Thursday, July 28, 2011

More Stress Signs

A few weeks ago I post about some physical signs that may be due to increase stress (see here for reminder).  Here are a few more few signs that may be stress related, anyone recognizing these signs should see a doctor first to rule out serious illness or injury. The irony of stress is that the very things that will make you feel better--exercise, self-care, eating a healthy diet--are usually the last things you want to do.


Stress Sign: Weight Gain

Stress often pushes us into a vicious cycle of choosing unhealthy foods, binge diet and eating, losing energy and gaining weight. This is due to an increase production of glucocorticoid hormones as a reaction to the stress response.

What you can do: You can jump in anytime in the vicious cycle to put a stop to it. Don't skip meals, decreasing calories too significantly can increase your bodies stress response. Actually eating to little is often a cause for stalled weight loss. Undereating almost always leads to eventually overeating and weight gain. Just make sure the added calories you need come from healthy foods.


Stress Sign: Back Pain

Although the causes of back pain are usually physical, emotional stress can play a role in how severe pain is and how long it lasts.

What you can do: Strength training and cardiovascular exercises are important in keeping your back healthy. Maintaining a healthy weight will also reduce strain on your back and decrease coritsol production which increases sensitivity of your nerves.



Stress Sign: Tension Headaches

These headaches occur when your scalp and neck muscles become too tense.

What you can do: See your doctor to make sure you don't have a more serious headache-related disorder. Utilizing meditation and self-care along with a regular exercise program and healthy diet will decrease frequency and intensity of headaches.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

What’s Causing the Obesity Epidemic

What’s Causing the Obesity Epidemic

Great post hope everyone gets a chance to read.

Bottom line: Worry less about what types of calories (fat, protein, carbohydrates) and control the amount of calories you take in.  Going out to eat less can help (if you do go out, split your meal with someone or take part of it home for a meal tomorrow), and at home eat smaller portion sizes also (instead of going back for seconds you may find more energy to go out and get some exercise instead).

So simple, yet so hard

Friday, July 22, 2011

The problem with all crash diets and not enough strength training exercise

Many diets promise fast weight loss, and with enough calorie reduction every diet is 100% successful to lose weight. But unfortunately we can’t live this way forever and eventually the weight comes back 100% of the time (usually with in 6 months to 1 year), so long term every one of these diets nets to 100% failure. But the failure goes deeper than most of us realize. Our weight that we can change is made up of fat and muscle. So when we lose weight we lose both fat and muscle, not just fat. Strength training, which combats the muscle loss, is often the forgotten exercise component to healthy weight loss. Other then aspiring athletes most of us do not spend the time and energy toward strength training programs. Strength training is often times the missing ingredient to help us achieve the weight control we would like long term.


Many of us have gone on multiple different diets in our life only to end up back where we started. These “yo-yo” diets can have a significant impact on our metabolism and our chance to successfully get weight off and keep it off to be healthy. In our attempt to lose weight we lose fat and muscle as we stated. It is biologically very difficult to lose weight and not lose some muscle. Our goal needs to be losing as much fat as possible and not muscle. The best way to accomplish this is to go slow (1-2 pounds per week) and make sure we are strength training. The faster our weight loss the larger percentage of it will be muscle. When we gain weight back it will be fat weight not muscle, unless we are doing lots of strength training.

Here is an example of the problem. If you lose 30 pounds, 20 pounds of fat and 10 pounds of muscle, but then regain the 30 pounds it will now be 30 pounds of fat if you aren’t doing strength training exercises. You know have to eat about 300-500 calories less then before your “yo-yo” diet even though you weigh exactly the same to maintain that weight. Why? Realize the more fat percentage you have, the slower your metabolism. Your metabolism is the amount of calories you need to keep your body alive and maintain your weight. A pound of muscle burns about 30-50 calories per day, whereas, a pound of fat burns about 5 calories per day. This is why some very heavy people can eat very little and still not lose weight or even continue to slowly gain weight, they don’t have enough muscle and their metabolism has slowed down dramatically. The only way to speed up our metabolism is to increase our muscle mass percentage to body weight through strength training exercises.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Can your breathing actually decrease your stress?

After taking in a breath slowly exhale. You probably don’t realize it, but your heart has just slowed down a bit. Don’t worry; it will speed up again when you inhale. This regular-irregular beat is a sign of a healthy interaction between heart and brain. Each time you exhale, your brain sends a signal down the vagus nerve to slow the cardiac muscle. With each inhale, the signal gets weaker and your heart revs up. Inhale, beat faster. Exhale, beat slower.


