Ep 134: A Simple Tweak to Increase Your Metabolism, Hormones, Fat Loss, Workouts, and Sleep
Are you struggling to achieve your health and fitness goals despite following your diet and exercise routine? Do you feel like something is holding you back?
Happy New Year! In this first episode of 2024, Philip (@witsandweights) talks about stress, its impact on health and fitness goals, and how to reduce or cope with it effectively. He gives a lot of attention to nutrition, training, and even sleep, and he talks about how sometimes stress can be the hidden barrier to unlocking a higher metabolism, more effortless fat loss, increased energy, and better health. Philip dives into practical, evidence-based strategies to identify and mitigate stress in the context of both physical and mental health.
Philip also created a free Stress Solution Guide to accompany this episode that you can download at witsandweights.com/free or click here for direct access.
Episode summary:
Stress is a universal challenge that often goes unrecognized, particularly when we pursue health and fitness goals. In a recent podcast episode, we take a deep dive into the covert world of stress, unraveling its subtle yet profound impact on our well-being. The episode isn't merely a discussion about stress but offers a treasure trove of actionable advice and strategies for resilience and management.
Listeners are introduced to the concept of stress as a hidden barrier to fitness success, learning about its capacity to derail metabolism, disrupt hormonal balance, and lead to counterproductive behaviors like unhealthy snacking. The episode acknowledges the different ways individuals experience stress, emphasizing the importance of understanding personal stress triggers and supportive strategies within relationships.
The episode delves into the physiological and psychological effects of stress. Listeners gain an understanding of how chronic stress can impact sleep patterns, dietary choices, and even gut health, which in turn affects gym performance and body composition. This knowledge serves as a powerful tool for listeners to begin recognizing and addressing their stress responses.
The podcast doesn't stop at identification; it provides a range of techniques for stress reduction. From engaging in creative pursuits and cultivating social connections to spending time in nature and organizing one's environment, the advice is practical and varied. Listeners are encouraged to pick one simple action to reduce stress, ensuring the approach is accessible and not overwhelming.
Nutrition, a key aspect of stress management, is also addressed. The episode highlights the role of maintaining adequate caloric intake and balancing macronutrients, with carbohydrates playing a significant part in managing stress levels. Real-life examples from the community underscore the personalized nature of stress management, showcasing unique methods like photography and heavy lifting as stress-relievers.
The episode rounds out with a discussion of advanced stress management techniques like yoga, cleaning, and Transcendental Meditation. These methods, while potentially more involved, offer additional tools for those looking to deepen their stress reduction practice. The host also touches upon the potential of supplements like ashwagandha and magnesium to support stress management, though emphasizing lifestyle changes as the primary focus.
The episode closes with a reminder to listeners to select one stress management technique that resonates with them, incorporating it into their routine. The provision of a free stress solution guide further extends the episode's resources, offering listeners a structured approach to tackling stress.
In summary, the podcast episode serves as an essential guide for anyone looking to improve their health and fitness by managing the omnipresent challenge of stress. It acknowledges the complexity of stress, provides a wealth of strategies for combating it, and encourages personalization and simplicity in approach, all with the goal of enabling listeners to achieve their fitness and wellness goals without the hindrance of unmanaged stress.
Today you’ll learn all about:
3:19 Recent 5-star reviews on the podcast
6:31 What is stress?
