by Deirdre | Oct 19, 2012 | Mindful living
Why is it that when we need exercise the most – stress is everywhere and we’re craving more and more comfort – we pick that exact moment to have trouble finding time to fit it in? We drift so far away from regular exercise that we start seeing the lack show up in our health. Insomnia, digestive issues, pain, you know the drill.
Then the day comes when we want to rise up out of the hole of inertia and recommit to fitness. We see how much fun our fit friends are having and sign up for boot camp or hot ashtanga yoga or a half-marathon.
Bad idea.
I know, I know — all the people who love those hot, sweaty highs are thinking that I don’t know what I’m missing. I’ve been there and had those highs and loved them too. But if you’re coming off a long period of stress with little to no exercise it may not be an endorphin high that you’re getting.
It may a raging b*tch low.
Here’s why . . .
Your aerobic energy system is de-conditioned. It’s not up to the job of producing that much energy that fast. To pick up the slack, your body switches to your anaerobic energy system. That’s the slow twitch muscle fibres that fuel up with glycogen (sugar) and gives you power, speed and big muscles.
But your anaerobic system isn’t designed to power you through a boot camp class. Think more like 2 minutes of fast, strong activity. You know what you’re doing when you grit your teeth and muscle through?? You’re stressing out your poor, tired, stressed body.
When you don’t have the underlying aerobic conditioning to improve your stress resilience you’re doing yourself more harm than good. You’re taking a stressed system and stressing it further, all in the name of regaining fitness.
And it ain’t gonna work.
Phil Maffetone, athletic coach to many world-champion triathletes back in the day, has called this aerobic deficiency syndrome. Doesn’t that sound official? It’s caused by underuse of your aerobic muscles and overuse of your anaerobic muscles.
Here are the symptoms:
- Recurrent physical injuries
- Excess storage of fat (your body doesn’t burn fat so it stores it)
- Blood sugar stress (your body can’t pull fat from your system so it pulls it out of your blood stream, causing cravings and moodiness)
- Hormonal imbalance (the excess stress messes with your cortisol levels, throwing off all your hormones)
Seriously, if you’re splitting a gut, ready to escalate a minor disagreement into violence, and super important, STILL PUTTING ON WEIGHT, you need to rethink how hard you’re exercising.
Phil recommends building an aerobic base first, before you start making big plans for weight training or intense exercise. He’s a big believer in using a heart rate monitor and keeping in a moderate aerobic level. Here’s what he has to say in his book, The Big Book of Health and Fitness, about building your aerobic base:
For a workout to be truly aerobic, you should be able to exercise the same way for many weeks and months with continued benefits. And, when you’re finished each workout, you should feel great – not tired or sore, and certainly not ready to collapse on your couch. Nor should you have cravings for sugar or other carbohydrates – your workout should program your body to burn more fat, not sugar.
How long this takes depends on your aerobic fitness today. He suggests up to six months of slow, steady progress.
This may be new, but think joy and fun with exercise.
Posted by Deirdre Walsh, Image: iStockphoto
If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends!
by Deirdre | Oct 15, 2012 | Mindful living
During difficult periods of stress – when pain, unstable moods, poor memory and inability to cope rear their ugly heads – it can be very helpful to seek out the advice of a health practitioner. They can help you with the symptoms of stress as you find the time to bring your life back into balance.
But who to call?
Your doctor has a few goodies in her tool-kit, like anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs and counselling. Complementary health practitioners — like naturopaths, osteopaths, traditional Chinese medicine, massage therapists, etc. — all have methods to treat stress that may be more effective in the long run and work to rebalance your system. I’ve been to quite a few different practitioners and have found pros and cons to each of them. I’ll share my experience with you and add some great resources I’ve found on the Web.
Let’s talk about naturopaths
Naturopathic medicine is another form of primary care – the front line for health concerns. They’re looking for the root causes of illness or disease, not just the symptoms. They promote health and healing using therapies derived from the natural world.
Natural is a loose term here as many naturopaths rely on supplements. Sure, they can be derived from natural sources, but sometimes they pull one or more active ingredients from a natural product and then put it into pill form, much like pharmaceuticals. Some of the therapies that NDs draw from are:
- Clinical nutrition – food is medicine! NDs may suggest special diets or nutritional supplements such as vitamins, minerals, or enzymes.
- Botanical/Herbal medicine – using plant substances to stimulate healing and add nutritional value
- Homeopathy – using minute amounts of natural substances based on your personal profile to stimulate the self-healing abilities of the body.
- Physical therapies – like massage, hydrotherapy, use of light, heat and cold, or instruments like ultrasounds.
- Traditional Chinese Medicine – acupuncture and Oriental herbs
So how do you find a good ND?
