There’s an old expression.
It’s not the snake bite that kills.
It’s the venom coursing through your blood stream.
It’s the same with stressors in our lives.
They in themselves won’t make you fatter and less healthy.
But ‘holding on to them’ and allowing them to course through you over time will.
It’s been shown that chronically elevated stress levels are one of the worst things for our health and waistlines.
Not the short but intense stress of our evolutionary ancestors.
Where a sabre tooth tiger attacks, but everything’s fine once you’ve escaped.
Instead the constant medium-high stresses.
The worries and strains of everyday life.
They cause changes in your hormonal balances.
Even (thankfully reversible) changes in the way your DNA works.
They make making better decisions harder.
Reverting back to longer established habits more readily.
We cannot ‘stress’ more strongly that anything you can do to help with stress levels is your biggest win.
We know it’s easier said than done.
That many of you will think “That’s all very well, but I’ve got a lot on at the moment.”
Or “It’s alright for him, what’s he got to be stressed about?”
Try three kids, damaged and constantly hurting spine, own business, dying Auntie who’s coffin I’ll be carrying soon and all the general worries of life we all have.
The question to ask is “How much time and effort do you spend each week on dealing with and minimising stress?”
Really dealing with it, not just sedating it with booze, TV, Facebook, etc.
If you’re spending a few hours a week on exercise but none on dealing with stress, you’d get better results by dropping a workout and spending that time meditating or making changes in your life to reduce those stresses.
Again, not that easy, but it can be done.
We’ve known hundreds of clients to make changes to their work and / or personal life that have helped infinitely more than an extra workout would.
If you’ve dismissed the benefits of meditating without ever trying it, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice my friend.
It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.
Put time and energy into reducing the stresses in your life.
It’ll get you better results then an extra workout.
Promise!
Much love,
Jon ‘Also sedates, but trying to do it less’ Hall and Matt ‘Bite the snake back’ Nicholson
P.S. Helping people deal with stress and other lifestyle factors, rather than just adding in more workouts, is one of the reasons our guys get such awesome results. Next find-out-more meeting for the 20lbs (with 5lbs Christmas lee-way) and ‘Beach Body’ challenges is less than two weeks away: myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting
