Tag Archive for stress

Reasons To Exercise You Didn’t Even Know About, and How To Fit It In.

debbie (27)Who loves to workout?  I do!  I have plenty of friends and family who do, and I work with several clients who do.

Even if you don’t, READ THIS POST.  Exercise, or more accurately, moving, is so crucial to a normal healthy brain and body, that science tells us not moving is probably more unhealthy than smoking.

Exercise balances and normalizes our testosterone and estrogen.  Men, you want more testosterone as you age?  Exercise.  Women: bad periods, rough PMS, menopause?  Exercise exercise exercise.  Moving our muscles and stressing them, reduces the inflammatory conditions of these cyclical changes.  Ever been PMSing, worked out, and then felt so. much. better.?

More benefits: exercise, any exercise that makes our muscle move and feel a little stress, causes the muscle cells to make special proteins that go through our blood, into our brain and GROW IT.

Parents, this applies to kids too.

When our muscles move, they create a protein called BDNF ( brain-derived-neurotrophic-factor).  BDNF literally goes to the brain neurons, and waters and fertilizes them.

When our muscles move, our neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, GABA) are “balanced”.  The percent of studies showing that exercise reduces anxiety and depression better than every single drug on the market?  About 100%.  With no negative side effects.

As a matter of fact, looking at us biologically and ancestrally, we’ve been created to move (forage/hunt for food, shelter, mates) to stimulate productive brain activity.  Moving makes us smarter and better able to cope with life.

Several studies show that if we want to learn new skills or facts, exercise first.  It stimulates pathways that allow us to build memories/learn in our brain.  There’s a caveat though. If you think you’ll do your learning while you exercise, say, studying on the elliptical or treadmill ( one of my preferred methods when I went to Nutritional Therapy school), keep the exercise “steady state”, and not anaerobic.

Exercise that’s too hard temporarily shuttles nutrients away from our learning centers; exercise that’s easily doable increases nutrients to the learning centers.  That’s just a word of caution on learning while exercising, not a warning against hard exercise, because the benefits of hard exercise are numerous.

Or not.  It depends on how you feel about it.

Here we get to exercise and stress.  I said that of the thousands of studies comparing all the drugs on the market to exercise for relief from anxiety and depression, exercise wins every time.  Hands down.

When we feel “stress”, we’re actually feeling the results from a whole bunch of stress “chemicals”.  (we’re a chemistry set, not a math equation).  Whether our stress is real or imaginary, from traffic or a fight with a spouse or an actual threat to our lives, the chemistry is the same.

Our adrenal glands release epinephrine and cortisol to prepare us to physically defend or save ourselves.  Our heart rate increases.  Our blood pressure increases.  Our digestion stops.  Our arteries constrict.  Our muscle cells dump their magnesium (magnesium relaxes us, but the brain thinks we need to be tense), and **** cells become Insulin Resistant.

When cortisol is in the blood, FAT CAN NOT BE BURNED, JUST STORED.  In this state,our body actually tears apart muscle tissue and converts it to glucose/sugar to burn instead of using the fat in our butt.  

We need to manage our stress, and exercise does that! Most of the time.

Unfortunately, some people are so scared of exercise, so adverse to a whole – imaginary – negative scenario they’re created in their minds, that they have “Exercise Induced Anxiety”.  I stole that from one of my clients who used that term to describe herself.

I get it.  Gym class was traumatic for a lot of us.  It left some scars.  But I know former athletes who don’t like to workout anymore either.  Their younger athletic years were formed by coaches and teammates telling them what to do and how.  Independently exercising, which is pretty much Adult Exercise, isn’t appealing, or motivating, so they don’t do it.

The latest stats from the CDC on who exercises show us that only 20.4% of adults over 18 exercise regularly.

No wonder we have 70% overweight and on pharmaceutical drugs in this country!

What to do? Be determined. Set your mind that you’re going to move every day and you’re going to like it.   Honestly.  It’s that simple.  Oh, and have a plan.  Write it down.  Use alarms and calendars and verbalize to friends and family your intentions.

