Stress
How Does Stress Effect Our Health & Fitness
Most of us know that stress can really derail your path to a health lifestyle. Be it work stress, relationship stress, or even workout stress, if left unregulated, stress can have a whole host of negative effects to our health. Multiple studies have shown that unregulated stress can increase weight gain (in the form of fat, actually decreasing muscle), leave us restless/sleepless, increase our likeliness of getting sick, and a whole host of other health issues.
If you have been wondering if you stress levels are too high, take the Life Stress Test in the link below and see how you measure up.
Fuel
Food is Fuel
A lot of people have a very strained relationship with food. Be it too much, too little, to processed, or too strict, a lot of us "misuse" our food consumption.
To really adopt a healthy relationship with food, we need to start looking at it for what it is...fuel.
Not matter if you are on the Jenny Craig diet or Paleo, what we consume and put in our bodies will dictate how we feel, act, and even long term health effects such as diabetes and heart disease.
Pillars of good nutrition
When we are thinking about food as fuel and want to use it to maximize our health and fitness there are some key components we always want to pay attention to:
- Drink plenty of water
- Eat plenty of fiber
- Eat natural, minimally processed food
- Eat a variety of protein sources
- Get your fruits and vegetables
- Avoid inflammatory food
How much do I need
Following the basic rules outlined above, we can then look at how much food we actually need. That comes from figuring out our daily calories burned. You can figure this out by going to get a metabolic test done, usually at most hospitals or sports medicine labs. Those can be costly and time consuming though. Another option is using a calorie calculator like the one in the link below
Once you have your calories counted, another key aspect of making sure you have the right fuel in your system is to use a macronutrient calculator. Your macronutrients, fat, carbohydrate, and protein, all serve different function. Depending on you daily activity levels and goals for you health and fitness, your macronutrient breakdown may be different than someone else. You can use the link below to figure out what your macros should be for your fuel consumption.
Movement
What Does Good Movement Practice Look Like?
The term "movement practice" is referenced instead of exercise or working out here because we want to start thinking about how we move in the fream of our over all health and well being.
Exercise is great and absolutely essential, but movement entails more than just working out.
Movement practice encompasses our posture, how we sit, how long, our leisure activity, past injuries, recreational sport, on top of our exercise.
We want to start thinking about movement as an extension of our overall health, where we want to come away from workout feeling challenged yet accomplished, where by we are empowered to play with our kids, go on a hike with our spouse, and play a pick up game of basketball without the fear of injuring ourselves.
For more in depth info on what goes into movement practice, check the fitness tips pages under assessments and corrective exercise.
Recovery
We are only as strong as our ability to recover
To be more precise, we can only achieve optimal levels of health by letting our body recover from stress. This is accomplished through understanding our stress and where it comes from, fueling our bodies properly, and adopting a movement practice that sets us up for success.
Tools to help recover better
Aside from following the advice in the sections above, we can also use some simple tools and tricks to help with our recovery.
- Get good quality sleep
- 7-9 hours
- No screens 30 minutes before bed
- Don't eat high carb foods for dinner
- Manage self care
- Massage
- Breathing
- Cold water submersion
- Good Movement practice
- Move often
- Don't move through pain
- Seek trainer/physio if necessary
- Mitigate inflammation
- Identify stressors
- Eat high quality food sources
- Get health monitor (i.e. Fitbit, Whoop)
Click the button below and get your free Pain-Free Mobility Warm Up Handbook!