11:08 Acute vs. chronic stress
12:54 What creates more stress
14:41 The effects of stress
18:55 The physiology of the stress response
21:20 Pick one thing
23:18 Self-therapy
24:54 Social connection
25:39 Spending time in nature or outdoors
26:16 Planning or organizing
27:07 Optimizing nutrition and training
30:27 Ideas on managing stress from the community
38:52 More stress management ideas
43:53 Outro
Episode resources:
Mindfulness Special: Relaxing Guided Session to Manage Stress and Anxiety with Allen Friedman
Shoutout to the Sam Miller Science podcast (inspiration for episode)
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Transcript
Philip Pape 00:00
Maybe you've dialed in your nutrition, training and sleep, but you're still not getting the results you want. It could be that one thing in particular is holding you back and you don't even know it. In today's episode, we are uncovering how a simple tweak can revolutionize your metabolic health hormones, fat loss workouts and sleep to push you past those plateaus. Stick around to learn what it is and what you can do about it. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast in our last episode which was last year, Episode 133. Making fitness fun again through adventure with Kelly Howard, we talked about how the spirit of adventure can revitalize your fitness journey. You learn how to overcome common hurdles to staying consistent with your fitness goals, external versus internal motivation and how to embrace a sense of fun and adventure to reignite your passion for fitness. Today for episode 134. The first of 2024 a simple tweak to increase your metabolism hormones, fat loss workouts and sleep Yes, everything we are talking about stress, especially stress has impact on your health and fitness goals, and how to reduce or cope with it effectively. We give lots of attention to nutrition training and even sleep. But sometimes stress is the hidden barrier. It's just lurking there in your life. And it's the hidden barrier to unlocking a higher metabolism, easier fat loss, increased energy and better health. Today we're going to dive into practical evidence based strategies to identify and mitigate stress in the context of both physical and mental health. Now I do want to give a shout out to Sam Miller of the Samel or Science Podcast, who recently did a very detailed multi episode series on stress that inspired this episode. And I also want to give a shout out to many of my clients and members of the Wits & Weights Facebook community who contributed ideas for how to manage stress that we're going to include in this episode, so many creative ideas, including one of my own that I just discovered today that would be helpful that I will be sharing. And those are later on in the episode. Now, as you're listening to the show, don't stress. And by the way, listen to the show at 1x. Don't go faster. I know many of us, myself included, listen to it faster, calm it down, listen to it at 1x. And now you see what I just did there Right? Trying to help you reduce your stress, even as you listen to this podcast. But don't stress because I created a free stress solution guide to go along with this episode. And of course, you can download that at wits & weights.com/free or click the link in my show notes. Again, that's wits & weights.com/free Or just click the link under episode resources in the shownotes. Now before we dive in to this episode about stress, I wanted to share a few recent five star reviews from Apple podcasts. If you want your review featured on the show, it's very simple. Just screenshot it and tag me at Wits & Weights and I will make sure absolutely to give you a shout out in this part of the show. All right. The first review is from emotionally healthy legacy. Elizabeth says helpful resource for someone who wants to lose weight the healthy way and sustain it. This is a great resource for both men and women. The host really seems to know what he's talking about. Very knowledgeable. I'm glad I gave you that impression. Elizabeth I do try. And that is really the goal of this show is sustainability. So and for men and women, so I'm glad you liked it. The next step the next review is by careless down to earth knowledgeable, be new to weightlifting. I found this podcast to be straightforward, practical and super informative. The community is also fantastic, uplifting and positive folks, Philip is very responsive to questions and offers tons of tips for both beginners and more experienced weight lifters. This has become my go to podcast for all things fitness.
Philip Pape 04:31
You don't know what that means to me it really genuinely when I hear something like that I'm I'm still shocked a little bit of impostor syndrome. I'll admit that someone would make this like their main fitness podcast but that is where I'm trying to go with this. And also the fact that our community is uplifting and positive. If you join the Wits & Weights Facebook community that is exactly how it is. We will kick you out if you're if you're a meanie, but if you're helping people out you're positive you get to hang around Like minded folks that are trying to do the same. And then the last review is by Maggie de I think is how you pronounce it. Love the research and science as a guy looking to book Getting scientifically backed workout content is Big Love. The carbs episode might explain a thing or two. Winky face emoji was recommended through a website, but I'll be sticking around. Thank you so much. I always love again to hear someone who discovers a podcast, find it valuable, and wants to stick around. And of course, anybody listening, if you want to leave a review, just go to Apple podcasts. And it's pretty easy to do. Take a screenshot and tag me in definitely share this episode with a friend if you found it valuable. Alright, we're gonna get into today's topic, a simple tweak to increase your metabolism hormones, fat loss workouts, and sleep and we're talking about stress, the simple tweak is stress. Now I know it doesn't sound simple to all of us. Some of us have extremely full, busy, hectic, crazy lives, however you want to describe it. And I realized, as I'm recording this episode, I was walking the dogs, I was taking them for a walk. It's the very last day of the week before Christmas. And I thought this week was going to be less stressful than others. Now, my tolerance for stress is fairly high. Wherever that comes from, I don't know, I've had this sense my whole life that no matter how bad things get, they're gonna get better. And somehow that grounds me, and I'm grateful to have that inherent in me or training me or from my parents or whomever. But I can see the contrast between people and the amount of stress that they perceive. Now we're going to talk about what stress is how it impacts