If you already work out every day, you’re golden.  If you struggle with with either fitting exercise in or moving at all, listen up.

1) Pick something that doesn’t sound scary:

-walk with a friend or a kid or a dog

-play a game in the yard with your kids

-set an alarm on your phone and walk up and down the stairs (in your office or home) 4 or 5 times a day

-set an alarm on your phone and do a wall squat or plank 4 or 5 times a day

2) Pick something fun:

-join Zumba

-join a weight lifting class

-join a beginner yoga class

-join a beginner group fitness class

3) Set Your Self Up For Success

-pack your clothes the night before

-pack a bag and water bottle the night before

-pick a sport or a class or an activity that’s appropriate for your fitness level and not something you’re going to be so sore and fatigued afterwards that you never want to come back

-put it on your calendar, and then stick to the schedule. If you have kids that need to be included, either driving them to the gym or having them with you, CONSIDER THAT.  It takes time to get kids in the car – out of the car – into the gym. Learn to become a Time Master, and teach them how to do it too.  That’s a pretty crucial skill to have.

Honestly, we can’t afford NOT to exercise or move.  Our body was designed by God for us to move.

Want a great book to inspire you to get off your butt and sweat a little it?  Spark, by John J. Ratey, MD.  It’s loaded with information that even I’ve never seen before, and I read everything about exercise that I can get my hands on.

One more reason to exercise:  Exercise GIVES us energy, it doesn’t steal it or drain it, it creates it.   Who doesn’t want more energy?

Part 2 of Summer Shape Up: Stressing About Our Body Fat Just Makes Us Fatter – Really.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALet me say that again:  Stressing about our body fat just makes us fatter. It’s true; and as woo-woo as that may sound, it’s very grounded in science.

Remember in my last Post  I said that when it comes to weight and our health, our thoughts are more important than a food plan?  If a good food plan was all it took, no one would be fat and sick.

One of my favorite quotes is:  “Our body isn’t a math equation, it’s a chemistry set.”  This is why low calorie, low fat diets don’t work in the long run.  We upset our chemistry when we eat that way.

I’m continuing my series on taking control of our thoughts to get control of our body.  Many of us constantly bemoan our butts, our stomach’s, our thighs, and our batwings. Constantly.

How’s that negative thinking working?

A favorite quote, “What we think about, we bring about.”   More science, more chemistry; our brain LISTENS to our words and creates chemicals and structures in response to those words.  Seriously.

Constantly bemoaning our weight and our shape and our health is called STRESS.  “Stress” is a chemical state in our body that’s really only good if we need to run away from a bad guy or perform a heroic feat.  Other than that, it works against us. (Actually, there’s more to the stress story.  “Temporary” stress can help us solve problems and get out of jams. It’s “Chronic” stress that hurts us – and makes us fat.)

A stressed-out state, for ANY reason (mental, physical, emotional, REAL OR FAKE), causes the same chemical response: an increase in hormones that dump lots of SUGAR into the blood stream.  Nothing is easier and faster for our cells to use in an emergency than sugar.  Not fat, not protein, but SUGAR.

When we feel stressed from a kid or a spouse or a co-worker or traffic or from agonizing over our weight or stressing about food or exercise, our glands squirt FIGHT AND FLIGHT HORMONES (chemicals) into our blood stream.

These hormones do a number on us:

– they inhibit fat burning in cells (never good for healthy body weight!)

– they dump loads of sugar/glucose from the liver into the blood

– they break down muscle tissue to convert to glucose (fitness friends, take note – we want that muscle!)

– they make us hungry and crave more sugar – just in case the stress is chronic (“stress eating”)

– they slow down the thyroid (not a priority), slow down digestion (not a priority), slow down sex hormone production (not a priority)

– they suppress the immune system (not a priority, and this is why stress is associated with being sick more often)

And that’s just the starter list!  The gist:  Stress Makes Us Fat and Sick, not lean and healthy.