Ask people you trust for a recommendation. Why, specifically, do they like working with them and what the are the ND’s best qualities? What they would change about the relationship? These questions will get to what they value in the relationship and you can tell whether it matches your values. You may be really into their knowledge of herbs and supplements while your friend may really value their empathy.
A typical story of working through stress with a naturopath can be found at Best Health Magazine.
Here are 5 things to insist on:
1 – You feel completely heard by your naturopath and feel they understand where you are.
Success comes from following the treatment plan your ND creates for you, so see if you feel a level of trust and teamwork between you. If you don’t feel that you’re able to discuss the treatment plan then you probably don’t have the right naturopath.
2 – You don’t walk away feeling like you’ve been talked into doing a lot of tests.
Yes, there are a lot of really cool tests you can do. You can test your hormone levels, your sensitivity to foods and a ton of other really interesting things. But they’re expensive and your ND should be able to give you a really good reason for you to invest in them.
3 – They make recommendations to food and exercise that you can implement yourself.
Your treatment plan should be easy to follow and implement yourself. You may choose to speak to a holistic nutritionist or exercise specialist, but it shouldn’t be required to follow the plan.
4 – They have a solid clinical education.
There are different levels of professional certification within naturopathic circles. In Ontario and British Columbia, naturopaths are licensed and have had four years of training with supervision and practicums. In Alberta they are regulated. In the United States the distinction between different types of naturopaths isn’t as clear. Some can train in distance programs for under 1000 hours and others require thousands of hours combined with practicums. If you’re in the States and interested in more information, you can find it here.
5 – They recommend good quality products.
There are a lots and lots of supplements and natural products on the market and few of them are tested for quality. In the U.S. when there’s no government-verified seal on the label then there’s only a 2 in 3 chance that the contents will match the label. I’ve written about the ins and outs of knowing what’s in the bottle here.
The bottom line is that you should feel like you have good communication with your ND, that the diagnostic and treatment plans fit within your budget and you’re getting good quality products. A good naturopath is an amazing ally to beating back stress.
Posted by Deirdre Walsh
by Deirdre | Sep 21, 2012 | Healthy Mind, Inspired Living, Mindful living
When do we know when we’re under stress? I’m way too familiar with the signs from my body that I’m burning through my energy reserves. I start getting really sensitive to sound and interruptions. I need the kids to turn down the music in the car. All of a sudden I can’t remember things. My head, back and hip start aching. My eyes get really, really tired – all the way back to my brain. I lose my sense of humor – big time.
Getting more under stress
That’s when I turn to the thing that comforts or energizes me now – and makes me feel bad later. All the women I work with have some kind of go-to when they get those signals from their body. For some, it’s hitting the kitchen after the kids go to bed. For others, it’s the glass of wine at the end of the day that goes to two, or sometimes three on a bad day. Some of them are queens of the meltdown – not meaning to fly off the handle, but powerless to stop themselves. Others are awake at night, believing if they keep obsessing about the details that the day will go better. Me, I usually head for sugary treats – either chocolate or wine.
All these things provide soothing short-term comfort, but really are small, relentless steps towards feeling crappy and ashamed.
Why do we do these things?
Because our bodies are looking for something to stabilize the effects of the stress hormone, cortisol. That’s the bad boy that your pituitary gland pumps into your bloodstream after your hypothalamus – the stress thermostat in your brain – senses you are not safe. Cortisol is an amazing biochemical when it gets in, does its job and gets out. It’s a master at protecting you from danger, either by fight, flight or freeze. It’s a powerful ally.
But if you call on it too often – with worry, or running late all the time, or adrenaline rushes – it starts running the show and your body pays the price. I’ve written about how uncontrolled cortisol plays havoc with your system here.
But the worst offense that uncontrolled cortisol commits against busy women is this:
Even though they love their life, they are tired and their body hurts.
Tired, tired tired
Tired in the morning instead of bouncing out of bed to greet the day. Tired in the afternoon, often looking for a pick me-up. Tired in the evening, often crashing in front of the tube for some House and Garden TV, or some trashy pleasure on a really tired night. Too tired to exercise, or eat right, or be present to the wonderfulness of their life.
I’ve written about the three-stage downward spiral of stress before:
- busy multitasker – where you feel wired and tired at the same time. Life is busy, but you’re proud of what you can accomplish.
- burned out – where you’re always behind and you wonder how you’re going to catch up. You doze off easily when you’re forced to sit down.
- flat-lining – when you can’t keep up anymore and have to cut back on work and activities
These wonderful, gorgeous women drift further and further from the warm, kind, generous person they used to be. They muscle through the day on nerves and steel. And, really, they know they’re not much fun to be around anymore. This is not who they thought they’d be at this point in their life.