us, and then how to manage it. But I just wanted to connect with you, as a listener personally, that everyone's level of stress is different. Some people have way more stress anxiety than others, either naturally or because of their circumstances. It really helps. Of course, like in my case, my wife, she gets really stressed out by certain things that I don't and vice versa. So for example, you know, if you if I had to just all of a sudden do all the chores around the house right now, that would, that would raise my blood pressure, like I would get stressed about it. My wife loves doing that stuff, which kind of works out right, we she stays at home, and it works out for me. I do the financials and the business and a whole bunch of other things. And we have a shared kind of partnership. But that would stress me out. If her mouse stops clicking on her computer and doing what she wants. She just she she'll freak out, right? And she knows, this is the case, if she's listening to this, she'll come to me and be very frustrated, you know, express her frustration, like why is this happening now? I can't deal with this, can you fix it and it becomes this huge thing. But I understand that about her right. And so I understand I want to be calm and go over there. Alright, sweetie, let me fix it. Let me see what's going on. And I kind of keep her out of it, I fix it, hopefully. And then you know, she's back in the picture. And we're good to go. So everybody's stressed by different things. I realized this week that I had cleared my calendar a little bit, not as much as I wanted, but I cleared it a bit so that I could get caught up on podcasts and some stuff for my business take care of some fun, creative ideas I had. But you know, what always happens with me is as soon as I leave a gap in my schedule, even if I tell myself even if I put in my calendar and set myself a reminder that this is going to be downtime. I'm going to chill out on the couch and watch Netflix, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to just veg out do something fun. You know what happens? I fill in that time I just do I get a crazy idea as I'm walking around the house. Oh, I gotta do something about that. Forget the hour of downtime, I've got an hour now why don't I use it up. And so the weekends have been fuller than I expected. And so I know for a fact that this contributes to a higher level of chronic stress in my life than I would have otherwise. Now whether I can handle it cope with it, you know it whether or not it's affecting my health in a big way, that that's hard to tell. That's part of what we're gonna get into today of how can you even tell? And what can you do about it, but I want you to know that we all face stress, okay? And don't assume the person next to you because they have you know, more kids and more obligations or, or they're single and have no obligations that they have more or less stress, just know that it's all relative to you and your personal experience. And that as we age, the stress tends to rise simply because our circumstances get more complicated, right? We have children or we have more financial obligations, we have bigger bills, we're getting closer to retirement and thinking like getting worried that you know, we're not going to have enough money saved. You know, people in our family, you know, pass away they die. Our pets die. Like all these things happen more and more as we get older. And we take on more things and we are maybe wiser but busier right? And all that adds up. So I feel you right? If you're listening to this and you're like, Man, I'm just so overwhelmed. You know I've got I've got my business, my work my kids working 14 hour days. that might be where you're at. And it is where you're at right now. And that's okay. The question is, how much is that contributing to other things, we're just a little tweak here there could unlock a more positive road to better health. And that's what we're going to talk about. So we're going to discuss the interconnected physiology, right how your body responds, the hormones and such, and the psychology. So the mental side of stress, including how it impacts your brain, your immune system, your hormones, your sleep, your diet, your exercise performance, and more. Right, without hopefully stressing you. Alright, the goal of today's episode is to give you actionable advice toward the end, based on all that information gets you nice and educated, to better navigate stressful periods, and transformational and transitional periods. Because oftentimes, the stress comes from change, it comes from things that aren't expected. And it can come tomorrow, you could get in an accident, there can be a medical condition, whatever we know these things happen, and I'm not trying to stress you out mentioning them. But knowing that they happen, how do we build the resilience for that, okay, so let's define the difference between acute and chronic stress. Acute, acute is the here and now it's short lived, and oftentimes can be a positive, adaptive or helpful form of stress. My favorite one of those is the acute stress of exercise of training. When you lift heavy weights for an hour in the gym, you are stressing the heck out of your body, but in an acute way. And we see this physiologically, we see an increase in blood pressure. For example, if you took my blood pressure, right in the middle of a weight training session, it's gonna look like I have terrible health. It's gonna be through the roof, but that's okay. That's actually part of the process. And as soon as you're done with your, your workout session, everything starts to get back to normal, and the acute stress goes away. And we know that the acute stress like that can actually build resilience against chronic stress. So what is chronic stress? Chronic stress is that prolonged, frequent, difficult to control stress, and that's the important phrase here, difficult to control, stress things from things like your work, financial stress issues in your relationship, juggling all the demands of home life, including children, right, the list goes on and on. And they're difficult to control. Because, you know, like the Stoics, say, there are things in your life you can and can't control. And the chronic stress often comes from the things put upon us. Okay, not always right. There are definitely choices we make to be in the environments and situations we're in and around the people we are. But I'm not asking you today for one podcast episode, to just eliminate all those things. We're going to acknowledge them and realize that they exist, and many of them are right at this moment, out of our control. Okay. All right. Now, there are a few things. Key things three, in fact, that I'm gonna mention, that makes some types of stress, even more