#176: Unmasking Stress - How Diet Affects your Stress

 In this Episode, we delve into the often-overlooked impact of stress on our bodies. Stress isn’t just a mental or emotional condition; it has profound physiological effects that can accumulate over time, wreaking havoc on our health. From the misconceptions around dieting and nutrition to the hidden stressors in our daily lives, we explore how these factors contribute to a vicious cycle of poor health and well-being. Learn practical strategies to reduce stress, restore balance, and start giving back to your body so it can function at its best. 

If you're facing challenges on your midlife journey and need some guidance, I'm here to help. I'm currently opening slots for a few individuals to join my FREE 1:1 Coaching.

Apply now for personalised support from me.

Or you can check more of my coaching programs here


WAS THIS HELPFUL?
I’d be so grateful if you could take a moment to follow, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes.


WORK WITH ME:

Move Better, Minimise Pain, Prevent Injuries, Relieve Stress and Enhance Your Everyday Life with my Total Body Connection Program

Ditch one-size-fits-all dieting and discover your unique nutritional blueprint with
28-day Revoloution Program

Discover your Inner self and Improve your mindset with Mind Over Muscle Program

Get the support, guidance, and tools you need to feel stronger, healthier, and more empowered—at every stage. Membership Program

Join my EXCLUSIVE community of Women in Midlife: Strong Body...

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Stress Beyond the Psychological
• 0:35 The Diet-Stress Connection
• 0:51 My experience as a Personal Trainer
• 1:14 Life's Stressors: More Than Just Diet
• 3:51 The Gut as the First Indicator
• 8:16 Practical Steps to Reduce Stress
• 10:23 The Stress-Health Bank Account Analogy
• 12:01 Improving your Health

Transcript

POD 176: Unmasking Stress - How Diet Affects your Stress

Today, I want to talk a little bit more about stress and how it can affect our body in other ways and how. The impact of stress building up over, over time really, really can take its toll so much that in things we haven't even noticed. So stress is not just psychological condition. It's also a physiological condition.

And if you want to think about your body would be under stress. If you have been on numerous diets throughout your life, if you've been on a really low calorie diet, and it means that your body's not getting enough vitamins and minerals that it needs. to function optimally, that would be creating a huge amount of stress on your body.

As being a trainer, I see so many people under eating and thinking that they need to, , the way that the world has taught us and what we see in social media and all that is that we need to be eating less and exercising more in order to lose weight. And that's not necessarily always is the case.

 It's definitely not the case and it is. What causes our body to be under lots of more stress. When you combine, a lack of nutrients and, what helps your body to function optimally with your life stresses. If you've got a boss, that's, on your back about things, or you're having trouble at work with another colleague, you've been stuck in traffic on the way to work.

Your kids are having a tantrum and you're not sleeping. And then again, combining that with these rules that you feel you have to fit into to, in order to lose weight or to look a certain way, we have to eat less and, it's Overall, there's been a humongous stress on our system, on our gut and we'll keep you on the weight loss merry go round and keep continuing that yo yo diet cycle.

When we have poor nutrition, we either, we don't have the time, we're taking advice from unqualified people. There's lack of knowledge about how to prepare your own food. If you're choosing. foods that are poorly to digest. There's additives added to food. We over food, feed on foods because that's how they make them.

They make foods with the sweet spots, deliberately designing foods so that we eat more of them. Our system has a huge amount of problems, digesting all of this. And it, it puts a huge amount of stress on our system. When I say that we're having a poor diet, I'm not saying that you're choosing to have a poor diet.

I think lack of knowledge and understanding, and they have very nifty marketing ways. They're very nifty marketing that confuses people and they, people are paid thousands and thousands of dollars to get this marketing right, or so that they can sell a product. So I'm not saying you're deliberately having poor nutrition, but you may be feeling like you're doing the right thing.

And because of what you've been told in the past, and all of these things add up. to, to extra stress on your body and how, how it's making you feel. So when we add, we're adding in this poor diet, and our lifestyle stresses, our physical bodies are having a really hard time to keep up with it all.

And there's a real mismatch there. So the body's struggling to, to digest these foods because there's all these additives. And the question I get tired with travel, but my grandma used to eat it or my mom used to eat it. Times are different now. They make things differently because everything's all about how can they preserve it longer?

How can they add more crap into it so that it's cheaper for them to make so they can make more of a profit. And unfortunately that's what it all comes down to. The first. Place that this kind of mismatch in your system shows up is actually in your gut. There's lots of new research now about showing how your gut is like your second brain, and that's kind of the, the, like it's a real big indicator for when things are kind of out of balance.

There is this quote, I can't pronounce his surname. Pans, sell your, sell you, sell we, or something. He actually was the person that kind of first discovered and started researching stress. And he said, every stress, this was his quote, every stress leaves an Indelible scar and an organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little bit older.

It is not the stress that kills us, but is our reaction to it. So I'll say it again. Every stress Leaves an indelible scar and an organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little bit older. It is not the stress that kills us, but it's our reaction to it. And I think it's really important to think about that quote and think about how it impacts on, on you and your body.

