” says Buhr.

The Diet Zone: A Dangerous Place

Diet Coke, diet Pepsi, diet pills, no-fat diet, vegetable diet ... We are surrounded by the word “diet” everywhere we look and listen. We have so easily been attracted by the     1     and potential of diet products that we have stopped thinking about what diet products are doing to us. We are paying for products that harm us psychologically and physically.

Diet products     2     weaken us psychologically. On one level, we are not allowing our brain to admit that our weight problems lie not in actually losing the weight, but in     3     the consumption of fatty, high-calorie, unhealthy foods. Diet products allow us to jump over the thinking stage and go     4     for the scale （秤）instead. All we have to do is to swallow or     5     the word “diet” in food labels.

On another level, diet products have greater psychological effects. Every time we have a zero-calorie drink, we are telling ourselves without our awareness that we don’t have to work to get results. Diet products make people believe that gain comes without pain, and that life can be without resistance and     6    .

The danger of diet products lies not only in the psychological effects they have on us, but also in the     7     harm that they cause. Diet foods can     8     harm our bodies because consuming them instead of healthy foods means we are preventing our bodies from having     9     nutrients. Diet foods and diet pills     10     zero calories only because the diet industry has created chemicals to produce these wonderful products. Diet products may not be nutritional, and the chemical that go into diet products are potentially dangerous.