Linking Stress with Fitness Targets

27Jul/100

Linking Stress with Fitness Targets

Everyone has thoughts about upgrading themselves and improving their fitness, health and even indirectly their confidence levels. It is however far too easy to lose motivation, especially if you are expecting drastic and short term results. Its a hard truth but changing your body shape, fitness, diet and lifestyle is something that takes time. Realistically 'diets' can help you loose weight, if you start eating less but continue to be as active as before your body will loose weight and depending on the extremeness of the diet it can do so quite quickly.

Diet

BUT there are a few BIG problems with this firstly any crash diet is likely to see you losing the wrong type of weight. If you suddenly cut out all the fat from your diet your body will start burning your body fat in its place right? Well sadly NO this is not really true. If you starve your body of fat it is more likely to hold onto the body fat you already have as its supply has been cut of, put simply it rations! You may well loose weight but it is likely to be muscle wastage (this is called atrophy) and is especially true if you have quite a lot of muscle to start with.

The other big problem is even if you loose weight as soon as you stop the diet you will put it straight back on again! what you really need to do is change your lifestyle and diet (as in your life diet not a diet period) if you eat badly it is almost impossible to just change just like that, the key is to start small and make little changes that are realistic and you can stick to. For example start by cutting crisps out of your daily diet or replacing them with a baked alternative, once you have got used to this change make another one say eat 3 average sized meals + 2 - 3 snacks per day as opposed to gorging yourself on 3 massive platefuls! This will keep your metabolic rate up and means your body will be burning calories more consistently.

Other than diet the main factors which can effect you reaching your targets are lack of sleep and stress!

Stress and Worry

Stress is an unavoidable fact of life, if your lucky it will be infrequent but its likely it could be a daily inevitability if your job involved pressure and stress. When you are stressed you body releases a hormone called cortisol and reduces the amount of testosterone that your body produces which is a terrible combination which will stop you from putting on muscle or making cardiovascular fitness advancements. This is similar too, and can be linked with, lack of sleep.

So What Can You Do?

But what can I do about it? Well there are no magic fixes and its not as simple as flicking a switch, but there are a number of things you can do to improve your sleep routine and help your self to de-stress and stop worrying.

Sleep and Stress can be a very difficult lifestyle factors to solve, many people cannot 'turn off' when going to bed and constantly have worries and thoughts running through their minds, others cant wind down from what they have been doing immediately before bed. Sadly this can be a difficult problem to resolve but doing the following will certainly help:

Stop watching/listening to any vibrant and immersive media about an hour before bed - watching Die Hard before bed might seem like a good idea but your brain will be wired and you will find it harder to sleep
Have a hot milky drink before bed - milk and honey or a malty drink are perfect and milk contains casein which is a slow release protein which will stop you from waking up starving the next morning
Write down your thoughts and worries - if they are constantly spinning round your head get a pen and paper and write down your ideas, thoughts and worries, this should keep them on the paper and keep them out of your head
Carry out a relaxing activity - Having a relaxing bath is absolutely perfect for this! A bath should mentally relax and de-stress you by allowing you to let go of your concerns, try reading a book or listening to some relaxing music or even just day dream, this should take your mind away from life's problems and take your mind to where you want to be, think about things you have to look forward to and things you want to achieve. As well as changing your state of mind a bath, shower or steam will physically relax your body, soaking the muscles and loosening up your body and joints means you should be free of any physical aches and pains which might be keeping you up leading to a better nights sleep and a relaxed mind set.

Conclusion

Everyone deals with stress and sleep problems at some point, if you are into your fitness and well being these can be severely detrimental to your training and health. A healthy mind and a well rested body are much more important than they are ever given credit for. This is true regardless of your lifestyle.

Relaxing and loosening up both mentally and physically will mean better rest, better mental well being and better results no matter what you training program involves be it running, cycling or building muscle, rest and relaxation are key to progressing in them all.

So get to it, chill out before bed, take a bath to de-stress and loosen up your body with a steam or a whirlpool bath, after very little time at all you will be feeling more alert, more positive and most importantly happier not to mention seeing improvements in your lifestyle and fitness goals. Relaxation and happiness are often under rated and pushed aside in our busy lives.....pull them back into focus!