detrimental. Okay. The first is novelty. If something happens that we have no previous experience with, and we don't know how to handle that creates more stress than a situation we've seen before. Right? There are situations that happen to me that I've experienced before, maybe financial situations, for example, that I would be able to handle, because I've done through, I've done it before. Whereas somebody else, it's their first time, maybe they're 25, and all of a sudden, they get hit with some big bill or something. And it's like, oh, what do I do what I like, I'm just, I don't know what to do. Right? That's going to create a lot more stress for them than the one for me. So again, it's relative to your experience. Number two is unpredictability. And that's when things are unexpected or inconsistent. So there's some sort of some overlap with novelty here, right? But these are stressors that maybe you know, they're going to happen, you just don't know when, like, they're going to come up, and they're just random. And then the third dimension is lack of control, or lack of agency. And this is all those I mentioned this already, the external stressors that we feel powerless to influence are powerless to change. We just, we don't have control there they happen. And now we have a situation that we that we want to do something about or make a choice in the context of what we can't change the stressor. So chronic stress becomes problematic to your physiology. When it's constant, unrelenting, feels impossible to manage or to relieve. Right. And then it's ramped up and exacerbated by inconsistency, unexpectedness, and novelty. So you take all that together, and I'm sure you can identify some things in your life that fit the bill. So now the question is, what does this do to you and I know a lot of this is going to be quote unquote, negative might stress you out, just hearing what stress does do. But awareness is the first step. Right awareness of these things, I hope reduces stress in a way, because then you'll know where you can focus your energy and mitigate these issues. So the first is sleep, stress and sleep are intricately tied. Think we know that right? Cortisol, which we often call the stress hormone, and there are other stress hormones can impair your your ability to sleep. I mean, this is just thinking about your stressful things in your life can cause you to have insomnia, or it can cause you to disrupt your sleep or wake you up in the middle of the night thinking about it, raise your hand, if you'd have this happened. This hasn't happened many times, okay, happens to me a lot. When things are exceptionally stressful, I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night. And all I can do is find a piece of paper to write it all down so I can get back to sleep. So the sleep quality and your recovery and recharging from your sleep as affected by stress. And now you feel wired. But exhausted, right, you get these restless nights night after night. If you're wearing something like an aura ring, it's going to show you very little deep sleep. And yet you might be in bed for eight hours, but just not getting the sleep. And this is I put this in the top. Because I've said before how like just being sleep deprived alone can massively reduce your metabolism can increase your fat storage in the abdomen can increase your hunger, all those things. But oftentimes stress is the cause of the poor sleep. And any amount of sleep hygiene or sleep hacks aren't going to fix the sleep until you fix the stress. So if we can recognize that in ourselves, that sleep may not be the root cause but stress might be that can be helpful. All right. Second is the the effect that stress has on your nutrition on your dietary choices. Because chronic stress like lack of sleep drives cravings for high energy foods, high sugar, high fat comfort foods as well because there's an emotional component to it. And it also depletes nutrients in your body like it can actually reduce your absorption of nutrients to an extent like where your gut kind of malfunctions and your body becomes less efficient with handling, you know, processing B vitamins, zinc, magnesium, those kinds of things. So whatever your intake you have from your nutrients, the effective effectiveness of them goes down. And then between both the cravings and the nutrient depletion, now your quality dietary quality suffers. And that can lead to other impacts on many other things. Okay, then we have got health, all right. Chronic stress can inhibit stomach acid production. And that is probably tied to the absorption issue I just talked about. All right, B 12, iron, even protein, okay, protein absorption, it disrupts the microbiome, right? healthy gut microbiome, and we're just discovering now how important that is to your health overall, as well, it could affect your digestion to stress affects your training and gym performance. Right? This is huge. So when we talk about recovery, we talk about sleep, stress food, well, if the stress is high, it's hard to have get those extra reps in the gym, it's hard to feel energized, you may not be pre processing carbs and protein as efficiently, you're nutrient depleted, the list goes on, right? And then you have this elevated cortisol. Which guess what, ladies and gentlemen, elevated cortisol is catabolic over the long term, meaning it breaks down tissue, it probably has to do with your body trying to marshal resources to get close to homeostasis, because you're in this high stress state. And so it impairs muscle building or it causes muscle tissue breakdown. All right. The last effect of stress I want to talk about is your body composition overall. Okay? The increase in cortisol also induces further insulin resistance. And this contributes toward, you know, fat gain. Of course, as much as we talk about having high enough carbs and lifting helping all of this, the stress is counteracting that, right? Cortisol signals the body to store more fat, especially the harmful visceral fat. So if these aren't all reasons to improve your stress, I don't know what is. So now let's talk about the physiology of the stress response just to get a little bit sciency but not go as deep as like Sam did on his his multi part series. So this is the the fight or flight that you've heard about many times the sympathetic versus parasympathetic. So the sympathetic response right. When the brain perceives a threat, it signals the hypothalamus to activate the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands are what pump out stress hormones, cortisol, and adrenaline. By the way, cool, little side story. Adrenaline and epinephrine are the same thing. And they both mean above the kidney, add renal, EPA nephron, Latin Greek, if you found that interesting, share this podcast, okay.
