So What’s The Proble
m With Stress?
I always knew stress management was very important when it came to getting great results with my clients and I did whatever I could to help them with their stress/anxiety.
However, I didn’t fully appreciate just HOW important it was until very recently, when I completed my MindMAP course down in London with one of the industry’s top coaches, Dax Moy. (A course about the neuro-science of behavioural transformation – sounds boring, I know, but stick with me!).
I learned a huge amount that weekend and have since completely changed the way I treat stress management with all of our clients at the studio.
Allow me to explain?
Firstly, let’s look at how stress affects the body. Typically stress manifests as the fight, flight or freeze response and is a response designed to keep us alive under life or death situations.
These days, there are very few (if any) true life or death situations in our modern life yet most of us are experiencing these stress responses very frequently – behind the wheel of our car or when we’re late for a meeting, for example.
So consider this…
If we really were in a life of death situation, let’s say a big scary grizzly bear appears in front of us and looks like it’s about to attack us, the stress response will kick in to make us attack back (fight), run away (flight) or stand still and do nothing (freeze).
Under these circumstances the only priority is survival and all blood flow is directed to the large muscle groups ready for action. Let’s say we flight prevails and we run for our lives. Whilst running for your life, would you stop to eat a meal?
…Of course not, because it’s most definitely not a priority in that situation.
So how does this translate to what happens to us in modern life?
If you are constantly stressed (chronic stress), your body is certainty not making weight loss (or anything related to weight loss such as digestion, absorption, muscle building, metabolism) a priority in any shape or form…
These, and a whole host of other human functions are all non-essential so are in essence ‘switched off’.
In additional to this, many of us still try to eat (or more accurately mindlessly throw food down our throat!) under chronic stress conditions or try to have a tough workout when under chronic stress conditions. Doing so can actually have a more detrimental than beneficial effect on our health and body shape.
So really, the bottom line is this:
Stress management should be the priority and be tackled first before any nutritional or exercise strategies are implemented. More and more evidence is appearing linking chronic stress to negative health effects in our our bodies, among the most prevalent of which is weight gain (and the inability to lose weight).
This exact reasons why this happens in the body are beyond the scope of this article, but the take away message is to really consider how stressed you are and how much of an impact this is having on your results (or lack of results) in achieving the body shape and health you desire.
Don’t suffer in silence. We now offer stress coaching at Luke Bremner Fitness designed to help you get to and understand the root cause of your stress, and help you implement strategies for rapid stress relief. Please contact us using the link below to find out more about our stress coaching:
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