Does this sound familiar?
When I’ve drifted to away from being the me I want to be I’ve learned the hard way that all the chocolate and sugar in the world (or supplements or self-talk) will not help – well not for more than an hour or so. I’ve learned that I need to manage how the cortisol is affecting my body, and for me that means water, guided imagery, light exercise or meditation.
Tell me, how about you? What have you learned to keep yourself well?
Posted by Deirdre Walsh
Image: Death to Stock
If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends!
by Deirdre | Sep 14, 2012 | Mindful living
Client Insights is an occasional series of articles on breakthroughs that clients have experienced during coaching sessions. Client details changed to protect those released to fly.
One special client I worked with was Susan. She embodied the spirit of beauty in all aspects in her life. She found unending joy in creating beauty in her home, with her clothes and accessories, and in life in general. What she saw in beauty and creativity was excitement, and bringing them to life gave her that thrill. Her local art store was the first place she headed to when she felt disconnected from her creative source.
Susan wanted to see if coaching could help her improve her physical condition so she could continue taking on creative projects. She had been diagnosed with a disabling condition that was expected to worsen over time. She wanted to explore the options she had to continue her deep connection to creativity. When we first started working together, she had put her creative projects on hold to focus on her health.
She felt she was handling her health well – doing all the things she could to take care of herself and surround herself with caring specialists and talented alternative therapists. I asked her to check out her hormone levels with her doctor. As we hit peri-menopause, our sex hormone levels start bouncing around from day to day and underlying stress hormone issues can pop up. Some of the symptoms we attribute to other conditions can potentially be the symptoms of stress.
Understanding Your Strengths
It was easy to see that Susan could count on her strengths of creativity, kindness, excitement about constantly evolving and expressing herself through art. Her heroes were women in the popular media who made a success for themselves by being true to their creative, nurturing spirit. They were the ones we all love – who’ve lived their lives along with us.
Her immediate circle – family and daily contacts – were much more conservative and “left-brained” thinking. As much as they loved her, they didn’t know how to react to her “flightiness” – her multiplicities. As much as she loved them, Susan felt a bit like a fish out of water with them. Even though she didn’t really think of herself in these terms, she was the sole artist in her world. They did not get her talents.
And when she looked at the world through their eyes, she did not get her talents, either.
I asked her: “Have you ever done anything to savour your accomplishments?” She found them hard to see as accomplishments even though they were of staggering brilliance (her talents shone in design and she could make just about anything). For her it was moving from one challenge to another, without making a big deal out of it.
When she stopped to savour her talents and really look at how she was using her strengths all the time, she was excited by the amount of creativity that already existed in her life.
Susan’s big shift was realizing that she didn’t have to work towards what she wanted. She already had everything she needed. When she realized this, she got a sense that time opened up for her. Time wasn’t something she had to fight to preserve anymore. She was free to savour the time she had now.
When she re-ignited her creative vision, she grew even more in patience and kindness to help teach the people around her what she needed and how they could support her vision.
The shift that Susan made in her own thinking created space for her to disengage with the fear of change in those around her. The symptoms of her condition improved, opening up more possibility for new creative projects. She looked great and said she felt great.
Now my question to you . . .
Do you savour your life? Do you look at your talents and uniqueness with a kind and loving eye?
Posted by Deirdre Walsh
Image: iStockphoto
If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends!
by Deirdre | Sep 7, 2012 | Mindful living
I honestly think it’s a bit tragic that we live in a world where fun is seen as frivolous, or some kind of goal-oriented project, or the last thing we have on our list. We get bogged down by the needs of others and all those darn responsibilities. Is it possible that we took the lessons from our parents too much to heart? Of do we just wake up one day and realize that the love and attention that we want to give to everyone around us has become a bit of a trap?
Old Broads and Bikinis
I’ve always really admired the older broads who would spend their summers in their bikinis, gardening and puttering around the house, throwing on a caftan to go to the store. They just didn’t care about that “rule” that no one over 35 should ever wear a bikini. We had a neighbour whose summer look (until she was well into her 80s) was bikini and gardening clogs, cigarette in one hand and scotch in the other. While I don’t espouse her health habits – she must have genetic bulletproofing – I always was inspired by the joy for living that emanated from her.
There is a renewing power to joy.
I wonder if having fun – purposeless, pointless fun – is the new middle-aged bikini-wearing. It seems a bit self-indulgent, doing things only because they make you happy. You may find that others think that you’re not really trying sometimes. But you know what I learned from my neighbour? Stop giving a crap about what people think and start having more fun.