I know I already said this, but I’m saying it again:  stressing over our weight or our food or our workouts is EXACTLY the same as stressing over a bad guy or money or a fight.  Stress is stress is stress is stress.  The same chemicals are released into the body.

Action Plan to Combat Stressing About Our Fat:

1) Quit comparing ourselves to any woman on a magazine cover.  I quit buying women’s magazines 15 years ago.  I didn’t want my 4 daughters influenced by those faked and unrealistic images. Woo-hoo! FREEDOM.  Seriously, have you ever googled what they do to those cover images to make them look so perfect?

Having those images around is like having our favorite trigger food in the pantry.  Bad stuff happens.  Set yourself up for success and control your surroundings as much as possible.

Temptations CAUSE stress.  Get rid of them.

2) Quit comparing ourselves to anyone at the gym, or in our circles, who has a better body than us.  STOP IT.  What a waste of a brain space!  And it’s stressful!  We have friends and family who need our help and our prayers.  We have a home and jobs and people who need our attention. There’s turmoil and starvation and war going on, and we’re stressing about our butt and our weight?  Let’s focus on important issues.

The Bible says to focus on Love, Joy, Appreciation, and Gratitude.  Meditation books say the same thing.  What we focus on has a CHEMICAL CONSEQUENCE.  (Hey!  Food also has chemical consequences!)

3) DEEP BREATHING.  Humming.  Singing. Breath Patterns.  Yep, really. For weight loss!  These actions stimulate our Vagus Nerve, the nerve that runs from the brain stem to every organ in our body.  When we stimulate it with deep breath, humming, and singing, it releases Happy Chemicals.

This is the polar opposite of our Fight and Flight/Sympathetic nervous system, which is the system that releases cortisol, adrenalin, and more.

The Vagus Nerve releases chemicals that actually benefit our DNA, and make our brain more creative, problem solving, and powerful.   Fight/flight chemicals (chronically produced) damage our DNA and inhibit problem solving and creativeness.

Fight/fight chemicals also deplete our willpower.

The Vagus Nerve meanders all the way into the belly; spreading fibers to the tongue, pharynx, vocal chords, lungs, heart, stomach, intestines and glands that produce the anti-stress enzymes and hormones: Acetylcholine, Prolactin, Vasopressin, and Oxytocin. These chemicals make digestion, metabolism and relaxation BETTER.

They even make us poop better!

4) Gratitude, appreciation, love for your body. Yes, you need these for weight loss.  Honestly, even a year ago, I wouldn’t have written that.  I’ve read this, been taught this, for years, but it never sunk in.  I’m wired pretty happy, so I never thought I needed this advice.  I was wrong.  We all need this advice.

Again, stressing over our body, picking apart it’s “defects”, is just “stress”.  Stress is a chemical state that inhibits fat loss, and encourages fat deposition.

I really believe this explains the strict diet and exercisers, who are just doing it for weight loss – not health, who never seem to lose weight.  

When we eat for health, our thought patterns are something like this:  “I haven’t had any fish in a few days and I really need that Omega 3.”  Or, “My throat hurts, I need some garlic.”  Or, “If I eat that, I’ll have bloat and foggy brain the rest of the day. Better stay away.” Eating for health means looking at food as Medicine, and it’s empowering!

Counting calories, measuring, white-knuckling up some willpower – NOT empowering.  At all.  It’s draining.

Try this: next time negative beliefs about your body consume your thoughts, stop them, and replace them with 5 different gratitudes about your body.

If you have difficulty thinking of 5 gratitudes, you’ve got a bigger problem than your weight!

Resource for improving your mind:  Battlefield of the Mind, by Joyce Meyers.

Learn more about the Vagus Nerve here.

Reinforce Food is Medicine here.

Go think about what you’re thinking about!

Part 1 of Summer Shape Up: Train Your Brain To Work For You.

20150530_094024I’ve been absent for 2 weeks from my blog and it’s killed me!  We’ve had 2 big graduations, parties, and extra travel; but the real reason has been that my computer died.

( Pic of our youngest daughter, Shelby, after her HS graduation, with me, and Amanda.)