Every little bit of stress that we have, it just takes its toll and, and when you're, a little kid, , it might not take its toll that much, but it adds up over time. And by the time you're reaching 30, 40, 50, 60 plus, those stresses have taken its toll and have worn you down over time.

So it's really important to start to become aware of them and start to put in things into place. To as a stress management tool. And so each time that your body is under stress and strain, it reacts by getting a little bit worse and by getting a little bit less functional. So normally what used to, not what used to not really move the needle a lot, a lot at all when you were younger, say, so if you maybe were out all nights and you had low sleep and you'd get up and you would come home, I remember I used to go out.

And I'd come home and I would I would go straight to work and I would work all day and I'd be okay and I'd be at fine and you would survive the day fine. Well, I could not do that at all now. There is no way I could cope with doing that and doing the same thing of. So. It's really, it's really these things, they take your toll.

And I think understanding how this, this stress takes its toll over time is really the key to helping you move forward. I see lots of people stuck in situations of saying, but this worked for me before I did this before, but I want you to understand what you did before it didn't work and it added more stress.

So it took another little bit away from you. That makes it just harder for you as you get older. So, so stop catching yourself on that loop of, but I did this before and it worked. It may have worked before, but times are different now. And, and it didn't work. It actually just added more stress and strangeness because you put the weight back on and you're not happy.

So stress is defined as a mismatch between the demand and the capacity. And when it really comes down to it, it's, it's, when we really think of it, it's a mismatch in the demand and the capacity. So we've got to think about stress and our body and possibly why you've gained weight and your body is now no longer able to cope with the demand that you were putting on your body.

And this can be all things added up. Poor, poor diet, pollution, toxins, food additives, infections, high work stress, a whole host of things. But it really makes you understand how over time this can add up and it adds up and it makes a big, big difference to our life. And the stress is placed on our guts and our body and which is already struggling with the normal amount of stresses that we've already put on our body over years.

And it just becomes non functioning. Like it just, it, it won't, you think you're doing all the right things. But, but, but it's just not working anymore because there is this stress build up over time. So what can you do? What can you do? We've got to look at really calming the body down. We want to start to reduce the demand on our system, that we're putting on our system.

So if you think about a shoulder injury, So you have a shoulder injury and you're still trying to go to the gym and you're still trying to do shoulder presses and show different shoulder exercises. So how can you shoulder repair when we're, when we're constantly using it and putting it under more strain, it's not going to, you're just, it's just, it's just going to cope and try to do what it can, which is sometimes a lot of the phase that a lot of you guys are in at the moment.

We're going to change that. Okay. We are going to change this. So let's think about how you can calm your body down. And it's unique to you. There is all different things. It is not just a one way fits all. So you can start to eat a balance of quality food. So have a better balance of quality foods. If you're eating lots of things out of a jar, you could look at swapping those things out.

If you're eating lots of takeaways, you can look at changing them. So we can look at making small changes there in the quality of the food that we're eating. Make sure that you're getting a nice balance of vitamins and minerals. So, so really think about what you're eating. And get that, get that balance.

You look at the colors of the food that you're eating. Do you only eat the same things? Look at that and look at what balance can you get for your body. Understand that low calorie diets. Do not work. They do not work and they put you under more stress onto your body. Get out. There's a lots of research to show that walking and getting out in nature is really good for the mind and really good in calming it down.

Deep breathing is probably number, the number one thing for stress management, is really learning to deep breathe and, sleeping, sleeping is good, king, sleeping is king. Sleeping is gold. It gets you sleep. So, so that's just some strategies, but we will go through more. Trust me. So I want you to start to think about, I really love this analogy and this really helps me understand or understand, and I want you to really think about your overall health and wellness as having points.

So we've got points in a bank account, and I want you to think about how we're going to withdraw points. And we're going to deposit health points in and out of our bank account. So we're starting off with a million health points in the bank. And if we're spending 20, 30, 40, 80 out of that account each day, we could be spending that on lack of sleep on alcohol and missing meals on sweets, high sugary foods, drugs, any of those things.

So we're spending that amount of 60 a day. You're not going to really be too much worried about that. Initially, because it's going to take a while to really start to notice that it has an impact on your body. So you've got a million points, but we, a million points and we're going to slowly chip away at those points.

And it might not be a problem for quite a while, 10, 20, 30 years before your account balance starts to get quite low. And, it gets pretty close to zero. And then you start to get worried because you start noticing that you've gotten a problem. And this whole time that you weren't actually experiencing any of the symptoms, the thing is you always had a problem.

You just weren't aware of it. And we were always withdrawing from this bank account. We were always withdrawing these health points and we weren't depositing anything back. And even if you think, well, I did do some good things. It was maybe never enough because maybe we were just withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing, and not banking enough back in.

So now when it comes to improving your health, your body composition, your visceral fats, your muscle mass, we really need to stop withdrawing points from this bank account. And we really need to start depositing them in. And I really, really love that analogy. It really, resonates with me and we want to think we have just taken for such a long time and each time it makes it harder for us to keep moving forward.

So what I want to get from this is how we can start giving back to our bodies. How can you start thinking about what, what can you do to give back?How Diet Affects your Stress