As your stress and anxiety levels increase you typically will take shorter and faster breaths. This is a useful mechanism to protect you in dangerous situations that may last a few minutes; the problem arises when you have chronic long-term stress that lasts days, months or even years for some people. Normally you should be breathing an inhale/exhale cycle about 8-10 times per minute in a quiet, relaxed state. Many people are in an increased stress response state and will breathe more cycles per minute. Also when stressed these short breaths are often mostly performed by the chest and neck muscles and not as much with the diaphragm. When you work on taking bigger, slower breaths you get the diaphragm to work more, as it should.

Increase stress can lead to increases in depression, anxiety and increase your susceptibility to disease (you are more likely to catch a cold when over stressed). It will also increase the sensitivity of the nervous system, so your pain will often times be greater when you are stressed. Your brain uses two different nervous systems to control your body. You have complete control over one of them, which tells you to move your arms, legs, mouth, etc. to do things. The other is automatic (that’s why it’s called the autonomic nervous system) it speeds up your heart rate, alters your digestion and other things that happen without your full conscious control. This autonomic system has a part to it that increases activity to tolerate stressful activity and another that slows things down to allow you to keep some balance and not have your heart race out of control along with other functions. The interesting part is that through conscious control of working to slow down and use diaphragm breathing, you can actually affect the autonomic system and promote increase relaxation. So yes by working slow diaphragm breathing you can decrease your stress!

Friday, July 15, 2011

Why are Fruits and Vegetables so expensive?

Obviously we all know that fruits and vegetables are an extremely valuable part of a healthy diet, especially since this is often times one of the items we fail to get enough of. Considering we should be having 5-9 servings a day, many of us fall short of this recommendation. But it is easy to justify cutting them short when we look at the cost of them. Is that extra cost really worth the added health benefit? At least they seem expensive, but are they as costly as we think? I think many of us have a double standard sometimes when it comes to these food items. While it is hard to drop $1.50 for a red bell pepper, yet $3.00 for a bag of potato chips (that we can sometimes eat in one setting) seems like a bargain. The cost per serving isn’t that much different, and the nutritional value is vastly different. And of course we all know that disease can be very costly, so realize the cost of those veggies is an investment into your healthy future!


Tips for getting produce:

  1. Fruits and veggies should take up at least a third of your meal plates. So they need to take up at least a third of your shopping cart, so it is okay if they take up a third of your bill.
  2. The more colors of the rainbow in your cart the better selections you have made. The better the variety the better your overall nutrition.
  3. Look for produce that is in-season and grown close to home, this helps keep price down. 
  4. Think shelf-life. Some produce keeps better than others, so plan your meals accordingly.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Stress Signs and How to Reduce Them

Scientific evidence suggests that to much stress lowers immunity, which can lead to many physical symptoms as well as emotional problems. Here is a list of a few sign that may be stress related, anyone recognizing these signs should see a doctor first to rule out organic causes like viruses or serious illness. The irony of stress is that the very things that will make you feel better--exercise, self-care, eating a healthy diet--are usually the last things you want to do.

Stress Sign: Irritable Bowel Syndrome

The colon and how it responds is connected to and controlled by the brain through nerves. That's why when we're worried or anxious; we can experience anything from nervous butterflies to cramps or diarrhea.

What you can do: Exercise, even something simple as going for an easy 20 minute walk, can help you burn off stressful energy while also helping to keep bowel movements and sleep patterns more regular. Increasing foods higher fiber to your diet can also help improve how your intestines work.

Stress Sign: Frequent Colds

Stress will lower our immunity, so we are less able to defend off viruses and bacteria. Research shows that subjects who reported higher levels of stress were twice as likely to catch a cold as their less-stressed counterparts.

What you can do: Build a routine of social stress management techniques (an after-dinner walk, weekly coffee with friends, etc.), and remember to stick to it whether you "feel" like it or not, particularly during times of stress.

Stress Sign: Heart Palpitations

Stress can give you heart palpitations that may feel like your heart is racing or skipping beats. Check with your physician to make sure it is not a heart problem.

What you can do: Multiple studies suggest exercise or meditation in which you progressively and systematically tense and then relax every muscle group in your body or, practicing yoga or tai chi type movements on a regular basis can reduce the frequency of your palpitations.

Stress Sign: Chest Pains

It is not uncommon for women--even young women--to have stress-induced chest pain.

What you can do: Talk to your doctor about whether this is a sign of something more serious. Additionally, don't underestimate the power of just being somewhere quiet or listening to music. Self-care is not selfish care.