Stress, me, and a blog make three
“Look, Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.” [2001: A Space Odyssey] - Sir Arthur C. Clarke [photo courtesy of FilmReference.com]
When it comes to losing weight, managing stress over the last several months has been my biggest challenge. While I’m still ahead of the game at 26 lbs for the year, my recent progress has really slowed. (You can read more about my progress in my most recent status report, “Forget Lassie - Simple Carbs are Man’s Best Friend“.)
While it is certainly true that daily stress might be more manageable if I were exercising regularly (without question), here’s the problem: So far I haven’t been able to find the motivation that gets me out in the cold and rain of a wet Oregon spring. I am eating well, and I think those habits that I’ve been working on have really paid off in the sense that I’m still losing weight slowly. However, until I get a better handle on the pressures of my current situation and make room for regular exercise, I don’t expect that my weight loss will be accelerated further than it’s current rate. I am certainly not giving up on finding a way out of my front door to go for a run; however, some bigger changes might be in order.
In doing some reading about the effects of stress, it’s clear that beyond inhibiting weight loss, prolonged stress can have real physical consequences. In Dr. Will Clower’s recent book, The French Don’t Diet Plan: 10 Simple Steps to Stay Thin for Life
Here’s a summary of some of the common effects:
- Muscles: Blood sugar levels stay at higher than normal levels, which ultimately leads the body to break down muscle tissue in a search for more energy.
- Immune system: Antibody levels decrease, T-cell response to infection is reduced, and white blood cell count is negatively impacted. Common sense says that if you are stressed for longer periods of time, you are more susceptible to illness. Science agrees.
- Bones: Calcium levels in bones drop over prolonged periods, and the ability for the body to absorb additional calcium is reduced.
- Heart: Basic heart performance appears to be reduced by the overproduction of cortisol as a result of prolonged stress; arteries are also negatively impacted in their ability to perform properly. The ratio of sodium to potassium begins to weigh in favor of sodium, which is thought to lead to high blood pressure.
- Central nervous system: Neurological hampering begins, with side effects that often include insomnia and depression. Migraine sufferers can move from an occasional migraine to chronic. Prolonged stress also increases muscle tension (this again is common sense), which increases fatigue, which in turn requires your body to seek out more resources for energy. Of great interest is recent research that links excessive stress to creating eating disorders.
- Weight: Hormones responsible for cravings to eat more are produced (presumably in its search for more energy), but the focus of the expenditure of that energy is typically in your extremities. Your digestive tract is the victim in this case, which may partially explain why ulcers were thought to be stress related. Essentially, you eat more but get less nourishment. What’s more, in recent studies it has been shown that stress hormones contribute to storing fat in your midsection, which is linked to higher risks for certain cancers and heart disease.
- Habits: Eating faster, eating more, making poor food choices, and eating out of necessity rather than pleasure become commonplace. We wind up treating food like gasoline - cheap and convenient, with the stopover to acquire it reduced to a mild inconvenience. Eating should be more than just a mild inconvenience.
Need I say more?
In our culture, we have been trained to look for solutions in the form of a product or a packaged plan. We are told that if we just wait long enough, we’ll soon have a miracle pill that will cure all that ails us. It could happen; certainly we are farther along that road than we were when Sir Arthur C. Clark wrote the words in the opening quote for this article. Sometimes, however, the answer is right in front of us, without a shipping and handling surcharge, or a computer trying to lock us out of the vehicle.
I am taking this week off work, hoping to recharge, catch up on rest, spend time with my wife and children, and reconnect with friends and compadres in the blogosphere. By the end of the week I expect to know what the next week will look like, but beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess, and I’m OK with that.
Stay tuned.
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I hope you have a great week off Metro!
healthranker.com Says: 02.06.08 at 5:02 pm
Stress, me, and a blog make three | AlmostFit.com…
In our culture, we have been trained to look for solutions in the form of a product or a packaged plan. Sometimes a better answer is right before us….
I spent the morning at the spa. That was heaven. I feel totally unstressed. Guys should go to the spa. I would change things so that they could watch sports television when they were soaking in their Moor Mud Bath instead of the candles though. Have a great week off.
@Christine: You know, that really is something that is missing in our culture. Men have done this for centuries in many other areas of the world - a friend of mine (an American) described his experience at a Japanese bath house, which was particularly funny because being physically larger than most Japanese men, he had a heck of a time keeping his towels in order. But, humor aside, he said it was transforming as far as understanding serenity.
