Your host Debbie Potts is also the co-host today in her chat about “8 Secrets to Avoiding Adrenal Fatigue” free gift you can download off www.debbiepotts.net
Stop Racing through Daily Life with the WHOLESTIC Method approach.
Is it possible to live in our busy society and not feel as if we are racing around all day, every day? At any age—even teenagers? For years, every week, I was training an average of twenty hours for Ironman Triathlons, running my own fitness studio, and training clients, coaching athletes, podcasting, managing a home life, and finding time to be a wife. I thought the new “normal” was doing more to feel successful. What I have now discovered is that doing less is sometimes more. That is, when we find the right balance. More is better… right?
I call it Chronic Stress Disease or addiction to busyness. We are all victims. Most of us Type-A personalities are addicted to being in a constant state of busy-ness with an inability to focus and always being distracted. I know so many people of all ages, including high school kids, who are way over-scheduled each day, leaving them racing from the time they wake up until they crash on the bed at night only to start all over and repeat the next day and the next… our own version of Groundhog Day.
Is this you?
Stress is often defined from multiple sources online as “any real or imagined threat, and your body’s response to it.” Celebrations and tragedies alike can cause a stress response in your body. That includes a planned party, a loss of a loved one, or a serious car accident. Stress comes in all forms. The term “feeling stressed” is not limited to being frustrated in a traffic jam or ending up late to an appointment. Stress comes in all forms; many you are probably unaware you are experiencing.
Ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you eat easy to grab process high carbohydrate manufactured foods?
- Are you addicted to and crave sugar?
- How frequently do you drink alcohol?
- How much coffee or caffeinated beverages do you consume each day?
- What type of exercise do you do each week?
- How long are your workouts?
- How do you sleep at night?
- Do you wake up at 2:00 a.m.?
- Do you wake up exhausted?
- Do you struggle going to be at night and staying asleep?
- Do you have any digestion issues or inflammation? Bloated belly? Gas?
- Do you enjoy your job or workplace environment?
- How long do is your commute to work?
- Are you struggling with depression?
Stress can be a result of a parent passing away or stress at work, but whatever type of stressors you are experiencing each day can accumulate. When we react to a stress—our brain (the hypothalamus) —responds by sending messages to the pituitary gland then tells the adrenal glands to respond to the perceived threat. The adrenal glands respond with an increase surge in blood pressure, heart rate, and more by triggering the release stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine. On top of the stress hormones being activated, the brain now sends another message out to the gut (the “second brain”) to notify it of the stress or threat. The digestive system is put on hold to allow the body system’s to deal with the immediate threat. Perhaps this threat is real like an argument with someone or bike accident or it could be chronic cardio or chronic busy-ness. We need the stress response team in our body to work when we need to run “from a lion,” but then recover. Instead, we often don’t stop racing from that threat and we exhaust our stress response system over time. Suddenly, you find your memory is slipping, you get headaches from eating any type of sugar, and then you wake up in the middle of the night thinking it must be time to wake up.
This is what happened to me starting in 2013. Living life constantly as a race day after day is not healthy for any of us. Especially me. I wrote my personal story and journey in my book called “LIFE IS NOT A RACE” (available on Amazon) to help others as yourself avoid experiencing the ongoing health problems I have battle since the start of the domino effect in 2013.
Read this great article on Dr. Mercola’s site:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/28/stress-affects-heart.aspx
Too much of anything can be toxic, but too little of anything can lead to deficiencies. How much stress and for how long can we tolerate it without creating an internal total body systems and hormonal breakdown? We are all different and unique individuals. Some people can tolerate more stress than others and even do genome testing to discover your resiliency to stress. I obviously found out the hard way. I can’t manage too much at once without becoming chronically stressed. And, it is not only a result of over exercising. As with all elements of health coaching, there is not a “one size fits all” solution for treating those individuals with chronic stress or rather addiction to busy-ness and doing too much in life every day for years. I shared my personal story about not pacing myself in daily life in my book “Life is Not a Race – It is a Journey.” I talk about “How to Pace the WHOLE you” with what I term The WHOLESTIC Method.
I didn’t realize I was running from a lion each day for the last ten years or that I was even being chased by a lion each day. Either way, over the years, I demanded too much from my body and specifically, my body’s emergency response system a.k.a the stress response team and the Fight or Flight sympathetic nervous system. My normal way of living was not healthy even though I thought I was fit, athletic, and ate healthy real foods. But, stress can and will change your life from the inside out. One day, you may find yourself stuck on the side of the road with such fatigue that you can’t continue. When you are finally forced to realize you are not actually living a healthy type of lifestyle, its then you start paying attention to the red flags hanging in front of you for years. I was oblivious to my red flags until March 2013. My busy lifestyle habits caught up with me and ran me down like a Mack truck. Boom. My life has never been the same since those early months in 2013.
This excessive reaction of the body to respond to stress overworks the sympathetic nervous system- our “fight or flight” nervous system. In turn, when the opposing parasympathetic nervous systems— the rest and digest nervous system—is under-activated, we become out of balance, dramatically affecting our supporting adrenal system. Think of a teeter-totter and how to keep it in balance; too much of anything will throw off the balance just as too much stress over time will imbalance your nervous system.
Based on my experience with adrenal burnout, I developed The WHOLESTIC Method which is a program focused on improving the WHOLE you from the inside out – resulting in fat loss, optimal health, and an improved personal performance. It doesn’t matter what level of athlete you are, I believe most of us are living life as a race and we need to place more speed bumps in our daily schedule in order to avoid burnout and breakdown.
Find the book and manual on Amazon:
