The Negative Effects of Chronic Stress on Gains

Next question is from lean H 17 is chronic stress a strong enough of a component to keep someone from achieving their fitness goals Good question. Yeah, okay. Let's let's kind of let's break that down for a second is something that has been proven to dramatically increase inflammatory markers or inflammation to increase all-cause mortality increased risk of heart disease cancer insulin issues like sensitivity issues diabetes Raises cortisol lowers testosterone causes hormone imbalances and women could that possibly affect your results? Okay, when you freight when you frame it like that, of course, well, that's why I did that because I know but it's like someone Asking like if you drive a hundred miles an hour Are you really likely to die and it's like well when you say like way more likely? Yeah, exactly and then if you frame it like well if you're driving like an asshole with your eyes closed at a hundred miles an hour on Roads like The bottom line is that that exercises stress on your body and if you're already high stress throwing more stress at your body now You're not gonna respond whatsoever and your body does some interesting things when it's under a lot of stress When it's under a lot of stress it is trying to survive and protect itself So what does it do it raises cortisol? What's so bad about cortisol? Nothing is bad about cortisol You need it, but when it's this is what it does it releases energy So you burn more energy it makes you not want to build muscle because building muscle means now your body requires more calories So we don't want to do that. It'll encourage fat storage because fat storage is like your Insurance and it can it can lower your libido because why should I throw your hormone profile all of that? Yeah, right. So that's just that's just cortisol, right? Why would it lower testosterone? Well if my body's under a lot of stress Why would it want me to procreate or be driven to procreate like this not let's not make that happen right and women you see other Imbalances stress is a big one. It's it will crush your gains if your stress is too high It would absolutely destroy your body's ability to build muscle or even burn body and even if you're if you're seeing results in spite of it, too, it's gonna dramatically slow it down and and and gains and But recomping your body is is a slow process already, you know, like it's not an overnight thing to change your body composition So it's already this long Slow grind to get to your goal as it is if you throw chronic stress on top of that you I mean Even just making it 10 or 20 percent worse is a lot and that and that I think that is I think be honest with you I think chronic stress is probably one of the main culprits that causes people to quit Because they feel like they're doing the right things because they're reducing calories and they're training their body really hard But then they're not seeing the results. They're not getting they're not getting the return on their investment They feel like they're putting all this working But what they don't realize is they already have so much chronic stress in their life And they don't recognize that the way they exercise is also considered a stress and the one they're probably Choosing is like the worst type of stress for their body considering all the other things are stressing And so here they are putting in all this work And I know there's somebody listening right now that could totally relate to this You're sweating your ass all in your work You're consistent four or five days a week all the time you make good food choices and your body just is not changing and a lot of times the culprit is stress because you are just taking it from all other ends and because we look at exercise and diet as Healthy and good for us you those both can be a stress eating in a calorie deficit is a stress right training your body Hella hard is a stress and if you're adding that on top of a very stressful life You'll stall the **** out of your very strong signal. Yeah, it's and it's a defensive signal to your body You know to preserve things right at all costs So, you know sort of in this famine state where you know, if I'm consuming something I want to make sure I have adequate energy to move forward with and so, you know That's a strong signal your body produces to keep you alive. So, you know, it is a part of the equation for sure Yeah, no, it is important to know that stress isn't bad. It's not it's also not good It's it could be either and it's essential right? so they've done studies on quality of life and Meaning and purpose and what do they find when people do things that are more challenging that cause more stress? For example have kids if you decide to have children You can 100% bet that your stress is going to increase but you can also this is according to the literature Bet that your quality that your sense of meaning and purpose will also increase so studies will show that stress is essential to a meaningful life stress tells your body to Improve and strengthen not having any stress would make you very weak And you know, you would be more susceptible to disease this is why hot-cold contrast. Oh my health improves when I do that Well, you're stressing the body and causing it To strengthen. Here's the other thing that we're not considering how chronic stress even if it did none of those things So let's just imagine in a magic world where chronic stress didn't have negative effects Physiologically on you it still affects your behaviors. So you can you will see that when people are chronically stressed They're more likely to make poor food choices, for example, so I'm more likely to self medicate with Sweet foods or junk food or things that I normally wouldn't choose or alcohol, right? I'm more likely to do those things chronic stress is Could potentially make me more likely to choose inappropriate exercise for my body So what I tend to see with clients is people are chronically stressed will do one of two things with exercise either one They'll choose a form of exercise. That's too hard for them Why because that extra cortisol makes them feel better in the moment, right? So the chronically stressed person they're the most likely to do the spin classes and the orange theory and the circuit type training or It makes you not want to do anything. I can't even think straight. I want to do nothing And so you're you're more you're you're less likely to choose Appropriate types of workouts for your body You're more likely to choose foods that are unhealthy that aren't gonna serve your fitness and health goals So even if chronic stress had no effect on you physiologically it 100% for sure has an effect on you Behaviorally, so what's the key to all of this? I think the key number one is to be aware and Then to help to place a little focus on management of stress. Well, what does that look like? Well, you could do things that offset it like turn off Electronics and get off social media, by the way This is a big one Like I was talking to you I can't say who this person was but I was talking to somebody Who this is what they specialize in and they work with people and they work through you know stress like a therapist, right? And they said one of the number one things they do when they work with people have lots of anxiety stress It's an easy first step is he says I tell people to Not go on social media and not watch the news just for a couple weeks just to see how you feel So that's one stress management Strategy another one is gratitude Gratitude man that makes a big Difference huge. This is probably why parents again with kids who are more stressed less time spend more money Most parents if you tell them hey, would you trade your kids for you know, not having them anymore? They'd say no because they also bring this tremendous amount of gratitude So it reframes all those things and makes them worthwhile and valuable So I think that's another strategy because you can get caught in that loop of just constantly focusing on you know Either what you don't have or what's not working and then just keep reinforcing that same thought process which then just perpetuates More stress to be accumulated as a result total it Hey, if you enjoyed that clip, you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe