Saturday, March 22, 2014

How does stress affect your body and your workout

High levels of stress will promote muscle breakdown and it will also release a lot more free radicals into your bloodstream.

" Stress is the body's reaction to any change that requires an adjustment or response. The body reacts to these changes with physical, mental, and emotional responses" ( WebMD).
First the good news.  

Getting exercise and a good workout increases the production of your endorphins. These are your brain's feel-good neurotransmitters, called endorphins.  So when you have a lot of stress getting a good workout in is going to make you feel better and relieve some of the stress you have.

Your workout will also focus your mind on what you were doing at the moment, and this will allow you to forget whatever is causing you stress in your life.   This can also make you feel happy and put you in a calm state of mind. Thus taking your thoughts away that which is causing you to have stress. 

Now for some of the bad news about stress. Recent studies have linked cortisol, a hormone that is released during times of stress, to cause cravings for sugar and fat. It is a believed that cortisol binds to receptors in the brain that control food intake. Plus if you are already overweight you may find you even more susceptible to these cravings.

This is why when you're under stress ice cream, cookies, or any other kind of sugar or fat food sounds good to you.  It almost feels like this would be comfort food to make you relax and releave the stress you feel. But in reality it is going to affect your body to cause even more stress.

Plus cortisol may also increase the level of fat tissue in your body and may also enlarge the size of your fat cells.   So it is essential that we limit the amount of stress in our life to control the amount of cortisol that is produced in our body.  This can also cause insomnia, and increased the sugar level in your body.

So we are to train hard and be able to compete and  we must also work just as hard to keep stress under control in our life. That means you need to set priorities make sure you keep organized and do not allow clutter, to come into your life i, and try to minimize any kind of distractions.  In other words try to simplify your life as much as possible.

Tried to keep to as much of the schedule as you can and keep your life organized into small time compartments. Then when you go to workout you will be at your optimal state which will also give you your optimal results.  

That you can train as hard as you should and you will get the results that you want.






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