Try an exercise this week for fun:
- Pinpoint something you do every week that’s really important to you. Something that you don’t want to do half-assed. It may be the meals you make for your kids, the quality of a report you hand in at work, organizing an event for friends, something like that.
- Think about how you could lower your standards a bit. Not a lot – maybe just 25% less perfect. 25% more lackadaisical (best definition I found for this was “carelessly lazy” – love it).
- Figure out how much time you save on that task by being a little bit lackadaisical – 5 minutes? 20 minutes?
- Think of something fun you can do with that time. I looked online to find fun things you can do in 5 minutes and came up with mostly tedious lists of things like empty the dishwasher, floss your teeth, etc. I hope I don’t have to point out to you that those things are not fun.
Remember
- Fun is something that takes up your whole attention, relaxes your body and has no purpose beyond giving you pleasure.
- Fun is not maintenance, and fun does not set goals.
- Once you start thinking about it you will remember quick things you like doing. The best ideas I could find were at CBS.
Handstands anyone? Let me know in the comments what you did for fun!
Posted by Deirdre Walsh
by Deirdre | Aug 30, 2012 | Inspired Living, Mindful living
Client Insights is an occasional series of articles on breakthroughs that clients have experienced during coaching sessions. Client details changed to protect those released to fly.
Before we get to the rest of the post, I wanted to remind everyone that today is an official “blue moon”. What it means is that August has two full moons this month – one on August 2nd and one on August 31st. It’s not really anything more a scheduling blip between the calendar and the moon. But it does remind us to go and do something we only do “once in a blue moon”. I gently suggest that you make that something fun.
Penny and I were coming towards the end of our sessions and I was feeling like we had just started getting close to the heart of things. I was constantly amazed at the tales of accomplishment she would bring to our sessions, but concerned because she didn’t see them as accomplishments herself. She couldn’t bask in the glory of her talent and awesomeness.
I really enjoyed coaching Penny – she has a lovely, ironic sense of humor and always showed up to coaching raring to go. She’d been working at the same place for over a decade before making a change to a new company, right around a milestone birthday. She was worried about falling into the same patterns at work – of being the underappreciated office go-to who got left holding a lot of bags. She was starting to feel that her personal time was more important and she wanted to have more control to focus on life outside of work.
We circled through a number of calls as Penny was establishing who she was going to be at her new job. She was determined to make things be different this time, but was often unsure as to how to do that. She found herself falling into old patterns, even in the new environment. We talked about the things that gave meaning to her life – spending time with friends, having downtime at home and, most importantly, getting back to a writing career that she’d put aside to make it in the “real world”.
The place where core values and actions fail to meet is a juicy place to spend time in coaching. I wanted Penny to get really clear for herself: “What is it about writing that is most meaningful for you?” She felt writing let her express herself in way that was never open to her before. She had absorbed the lessons of early life to be hard-working and always do a good job at your paid job. The first big aha she had was when she made the important distinction between time spent and time invested. She realized that spending time writing was an investment in her and not a silly hobby spent to pass the time.
Her insights started coming fast and furious from there.
On the next call she mentioned speaking to a co-worker late on a Friday afternoon. He was bemoaning the fact that the week had run late, and he had so much work for next week, and his weekend was booked with family events, and he had so much to look after at his house, and . . . . . Penny laughed as she called him a “sad-sack”, moaning about the state of his life when he was steeped in abundance. The abundance of a good job, of a healthy family, of a loving home. She marvelled at how he couldn’t see the riches that were right in front of him.
And then she said something that made me cheer inside. “You know, Deirdre, I saw too much of myself in him. Seeing life for the burden that it is and not for the gift. And now I see how my previous co-workers saw me. No wonder they avoided me.” She chuckled for a moment – good sign, I thought. And then she said something that really made me cheer. “I want more for myself from now on.”
Her first act was to put aside the perfectionism she’d been controlling herself with for years. She decided that her best efforts were going to be enough for her job. What is truly remarkable about this insight is that she broke through something that keeps so many of us stuck in life.
She decided she was enough.
After that huge insight, many of the qualities of that Penny wanted in her life fell into place – a bit like dominos. She felt a lot more efficient, and much less anxious, at work. She knew what she was capable of doing and decided to do her best to not worry about the rest. She decided to change up her exercise routine to suit her mood. She wanted to capture the great days to walk outside with her husband during the summer. She felt that coaching had freed her up to take less responsibility for everyone else’s experience and more for her own.
And she started writing regularly.
So I ask you . . .
Where do you downplay your achievements?
Are there core values in your life that you’re not taking daily or weekly action to express in your life?
What is one small action you can take to plant a seed of creative self-expression?
Posted by Deirdre Walsh
Image: iStockphoto
If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends!
