Stress and the metabolism.

Stress and the metabolism.

🤓A study, which was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, found that people who are chronically stressed are more likely to have a higher body mass index (BMI) and more abdominal fat. "Our findings suggest that chronic stress may be a risk factor for obesity.”

There are lots of different types of stress. 

😕Diet choices 

🙁Life events

☹️Illness 

😣Poor sleep

😣Exercise 

😖Trauma 

🫢Fasting

🥶Cold exposure 

😳Even our perception matters 

Stress in-our metabolism is anything that activates the fight or flight system. 

The fuel for this is carbs. Both fight and flight require explosive action so the body raises blood glucose in ready-ness for this life threatening event! 

💥Maybe vikings coming to raid your village. Or a bear attack… no it’s just your mobile phone ring asking you if you’ve been in accident in the last year. 😡

🩸 Now what will your body do with all this blood glucose, As you didn’t use it? The body raises insulin to clear it, Every time this happens you potentially damage your insulin receptors a little and raise blood sugar damages your cells a little. If your stress involved movement, your body will clear it through the movement.

Stress is not a problem, if stress happens once or twice a day. The body can easily handle this. A little stress is good, great In-fact. The problem is when you are stressed 24/7 this is called chronic stress. Chronic stress bad… very bad. 

This can cause insulin resistance, in the same way eating a super high carbohydrate diet can. 

YOU CAN GET INSULIN RESISTANCE EVEN WITH A LOW CARB DIET IF YOUR STRESS IS OUT OF CONTROL.

‘Not me bro I’m keto ’carbs aren’t essential don’t you know.” 

😠This is such a miss understanding. You don’t need to thinking about breathing, this doesn’t not equal you don’t need oxygen. Eating carbohydrates is not essential because your body will make them. For example Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the body. It is not essential because your body can make it out of the other amino acids. Essential and nonessential just refers to whether it needs to be ingest or not. 

Glucose and glutamine are fu*king essential in the body just like oxygen. The body isn’t going to gamble on whether you can find it in your environment or choose to eat it or not. 

Your body doesn’t care, if it wants carbs it will go a head and make carbs! 

Gluconeogenesis, is the formation of carbohydrates out of substances that are not carbohydrates. 

🔥 Here’s an example for context, you do not need worry about putting logs or kindling on the fire if your house is on fire. This is what chronic stress is like. ‘It’s cool bro my house is keto.’ No your fu*king house is on fire. 

Yes Keto can work for weight loss, so does anything that reduces energy below your adaptive TDEE. Keto and stress Doesn’t work. You are stripping your lean tissue and which is causing your metabolic rate to slow down.

All you are doing is burning your house down. 

Context matters. This is where you need metabolic detective work. Don’t follow systems and the one size fits all gurus, learn principles. This will teach you to navigate your own metabolic ocean. 

When you have an over load of stress this isn’t the time to think about losing some pounds, loose or deal with the stress first. Here’s quote of the century for overly stressed people. 

“putting your foot on the break can have more yield than putting your foot on the accelerator.”

It is said “A clever man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from other peoples mistakes.” so here’s a lesson from my mistakes.

2017 ballooned up like a… well like a balloon 🎈 I had spent the last 3 months in hospital with my daughter, who had cancer. Long story… She’s all good now. 😃 

But the stress was unimaginable and it changed me. My body didn’t work as it used to, unknown to me I had developed stress induced insulin resistance. All I knew was I got fluffy. 

I know what todo as a personal trainer I’ll double down in the gym! This is just a matter of discipline… oh poor naive me. You see we have a internal bucket for stress. I imagine stress as dog poo that you put in a bucket. My bucket was full, and doubling down at the gym all it did was fill the bucket till it over filled and made a mess. 💩 

I had become intolerant, to high intensity exercise, really it was just stressful events not just workouts. 20+ mins of what used to be joyous hell, became a week of irritability, anxiety and low mood. All things gravely against my natural, happy go lucky nature. 

“This got me into shape before?” I thought 💭 

It’s obvious to anyone reading this, what I needed to do right? Apply some breaks… Guess what knucklehead did… ‘ let’s try 40 minutes’

What happen I fell out of love for fitness, body composition got worse, and I felt generally awful all the time. Furthermore, my appetite was uncontrollable. 🍕 🍟 

The universe had enough of my silliness and broke my back. As I lay face down on the ground in pain for six months, my appetite, normalised I lost weight. I began some simple breath-work and gratitude practice. Simple highly effective down regulation. 

It just tells the system “Hey metabolism the bad man is gone now.” So internally, I could begin to heal.

Despite being well educated in all aspects of health, metabolism and fitness, sometimes you just need to experience it to learn the lesson. As for how I got back into exercise this guide explain some of it https://anguspt.gumroad.com/l/lumenworkout

🕰️ Turn the clock forward I’m now happy physically and mentally where I’m at, and a better coach for it. Measurably my HRV sits around 150. I’m stronger, my endurance is better (thanks zone 2) 

Resting heart rate low 40s, I’m back to being happy go lucky. 

⛵️The metabolism is adaptive and reactive.

I think of the metabolism like, the Ocean. Your goal is to sail from the UK to America you know where America is. You know the ocean is large and you know where you are. Now you have to navigate the adaptive and reactive ocean.

⛵️You need to put your sails on at the right place at the right time to put you in the right direction. Sometimes the sails go up at full mast. ⚓️Sometimes they come down. If the winds are against you, you have to put the anchor down and wait until the winds pick up from behind again. 

🌊 All you can do is adapt and react to the signs the ocean gives you. If you just put your sails up and hope for the best, you’ll end up smashed against the rocks, with a broken boat. 🤡

If 7 billion people try it. They’ll be a small fraction of people where the wind picks them and takes them to their destination, that’s luck not a good plan. 

I’m very sympathetic towards stress. (Pun intended) Because I’ve been there, I’m still more sensitive to stress than I was before it feels like that stress pathway has been opened. 

However, To make progress you must apply stress, this does not need to be random, violent or overload your 💩 bucket, it can be systematic and controlled. With a protocol to down regulate afterwards, a nice mix of acceleration and breaks. 🚗 

 Angus