Here’s the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A147999
You’re totally right. I oughta’ think about doing that!
Great blog, good advice. I like it when i see people are aware of such issues.
Enjoy your week off!
The stress thing definitely can affect your progress… but I’m also hearing a wee bit of an “excuse” on the exercise. Yep, it was POURING rain and cold here yesterday and honestly, it doesn’t feel at all like summer here yet. So outdoor exercise plans can sure be iffy.
But, that’s no reason not to get some kind of exercise in. If you want to become a regular exerciser, you’ll need to line up strategies for getting workouts even when the weather is positively icky. That might mean taking a class, doing body weight exercises at home, buying a piece of exercise equipment, going jogging/walking inside your local mall (if you have one… there’s none here), doing a DVD workout in your living room, whatever it takes.
Mind you, it won’t do you good stressing over exercise, but maybe just make a small start. Knock out some pushups in the morning before you leave for work. A set of body weight squats when you take a break from the computer. Put on a good upbeat CD and dance if that works for you. And if you can find even 5 minutes for a little quiet time, that might help with the stress as well.
The exercise really does help with stress… whatever is bugging me, I can put it aside for that time, focus on my workout and you just feel so much better afterwards.
@Cynthia: LOL yes, for sure it is tinged with “excuse” - but I like to think of it more as “honesty” — I am trying to get behind it (in fact I did my Wednesday Walk today!), but I just haven’t found my way out that front door on a regular basis yet. That said, I do believe that the best thing to do in such situations is simply, “something” — any step in the right direction is better than where you were before that step. So I’m getting there. Excuses and all.
On the small workouts, I must say - I LOVE this advice. I think this way too. I am trying to talk myself into a Wii Fit…of course, it might be just to get that new Mario Kart game, but I’ve heard a lot of positive things about it.
On stress and exercise, I totally have the same experience. I just need to get up and do it.
Thank you for the encouragement - it makes a big difference!
One of the things that helps me “just do it” is to get dressed appropriately for exercise. Once I have my sports bra, my heart rate monitor and my shoes on, by then it seems silly not to do “something”… even if I don’t much feel like it. So usually I’ll start in on “something” and next thing you know, I’ll have done a workout.
Congrats on getting the walk in! My sister just got a Wii Fit and she LOVES it! So that’s probably on the agenda for us eventually, once we get a larger TV. (I’m tired of squinting at our relatively tiny set, LOL!) I think it would be a very good thing for you, again, you could do something in small sessions. And even a little bit might help de-stressing you.
I had a moment today… I’d ordered a new fitness DVD set to play with. Woke up late… decided a little semi-fasted cardio might be a good idea, say 10 minutes. So I got my gear on, and was starting to feel like doing zip… and then heard a something land against the front door. Guess what? Fitness DVDs. No more excuses left, LOL! So I plugged one in and struggled through the warm-up/stretch session then into some power yoga, where I was TOTALLY HOPELESS. I was about to pack it in then and quit, but felt like I hadn’t really worked that much, so I kept the DVD playing and ended up doing the entire workout, which went to fairly normal moves after the yoga stuff. I could DO that. The yoga I’ll have to work on separately.
Hang in there! After you get going on regular exercise, you’ll find you really miss it if you skip a week!
You should read up on adrenal fatigue syndrome. I was experiencing most of the stress-related illnesses you described (insomnia, digestive issues, ulcers, depression, extreme fatigue, food cravings and my heart rate was not recovering as quickly after workouts despite not being anywhere near overtrained). I went to a holistic medicine internist and discovered I have adrenal fatigue syndrome. It’s basically one step further than what you described, in that my adrenals are so overworked and have become so weak from prolonged stress that I no longer produce enough cortisol. I had no idea such a thing could happen. Now I’m on a strict detox diet (fruits, vegetables, eggs, fish, nuts/seeds - that’s it) to allow my adrenals to recover. I’m also not allowed to exercise to the point of breaking a sweat (adds stress to the body). The last piece I need to work on is reducing my stress. I haven’t quite figured that one out yet because, well, I’m a bit of a stress junkie. Much like a heroin addict, I seek out my next “fix” of stress. Hopefully you’re not in as bad of shape as I am.