Philip Pape 19:37
So the adrenal pumps out those hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Cortisol then affects everything, your whole body's physiology, immune health, metabolism, etc. Right? And here's another interesting thing, your brain structure changes with chronic stress. The amygdala enlarges and actually increases the fear and stress response the amygdala. Like the primal part of your brain, that response is a response to the fight or flight. So you're actually now you're effectively training your amygdala to be bigger and stronger, which is not what you want. And then the opposite happens with the hippocampus. The hippocampus is responsible for memories, and regulating your mood, guess what happens to it, it can atrophy. So Holy crap, like, I just learned this going to this research, I hadn't explored this specific phenomenon. But you're effectively strength training parts of your brain with your stress in the wrong direction, when you have too much stress, a bigger amygdala, a smaller hippocampus? I don't know. I think that's pretty cool. I'm fascinated by this stuff. I nerd out on it. But it's also scary in a way, isn't it? It creates this vicious cycle of greater reactivity, like you react more easily. And then you perpetuate the chemical response that's going on. So it's like it's this vicious cycle. And you probably know what I'm talking about. Soon as you get wired and stressful, and you're chronically stressed it, it just goes on and on and on. Even if you have a day or two of like, being able to relax and do stuff yourself. It's like, it's a temporary Band Aid, and everything's just ramps right back up. So what do we do about it? All right, I'm gonna throw a lot of you today, I realize that, but I like to be complete, and give you a lot of options. And so before I even go through my whole list here, my main action for you today, and I'm going to reiterate this later in the podcast, my main action that I asked you to do is pick one thing, pick one thing that's easy, and simple. Okay? If I'm telling you that having more sex will reduce your stress, and you don't have a sexual partner, that's probably not the one you're gonna go after. And maybe you're laughing right now. And that's the point I wanted to give you a little chuckle. But if there's something on this list, that is far from what you can do right now, don't worry about it. Don't even think about it. Pick one thing, that's easy, that you can give yourself a reminder to do tomorrow. Okay, this is the new year. I don't think I mentioned that this is the first full episode of the new year. So Happy New Year. And I'm thinking that we're all stressful this time of year. We're past the kind of high emotional high of the holidays. And now we're looking at the long path of our year, pick something that's easy to do. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits, & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you Lyft go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today. I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. And if we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show. Okay, so what are the options? First, we have lifestyle changes, and techniques. So these are all you can call them stress hacks. But these are all the very important things that I would recommend to a client, and usually would be more personalized to their life. But I want you to think about your life in which one of these makes sense. So first, we have anything that is creative or expressive. Okay, the this is like a form of self therapy. If you like art, if you'd like to paint or draw, or do Legos, or some sort of craft, if you'd like to play music, like I play saxophone, I don't do it as much as I would like. So that could be on my list. And my kids both play clarinet and flute, so I can play with them. And they play piano as well. Right? singing music, listening to me, not really the listening and this is more about expressing yourself. Okay, writing, creative writing. You like to write stories, or poems. This is not to be confused with like work writing, writing emails and social posts that you just don't like to do this is a more enjoyable form of writing. Maybe you want to use a quill maybe you want to do calligraphy, right? Maybe you want to write thank you notes to people. Dancing is another one. And dancing can be everything from just jumping around with your your wife or husband at home to meet not jumping around. But I mean dancing to music or dancing with your kids or just dancing on your own right, or going out and dancing somewhere. I'm sure you can come up with other ideas but different ways to express yourself. And by the way, after I give you this list, I'm going to share specific examples from the community and for my clients that might spark some inspiration. The next one is social connection not just once in a blue moon, but regular so also a connection. And this does include sex and intimacy with your spouse or partner, okay? In a real meaningful way, right? Not, we're not talking about random sex and one night stands, we're talking about meaningful connections here.
