I do it to “calm my nerves”, to “ease my mind”, or to “relax”.
We all have that vice that lets us blow off some stream. We smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, eat brownies, enjoy fast food, or any number of other vices. However, none of them truly reduce your stress and in fact increase it.
Physiological stress is the result of a busy mind (positive or negative), burning of calories, and physical activity. Living is a stress. Our body deals with each of those situations the same way. Activation of our sympathetic nervous system is our response to stress. It is the system that prepares us for action. We turn our bodies into energy and get it ready to be used. After that our parasympathetic nervous system takes over to help us recover, repair damage, and build us up for the next stressful moment.
All risk factors for chronic disease (body fat, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high LDL cholesterol, low bone density, poor immunity) are the normal physiological response to stress. When attacked by a tiger, as was possible with evolution, those factors all helped our body prepare to either fight or escape. After the encounter we would rest and eat normal whole foods to recover and our bodies would build us up to prepare for the next time. However, in today’s society we don’t have a tiger to defend ourselves against.
Instead we get pissed at traffic, or worry about firing someone, or panic about how to pay our mortgage. Then to relieve our stress we get a big bowl of ice cream, or sit down to a few beers or bottle of wine. This, however, does NOT reduce your stress. It actually increases it. When your body processes a calorie for energy, chemicals called free radicals are released into your system that your body perceives as danger and sends you into a stressed state by activating the sympathetic nervous system. There are increases in all the risk factors for chronic disease. This happens whether that calorie comes from a shot of tequila, a chocolate chip cookie, or a fresh organic salad. The difference between the liquor, desert and salad is that the salad is loaded with micronutrients called anti-oxidants that remove those free radicals from the system and reduce those stress levels. Thus, the salad is balanced with stressful calories and anti-oxidants to reduce that stress. The system is negated and we can build ourselves up and recover.
I do CrossFit so that I can eat and drink whatever I want? Nope. The miracle of life allows you to exist despite the utter poison you place in your body. CrossFit is an intense workout that simulates your fight with a tiger. However, without the proper rest and recovery it is just another stress on your body. Though physical activity stimulates your own production of anti-oxidants, it is not enough to overcome a poor diet.
How do I reduce my stress?
- Eat well.
- Drop your stressFUL stress reducers.
- Learn to change your paradigm. Many mental stressors are merely a poor understanding of your position in a situation. Find a way out.
- Learn meditation techniques to quiet your mind. A busy mind stimulates your stress response.
- Rest well after your CrossFit workout.
Any questions?
-Corey
haha, way to make me feel guilty after all the booze and cheese last night. I’m resting well today though and I plan to have that tiger in a choke hold by the end of the day.
Great explanations, Corey. I’d never heard food described in the way you did and it makes “healthy food” seem much more understandable.
Personally, I especially advocate items #3 and 4 on your list. Most of the work I do with my coaching clients is around helping them learn to tell the truth about life/themselves/others rather than believing the thoughts that run amok in their minds masquerading as reality. Teaching others is great practice because it reminds me to model rather than merely preach.
Thanks to you and Shanna both for being good teachers, preachers, and models of healthful living!
Corey you got me thinking about this stuff, I think, way back in April at the first CFA nutrition lecture you did. What I like about it is the emphasis on understanding that stress is a normal physiological process, and that good nutrition and sleep are key factors not only for athletics but for all of life. Living itself is a stressor, and we always need to allow for recovery.
One of the things you “stress” (forgive the pun) in this piece is the role that consumption of things (whatever: alcohol, brownies, pasta) plays in creating (oxidative) stress.
Which makes me think of fasting. Clearly, when the body needs energy, it breaks itself down, or it works with nutrients you put in your system, and either way this causes oxidative stress. I’ve heard that less calories overall has been linked to lower mortality.
The question emerges: could periodic (short-term) fasting play a role in rest and recovery?
I ask this partly as a question of spiritual practice, because I also noticed that you mentioned reframing and meditation as essentials. Fasting has long been paired with mediation as one of the staples of spiritual practice.
In the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, the main character, Siddhartha, learns three things from the ascetic Samanas (basically, yogis) with whom he spends a few years: to think, to wait, and to fast. These three tools, he claims, which basically amount to meditation, patience, and self-control, initially bring him a kind of mastery of his physical self (before he loses himself in the world… but that’s another issue).
Fasting is the act of reducing/eliminating calorie intake for a period of time. Your metabolism, or the usage of energy by the body, is like logs on a burning fire. When properly stoked you can increase the heat of the flame but an abundance of non-burning logs could elimate the oxygen and kill the fire. Fasting is like failing to place more logs on the fire. Eventually the fire cools and your metabolism slows.
Research on periodic or intermittent fasting is based on the theory that our cells only have a certain amount of turn-over. That a cell is only capable of a limited amount of function before it dies and is replaced with another cell. However, the stem cells, the base cell that others are divided from, only have a limited number of times they can be replicated. By increasing metabolism and using a highly stoked fire, you increase the rate of cell turnover and reduce your life.
Though fasting reduces your metabolism, if kept up for too long will stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. The balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic is essentially usage and preparation. Sympathetic is usage, the body turns anything it has into energy, therefore breaking down connective tissues like bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments and turning it into sugar and fat. The parasympathetic nervous system prepares the body for usage by turning that sugar and fat into connective tissue, bone, muscle, etc. If you burn out your energy (fat/sugar) stores, you body will either use newly ingested calories, or in the instance of fasting, will start to break down muscle and bone.
Fasting, when properly applied, can keep you from clogging the fire with too much wood. However, to have a hot fire you must continually add good logs. Fasting can be good or bad, it merely depends on your application of it.
Matt,
I have started to think of the religious and meditative properties of fasting. I used to fast one day a month for religious reasons. I was not always committed to the purpose for the fast at that time but I am beginning to think that the act of control and focus is well applied in fasting. I think it matched with a routine of meditation it could be very useful in balancing your life and reducing stress.
That being said, most of the current focus on fasting in our society is strictly about calorie reduction over a time period. Much of the Crossfit community talks about IF in those terms. I think outside of our culture, fasting has a deeper purpose. I think for anyone following a Paleo-diet, fasting should be more about the meditative, spiritual experience not just about calorie restriction and therefore can be of short duration if applied.
Thanks, I think I am going to start pairing fasting with meditation again.
Hi Dale:
As as a scholar of religion, I’m interested in the fact that fasting is so widely used in spiritual practice. For myself what really fascinates me is the intersection between physiology and spirituality, particularly in relation to that classic definition of health: “a state of optimal physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease.”
So I am starting to think that, besides exercising self-control with food and drink, it might be a good idea to use (a periodic, prudently practiced form of) fasting as a part of my recovery efforts. Maybe that’s another good tool for dealing with stress and madness.
But Perhaps our definition of “fasting” should include calorie restriction, and full or partial abstinence from certain harmful foods. If we think of it that way then various dietary rules, like avoiding processed foods, sugars, and alcohol, or the Paleo-diet, or the Zone-diet, these different ways of eating already ARE fasting.
And if that is the case then what might be missing from my practice is not the fasting — I have diet dialed in now –, and certainly not the exercise, but the meditation (and the rest).
Does salad/lettuce
relieve stress?