Well, actually, my computer was killed by a coffee spill:(  But I finally have a new one and it’s working and all is well!

All is not well for several women who’ve emailed me in the IMG951389past 2 weeks, wanting a diet plan that’ll whip them into shape for Bathing Suit Season.  

(Pic of me and brother-in-law, Bryan, at the Juvenile Diabetes Walk in DC)

I’ve got “plans”; as that’s my job.  But here’s part of my goal: To teach that our thoughts are more important to health and weight loss than a food plan.  Honest.  Really.  It’s true.

Does this sound like you:  “I’m so fat, I’m barely going to eat.  I’m going to start every day off with either a fast, or a juice.  I’m going to workout at least 5 days a week, with sprints!  Lunch and dinner will be miniature!  Boiled chicken and steamed broccoli!  The weight will pour off, and I’ll look just like all the women on the magazine covers by the end of the month.  Woo-hoo for diets!”

Reality check:  statistically, about 100% of EVERYONE who goes on a diet gains the weight back; more than 50% gain more.

Have you heard the phrase, “Stop the insanity!” ?  STOP THE INSANITY!  Would the above plan take off weight?  ABSOLUTELY!  Would it stay off? No.

We’ve got to work on our mind; the mind’s the priority.  If we don’t train our mind to work for us, we’ll never stick to a healthy food plan, ever.  We won’t even make a healthy food plan;  we’ll make a dumb food plan that guarantees failure.

Real health and fitness, being a great weight, is about the actions we take every single day, cumulatively.  Little bursts of starvation or action have no positive results.

To stick to a healthy plan, we have to BELIEVE that food and exercise and thoughts matter, that they create us, because they do.  They really do.

20150530_094802(0)Bad foods (processed flours and sugars, chemicals, hydrogenated fats) make a bad body and a bad mind.  Nothing works right, and I’m not just talking fuzzy thinking or a big butt, which stink.  I’m talking Cancer, Heart Disease, Auto Immune Issues, Neurological Problems, Diabetes, Pain, Headaches, etc. You get the point.

( Meg, Shels, Macy, Manda after graduation )

I’m on a mission!  Food is Medicine or Food is Poison, and I want everyone to believe that so much that it affects our behavior.  This is important.  A belief that we need to lose weight is NEVER enough to effect permanent behavior change.  Never.

But a belief that Bad Food causes Cancer and Disease, in us and our children, now THAT can cause behavior change.

You know what else Bad Foods cause?  Bad decisions.  Our thoughts are actually structural.  Our thoughts and memories are literally made out of proteins.  They’re not little vaporous words floating through our mind, like in a cartoon.

Quality in, quality out.

These protein structures, aka memories, affect our decisions and attitudes.  Again, quality in, quality out.

Want productive thoughts that lead to healthy actions?  We need to be Intentional and Discipled about our health.  To be intentional and disciplined requires knowledge and application.  This is where most of us struggle, right?  Every single thing we give attention to, that we practice and focus on, grows.  If we practice and focus on training our thoughts to lead to healthy actions, we’ll lose weight and get healthy.

Honest.  It’s that simple.

But it’s not easy.  Most things valuable and good aren’t easy.  Should “easy” be a criteria for what we do?   Is that what we teach our kids?

The next few Posts I do are going to be on Training Our Brains for Healthy Behaviors – Every Day.  Not because I’m an expert at it, but because I’m a student of it.   Habits, behaviors, practiced and learned attitudes; I LOVE THAT STUFF!!  I can’t get enough of it!

When we train our mind to work for us and not against us, you know what we lose (in addition to weight!)?  STRESS.  If we believe that what we put in our mouth is going to make us tired, depressed, bitchy, bloated, sick, and fat, then there’s no decision-making-stress when that temptation is put in front of us.  A trained mind allows us to easily choose foods that are good for us.

Join me over the next few weeks as I really zero in on developing habits that lead to a lean and healthy body.  Anyone and everyone can do this.  Let’s commit to becoming the person we’ve always wanted to be.