Philip Pape 25:14
But also connections with your friends, like if you have one or two or three close friends that you can meet with on a regular basis, and you find that a refreshing thing to do, whether it's go out for a drink, hang out their house, go do an activity together. This could also be groups and communities you connect with online, or through texting, or through WhatsApp or Telegram, there's so many ways, right? Find a group, there are many groups support groups out there if you need them. Alright, the third thing, spending time in nature, or outdoors, this can be going for a walk in the woods, killing two birds with one stone getting your gear steps in, so to speak, but doing it because it's outside, you get your Vitamin D sunshine, the birds chirping, there's something visceral about our connection with as humans with nature. And some of you in the community have posted how you live, you know, at the ocean, your rivers, near the woods, even in the city, there's so many beautiful places, and interesting places you can spend time in nature or outdoors. The next one is an interesting one, a lot of people resonate with this, especially in my community planning and organizing. So planning your day, your meals, your schedule, your vacation coming up your week, you know, it requires a little bit of intense activity and concentration, maybe gets you into a flow state. But for that half hour of work, so to speak, that probably feels pretty productive, and feels good to you not really stressful, so to speak, the reward is then your whole, you know, future for that thing is planned out. And now you don't have to make decisions in the future. And that takes away fatigue. And stress organizing is the same way some people really want to organize, whether it's their house, you know, cleaning, doing the chores, mowing the lawn, organizing your thoughts on a whiteboard, organizing things in a post it note, whatever. I mean, organizing means a lot of things. The next thing is all the stuff related to what we talked about on the show. So training, optimizing your nutrition, optimizing your sleep, so I think sleep and stress can kind of play off each other. So if if you feel that your sleep can easily be improved, not easily, but that improving your sleep can reduce your stress. And that's the main thing causing the stress. Because you just feel like you lack energy and everything else just builds up. And all you need is an extra hour of sleep, or a little bit better quality sleep, of course, I'm going to encourage you to try to do that, find a way to do that, and then see if it doesn't also reduce your stress. So it can go both ways. And then of course training and nutrition. I guess I'll just be explicit about that. If you're doing too much exercise, that can be stressful. But also if you're sedentary and you're not training at all, adding in resistance training in particular, but also walking are absolutely going to contribute positively to reducing stress, the resistance training does in many ways. One way is the acute stressor of the activity itself, which builds this physiological and as you realize brain based physical resilience to stress that carries you into the rest of your day and the rest of the week. But walking and endorphins from even other forms of cardio have been shown to reduce stress. Nutrition is just eating enough eating enough food. Like if you're dieting, that's going to increase stress just by default, by definition. So one way to increase to reduce stress, if you're in a calorie reduction reduced state is to not be in that state is to eat at least at maintenance or above. We went through this at the end of the year in our body recomp challenge where a lot of people, they said, we said together, we're not going to diet, we're not going to try to be in a surplus or be in a deficit, we're just going to stay where we are. But we're going to build good habits and eat enough food through the holidays and enjoy ourselves. And so many people did that instead. Wow. That was revelatory. That was that was life changing in a way because I realized I can eat more without gaining weight. And the eating more. reduce my stress helped me sleep better give me more energy helped me perform better in the gym. You see how this is all connected. It's all connected. So optimizing your nutrition is eating enough. It's also eating enough of the right macronutrients and micronutrients to support your health. So that's, you know, sufficient protein and carbs, carbs, especially a lot of you listening. If you're low carb or keto and you have a lot of stress, bumping up your carbs. It can help possibly I've seen it time and again happen. I talked about this on the more carbs more muscle episode because of the hormonal response to additional carbs. So they're all worth the all all things that need to be looked at. Okay, so that to a pretty good list of the big ones of how to reduce stress. Actually, I have more I have more, I'm categorizing these in different ways. So I'm going to talk about supplements. And I'm going to talk about more advanced stress management skills specifically, I'll get to that in a second. One thing mentioned is part of exercise could be really any movement that relaxes you. So that could include of course, a yoga, it could include stretching, like all of that in there. Okay. Now from our Wits, & Weights community and from our clients. Many of my clients contributed some ideas, as well as those in the Facebook community, which is totally free, you can join in the link in the show notes as always. And I'm going to shout them out by name, I think they wouldn't mind because they posted right in the community. I'll just give their first name. Just see this. Her idea she had two that I wanted to share photography. That's a form of art of creative expression. She also likes walks on the beach. Again, getting out in nature and the beach in particular, there's supposedly science not supposedly, but there's science that shows like the ionized water coming off of the ocean coming off of waterfalls has some positive interaction with our physiology. I don't know the details. I'm sorry, but look it up. It's pretty cool stuff that we are really attracted to walking near bodies of water being your body's water for our stress. Okay, Eric said he likes to