Are you feeling a little stressed these days? Here are some solutions...

Are you being chased by lions, tigers and bears each day?

Do you struggle with weight loss, fatigue and depression?

Even if you are you eating low carb-high fat that balances your blood sugar- you may not be able to become fat adapted if you keep calling on the fire department to put out “fires” or you keep being chased by a “saber tooth lion” for hours a day!
Let’s get started on learning how to become a fat burner by evaluating and investigating our lifestyle habits and behaviors.
Are you living life as a race and not a journey?

The first step in slowing down and taking care of the WHOLE you are by reducing or eliminating sources of stress that you can control. Now grab your new journal, notebook or a piece of paper. I would love for you to start a daily gratitude journal as well, but we will discuss that later when we get to the “happiness” element of the coaching program.

1. Identify your internal and external stressors that you are AWARE of today.

2. MAKE A LIST OF YOUR ENERGY ROBBERS: write down 5-10 “things” and people that set you off or cause you anxiety, frustration or just overall STRESS!?

3. Next, take that list and break it up into another list of any TOXIC PEOPLE that you can “remove”, avoid, ignore or change in your life. Family you can’t control, but what friends or people that you interact with in your life that suck the energy out of you?

4. DETOX your life – now after you identified energy robbers and toxic people in your life, let’s identify toxins in your environment and household items that you can switch out for a toxic brand (or make your own with essential oils -see ideas on Pinterest). Check out the EWG website or app for looking up your favorite items. STRESS also comes from toxins- what we put on, and in our body, as well as inhale in the air around us matters to our WHOLE health (remember optimal health starts begins at our cellular level and in our gut).

5. SCHEDULE your day – but now add breaks or “reset and reboot” times during the day. Perhaps you schedule in 5-10 minutes of breathing or using a meditation app as HEADSPACE. The point is, add more space or pauses during your day so you can slow down and recalibrate before you go onto the next meeting, event, chore or errand.

6. Measure your heart rate variability to track your resiliency and recovery from stress including day to day activities, life stress, quality of sleep, food sensitivities and exercise sessions. Sweetbeat Life app, Elite HRV app and the OURA ring are great to check out! We use the MYZONE Bluetooth heart rate monitor (see my website to order and join our team) for exercise and HRV testing. Track and measure what you can to check your progress on strengthening your nervous system.

7. Implement more HORMETIC exercises or habits into for your day. Hormetic stressors are “good” positive sources of stress in acute doses, blasts or bursts.

a. Exercise: HIIT Training
b. Intermittent Fasting
c. Infrared Sauna Therapy
d. Cryotherapy
e. Oxygen deprivation
f. Sun exposure

Hormesis in your body’s response to acute stressors and overtime with these “acute blasts” or doses of these healthy sources of stress, we adapt to the stress response, get stronger and build resiliency. In a Bulletproof podcast interview with Dave Asprey and Scott Carney, Scott explained that hormetic stress “exercises” can change your body’s reaction to different stressors by repeated exposure of increasing the dosage or intensity.

The wrong type of stress can damage our mitochondria with oxidative stress. This is another reason why hormesis is so beneficial for our mitochondria as it helps make our cells more resilient to oxidative damage. More later on oxidative stress – especially for the endurance athlete!

As I shared in my personal story in “LIFE IS NOT A RACE”, I was/am a victim of what I call “chronic stress disease” and my addiction to busyness led to creating an internal mess in my body functions… my body systems became dysfunctional or not functioning at optimal levels. Reed Davis, the founder of the FDN Practitioner program, explains how chronic stress leads to dis-ease and creates “METABOLIC CHAOS” on your internal body systems. I had this happen to me starting back in 2013. Somehow, I missed my personal red flags notifying me to SLOW DOWN and ENJOY THE JOURNEY. I was racing from the time I woke up in the morning (way too early) and didn’t stop for any breaks to reset, reboot and recalibrate until I hit the pillow at night. My days were way to busy and packed …and I was running from the “run from a lion” 15 or more hours a day!

We are designed to fight a stressor and defend ourselves but then recovery and repair from that threat, emergency or stress. Until our “fight or flight” becomes ongoing or chronic… leavings us feeling amazingly as a superhero for some time but eventually we start to feel exhausted, burned out on life, depressed and fat! STRESS is needed – we are not to avoid it completely, and that is almost impossible these days, but we are to build strength and resiliency to deal with stress. A type of stress could be either a life emergency, death or attack on your life. That is not an experience we want to go through, but life happens, and we should ideally rebound back from the tragic event.

We should feel alive and thriving each day… not struggling to get out of bed each morning and face the day -or work so hard to lose fat weight or to get strong. It is the chronic stress we want to avoid! We need to repair the leaky faucet and turn the “water” on and off.

I read an article from Dave Asprey, the founder of Bulletproof, on biohacking your ability strengthens your stress response resilience and strength. I loved how he described stress.

“Stress is the disruption of homeostasis or your body’s state of equilibrium. Stress throws your body out of balance.”

We are designed to “run from a lion” and then recover until the next attack – then return back to balance or homeostasis.
How do we get stronger at dealing with these attacks that hit us constantly all day long? We need to have our stress response system stronger and become more resilient – fight and recover. Repeat.

HORMESIS.

How do we strengthen our mitochondria- our energy powerhouses?

HORMESIS.

Avoid chronic stress and improve your H.I.D.D.E.N. internal stressors …then add some healthy new lifestyle habits with the tips below (and more on my podcast, in my book and the manual).

In summary, if you want to become fat adapted (speed up fat loss), optimize your health at a cellular level, improve the aging process and performance gains… then we need to start putting on the oxygen mask and take care of the WHOLE us on the outside and inside.

A few reminders for you to implement into your life today!

1. Identify, eliminate or reduce your negative sources of stress (energy robbers and toxins)

2. Reduce chronic stress by improving lifestyle habits and daily routines

3. Exercise less or more… The GOLDILOCKS Effect (more in the exercise section)

4. Get outside for morning sun exposure -move, stretch, breath and seize the day!

5. Slow down and take time out to reset, reboot and recalibrate.

6. BREATH more and right. Belly breathing. Nasal breathing. Deep relaxing breathing. Take three to five long inhales and longer exhales before you eat.

7. Instead of saying “why me”- look at situations or experiences that typically set you off (stressor!) and change your perspective. Work on seeing the learning opportunity in any “negative situation” or experience as traffic or work crisis. How can you take a stressful situation and change it into an opportunity to grow or lesson to learn and grow from it?

8. Be positive, kind and loving to yourself! We are our own worst critic. Look at a “negative” or “weakness” as an area of opportunity.

9. Red flags… start paying attention to your red flags and write them in your journal.

10. Journal each night your positive and rewarding experiences or moments you are grateful for that day!

11. Cut back or limit time online. Schedule set times to respond to text, phone calls and emails. Limit your time on social media and checking updates.

12. Make sleep a priority and create your sleep sanctuary. Remember to implement those pre- sleep hacks before bed so you enhance your quality sleep.

13. Put the oxygen mask on first!!