“Take Control Of Your Habits, Take Control Of Your Life.”

“Successful People Are Simply Those With Successful Habits.”  Bryan Tracy

Part 2, with concrete action steps and mind-bending facts,  coming soon!

Stress can make you Fat and Sick

I’ve had several meetings in the past 2 weeks about health and weight problems that were stress induced.  For those of you who wonder how stress could possibly make you sick or heavy, here’s a couple of reasons out of the many (you’d need text books to cover everything.)

Our adrenal glands, which sit right on top of the kidneys, make dozens of hormones.stessbinge  HORMONES RULE US. PERIOD.  When we feel stress from anything ( an argument, over exercising, traffic, kids, a project, illness/infections, work stress, dieting.. etc) our adrenal glands squirt some “fight or flight” hormones into our blood.  There’s several, but I’m going to lump them all under the one called “CORTISOL”.

Follow me here:  even though most stressful situations do NOT involve having to physically run/kill/chase/escape from a physical danger, the response from our body is as if that was the case.  Cortisol/adrenaline prepares us for a physical exertion. ( It’s a very primal response. ) How?  So many ways..   this is just a couple.

1) When “stress” is felt, sugar is immediately dumped into the blood stream.  Sugar is FAST energy and fat is SLOW energy, right?  If the body is preparing for a threat, it wants FAST energy.  Where does the sugar come from?  First, the liver shoots out it’s teaspoon or so of stored sugar, then, if the stress continues, the muscle cells will be easily converted to glucose/sugar (that’s called “muscle wasting”) and then fat cells will give up their fatty acids and they’ll be converted to sugar.    *************  What if you don’t actually need all that SUGAR/GLUCOSE because your emergency didn’t involve anything physical?    YouGottaProblem.   Excess sugar is ALWAYS CONVERTED TO TRIGLYCERIDES AND STORED IN THE MIDSECTION.  ALWAYS.  That’s why stress causes heart disease, because the cortisol dumps sugar in the blood that’s not needed, so it becomes dangerous belly fat.  ( The many dangers of belly fat are a whole nother lecture, seriously.)

2) Cortisol in the blood immediately causes the heart rate to increase, the blood pressure to increase, and it causes your cells to DUMP their Magnesium (remember, this is the short list).  Studies are showing that most of us are Magnesium deficient, which is bad, because Mag has many, many jobs to do in our body. One of them is to relax our muscles.  When Cortisol is present though, we’re in an “anti-relaxed state”;  dumping Magnesium allows our muscles to contract quickly.  Again, so we can zebra losing spotsrun/kill/chase/escape.   Stay in a stressed state, and the Magnesium deficit just grows.

3) Cortisol shuts down stomach acid, which means it shuts down digestion.  Digestion’s NOT a priority in a “fight or flight” situation.  Stay stressed, and you become nutrient deficient.  Nutrients run and build our body;  consequences are inevitable.

4) Cortisol halts Sex Hormone production, because the same “ingredients” (aka nutrients) are used to make the fight / flight hormones and the sex hormones.  There’s only just so many of those ingredients, and Reproduction is NOT a priority in a “fight or flight” situation.  The body will ALWAYS choose to make fight or flight hormones over sex hormones.  Hormones run and build our body: consequences are inevitable.

I could go on and on and on.  There’s not one single part of us that isn’t negatively affected by TOO MUCH cortisol.  That said, we need cortisol!  It gets us up in the morning, and it’s supposed to be our bodies “anti-inflammatory” response to injury.  Unfortunately, when the cortisol valve doesn’t shut off, the opposite response happens:  INFLAMMATION.  The cause of everything bad:(

If this post is ringing bells in your head because “this sounds like you”,  email me.  Your health, your weight, your moods, your energy, greatly depend on having healthy adrenal glands and normal levels of cortisol.  When damage has been done, you need to undo it, as soon as possible!

Oh, you know what else causes stress/cortisol/inflammation?  Too much sugar, flour, and toxins.  Seriously.  Yet another reason to eat Real Whole Foods.

Tell Me, Should We Vent Our Feelings, Or Should We Stuff Them?

me:girlsThat might seem like a really odd title to a post 4 days before Christmas, but I live in a Girl Household, and it’s been a subject around here.  We have 4 daughters, ages 16 to 23, and the subject has come up:  if you’re stressed and something’s bothering you, should you talk about it or not.  I tend to be a “not” person.  I find that I actually forget about what bothered me if I ignore it; and most of my problems aren’t biggies, which in my book, at 48, primarily means health.  Besides, talking doesn’t resolve most problems, actions do, (even a lot of health problems).

That title question could be argued to death, but here’s some facts:  our feelings aren’t always an accurate reflection of the situation. Our moods, our feelings, our attitudes, they come from the Neurotransmitters in our brain.  Neurotransmitters are like roadmaps up there, and they send signals for everything:  breathing, moving, opinions, moods, everything.  The four main neurotransmitters are Serotonin, Dopamine, Gaba, and the Catecholamines, adrenalin, and norepinephrine.  These  things are made from Amino Acids, and Fatty Acids.  There are no carbs in our brain structure.  Our brain cells use glucose for fuel, but science has shown that they can also use Ketones ( a by-product of fatty acid metabolism, from a high fat, low carb diet), really well.  As a matter of fact, science is showing that the brain actually runs BETTER on fatty acids than glucose. ( the brain is 60% fat, much of it saturated.)

 

What happens when you don’t eat enough protein and fat?  Or when you do eat enough, but your digestion is bad and you don’t break them down and absorb them?  (remember:  heartburn, bloat, gas, stomach pain = NOT NORMAL, and a big sign of poor digestion).  Your brain suffers.  Those neurotransmitters don’t get made, or they don’t get made correctly.  Add the Standard American Diet on top of that, and you’ve got flours, sugars, hydrogenated oils, and chemicals messing up brain function even more.  Add lack of sleep and movement on top of that, both of which are VITAL to brain function, and the brain goes even further down hill.

Depression, anxiety, ADD, ADHD, and other mood disorders are plaguing this country, but you don’t need a “mood disorder” to signal that your brain could use some TLC, and the right food.  Access yourself:  are you stressed often?  do you constantly take offense?  need naps?  feel wired but tired?  gravitate to stimulants or depressants ?  Listen To Your Bodies Signals, they’re telling you something.

Commercial Advertising by Big Pharma would have you believe that this is all normal and unavoidable and you just need to take a pill.  The efficacy rate of mood drugs is between 30 and 50%; that’s pretty bad, and so are the side effects.  What if it’s not your circumstances, or the people around you driving you crazy, but it’s you?  Oh man, that line got me in trouble the other day, but… what if?

My husband and I (the guy deserves a medal, by the way), read Julia Ross’s The Mood Cure this past summer, did the quiz, and have been on her  program for Amino Acid therapy since July.  Oh My Gosh what a difference, for both of us!  We’ve also made going to bed early a priority for the past 2 years;  again, Oh My Gosh, what a difference!  Did you know that each hour of sleep before midnight is worth at least 2 hours after midnight?  Actually, the more we tie our daily habits and actions to our mood and our health, the better everything keeps getting.

Wow, I hope I’m not making it seem like I don’t think any problems are worthy of stressing about, because I do.  In a house with so much drama  (we had 4 teenagers for a couple of years.), you have to be a little bit tough.   But the older I get, the more I believe that “life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it.”,  Charles Swindall;  and this one, “most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.”, Abraham Lincoln.

Remember the other day when I told you about Charis and her advice to look back over this past year and see what we’ve manifested?  I’ve been doing that every day this week.  My life is what I make of it, even when a challenge is thrown at me.  We only have a couple of weeks left of 2013; ask, what did I do, what do I wish I did, and what do I want to do in 2014?  What kind of person do I want to be?  It all happens in your mind, and your mind can’t work for you if you’re not nurturing it with the food and the rest and the oxygen that it needs to thrive.  Be determined to create a life where you thrive!