relax, okay, I love that just saying relax, because relax, I didn't even mention it could just be veg and out. Just chillin, read a book, right? Watching TV, playing a video game. I can play a violent video game, and it will relax me, which sounds crazy, right? But it's something that I really look forward to. I enjoy it. I'm good at it. It doesn't take a lot of thought. And as a result, I get relaxed regardless of whether the content seems quote unquote, stressful because I know it's fake. And that's just me. Okay. Anyway, relax. And then listen to podcasts. And listen to podcast is great way to reduce stress if it if it helps you relax, for example, or if it's entertaining, but also even if it's helping you with your personal growth. And it solves some sort of problem for you as you're listening. And maybe it maybe inspires you to write down an action that you're going to take and then that gives you confidence and certainty as to your next step. Leanne says reprioritizing tasks. I love this one, this is related to the organization and planning. But this is saying let me look at all the things on my to do list and reprioritize them, which could include eliminating them. But it also is putting the most important and urgent ones at the top right, maybe getting some out of the way right now getting them done. Maybe delegating them. So that could definitely reduce stress. Shannon said I love this quote, lift heavy, heavier and heaviest I had to include in there. I just love the quote the idea of lifting heavy reduces stress, I can attest to that. And pretty much everybody I know who lives heavy states that that's the case, there's absolutely no negatives that I can think of to lifting heavy with good form. You know, so there you go. Chrissy says yoga and cleaning. So yoga, specifically, a lot of people love to do yoga, as a form of movement, and mindfulness. And then cleaning, this goes under the category of I guess organizing maybe being in control, right and being proud and happy about your space around you. Very important. Right? A lot of people get stressed just seeing a bunch of clutter lying around. Brianne said Transcendental Meditation. Now she mentioned a specific book in the group. I didn't write it down for the notes. So go into the Wits, & Weights Facebook community, and you'll see a post that I did about what's your favorite way to reduce stress. And she mentioned it in there. But again, if you can't find it reach out. We'll point it out to you. But that's a very specific skill called transcendental meditation. Josh said organize, prioritize, execute. So I like how we included all of those which go under the planning and organization. And it kind of combines with what Leanne said about reprioritizing tasks. So organize your tasks, prioritize them, and then execute them. And that's actually an important one too, like, just getting stuff done, can reduce stress. And one of my quick quotes was about procrastination. And for many of you, you may be stressed because you're procrastinating. And so if you can use one of those tools to reduce your to do list
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that can reduce stress. All right, Tony mentioned one that I really liked here, reminding himself of the big picture. Yeah. How often do we get in the weeds? And we get stressed? Because we think there are a million things we have to do. And when you take a step back, you realize you know what, it's not that bad. Like, all these are nice, but there's this one thing that's really superseding all of it. Actually, it's what Carl Carl Berryman would call it Have your big lifts, the metaphorical big lifts in your life? So yeah. Carol said asked for help. Yes, you know, I didn't really have that up in the top while I had social connection. But asking for help specifically, from that group, to reduce your stress, so not just waiting to kind of get together in a, in a normal, relaxed situation. But when you're stressed right now, and you know, somebody can give you that help reach out and be specific and say, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm in a tough spot right now, could you help me with this thing and be specific and ask for help. And then she also said, venting to someone who will listen. So again, that's, that's related to social connection, if you have someone who you tend to help each other out, again, what Carl calls, give a spot, get a spot, right? They're probably one of the easiest people to talk to, and share with what's actually going on and vent. And they'll be accepting of that, right, and be able to take on some not even take the burden to you, it's a burden that you're releasing to the other person, it's probably a privilege that they can on, you know, release the burden from you. And they're not really taking on a burden. By doing that. In fact, they're, they probably feel more fulfilled, at least that's how I feel about it, when I'm helping someone who wants to vent and they're doing it in a genuine way and looking for support. And then the one I have that I just came up with, on my way to recording this podcast was, don't always listen to your podcasts on high speed. Like I said to x, I never listened to that fast. But sometimes I'll listen to them at 1.25 or 1.5, just to speed them up a bit. I think it's okay to do that. Sometimes, like if it's the information is kind of superficial enough that you don't have to hear every word and you're just trying to get the general content in. And maybe maybe I'm making an excuse and rationalizing, but if you do it all the time, I feel like it's going to hype you up to kind of wire you up and get you anxious. I've done that. And then I go to have a conversation. And I feel like it's slow. I'm like, Oh, that's not good. Like it's a time dilation, you know, kind of gravity will phenomenon happening there. So anything that wires you up, that can be slowed down is possibly a way to reduce stress. Okay, so that was a whole bunch of like, things that you can try. There are supplements as well that can aid with stress and cortisol, in particular, such as the adaptogens, or nootropics. Now, the big one that you hear about a lot is ashwagandha. And I will swear by this for a lot of people. But again, I'm not as a nutrition coach, I can't prescribe anything, these are herbal supplements, I'm not recommending them specifically to anyone, I'm just putting them out there. If you want to experiment with yourself ashwagandha, rhodiola, Rosea, Panax. Ginseng, there's others. And for a lot of people, this fills a gap or addresses a deficiency that is related to stress, and then it reduces their stress, I'm not going to go into the mechanism behind them. Because I don't want to spend too much time talking about supplements when there are a lot of natural lifestyle changes that can be made first. But the other thing that comes to mind, we talked about nutrition and micronutrients. I think if you have a deficiency that can be easily checked, usually with bloodwork, like magnesium. Or if you're vegan, and you want to take B complex vitamins, you know, B 12. That alone could could be also causing stress if you don't have enough of a certain mineral, or vitamin. And then we have what I'm going to call stress management skills. And I left these for the end as a separate section because I think they're more advanced. And sometimes tell me if I'm not wrong in your head here. Because this is a one way conversation. Sometimes I get I don't know, if you do I get stressed out thinking about stress management, like thinking about, okay, now I need to do mindfulness, I need to do meditation and breath work. And all the things I'm gonna mention here, that's actually three of the six things I'm gonna mention. But I don't want you to feel stressed that you have to go do some advanced skill, some guided thing, something you have to like learn over days or weeks. And even though these are helpful, and a lot of people swear by them, I'd rather you take the simple, easy step first, and then put this on, you're like, Okay, that's my, that's my next level list. And these are mindfulness. And that means a lot of things. For a lot of people, that simply means being in the moment and being present. Right. Alan Friedman and our group did a mindfulness session recently. It was also alternate nostril breathing, which is a form of breathwork. That's available in the community. And I think I put out an episode on that recently, over the holidays. So check that out if you want to be guided through it in an easy way. But there are also apps like the aura ring has an app. There's breathe and breath and so many apps that have mindfulness meditation and breathwork type activities and they just have a calming voice that walks you through for one minute, five minutes, 10 minutes, some exercise to help you get in the moment and reduce your stress So I'm not against any of those, I just want you to be aware, there are a lot of other things you can do as well. So we have mindfulness, we have meditation, we have breath work, and breath work could be as simple as belly breathing, or the four second, or the box breathing technique, or the alternate nostril breathing. We also have cognitive reappraisal, which is a fancy way of saying, re framing. So this one I actually like a lot. But it's not like something you just do necessarily so much as you it's a principle, and a way of thinking, when you say or write something about yourself, of reframing the situation from a negative to a positive. And I use this with clients all the time, like this is almost every week with every client, there's something that they might say, that can be reframed to put in a positive light. And that can reduce stress, because now it takes you from thinking, your failure, stress to, oh, I just learned something. And now I can make a choice to do something different control, less stress. A few other things are guided imagery. I mean, I could add a whole bunch of things to this list. But the last one I want to add, and this is something you can do right now, if you have someone in the vicinity is hug someone. Can you hug someone right now? And you know, what if you can't hug someone in the vicinity, or it would be weird, because you're in the grocery store, and then strangers, hug yourself, like, hug yourself and just love yourself right now. I'm serious, hug someone or hug yourself. That's what I'm talking about with connection, and how that can reduce stress. And some of us are isolated. We're working from home. We are rarely out and about seeing people. Hopefully we're doing it more now with the world a little bit more opened up again. But some of us are oftentimes in a very isolated environment for long stretches. And if you can connect with someone in any way whatsoever, do it. I hope that this episode has connected with you in some way as well. I help my calm soothing voice has helped. Just kidding. And yeah, I think I think that covers stress, I could just go on and on and on. But this episode, I want to keep it less than an hour. So what I'm going to say here is that stress itself can be a big, overwhelming, stressful topic. So again, if there's one takeaway from this episode is this identify one lifestyle change, or stress management technique that we just mentioned in the show? That sounds fun and easy for you to implement. And then reserve time in your schedule this week. For that activity. You can use the timestamps in the show notes to go back to the last section where I explained all of those right, go back to the timestamps don't stress, it's easy to go find it, use the timestamp and just pick one. Alright, last thing. Just as a reminder, I created a free stress solution guide to go along with this episode. It's basically very detailed outline that mirrors the content of the show pretty exactly. I mean, I basically took my notes and I turned it into a guide for you. And you can download that at wits & weights.com/free, or click the link in my show notes. Again, that's wits & weights.com/free or click the link under the episode resources in the show notes. Okay, in our next episode 135 The truth about testosterone for women's health with Karen Martell, one of our most popular guests, Karen Martell of the hormone solution podcast is back and she is uncovering the truth about testosterone for women. You'll learn the role of testosterone and women's health and vitality who might benefit from testosterone therapy. Common questions related to the benefits, safety and dosage of TRT and where all this is headed into the future. As always, stay strong. Don't stress and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong
