I have often written about the best ways to alleviate stress through exercise, and in fact we have a whole long article dedicated to Stress Beating Workouts over at our main London personal training website as well as several relevant personal training blogs in this very site. The importance of creating a proper programme to deal with stress is paramount and to think that it is possible to just go into the gym and blow off steam is simplistic at best and can more often than not make a bad situation worse.
One aspect of dealing with stress that is often overlooked is proper eating – get your nutrition right and you can mitigate stress and function better, get it wrong and all the negative hormonal cascades that are caused by stress can be significantly magnified. This makes sense and is hardly cutting edge stuff, but I feel that it is something that we need to keep reminding ourselves of as it is our natural instinct to reach for the cookie jar under times of stress and take solace in comfort eating. I know that I myself am hugely guilty of dealing with stress by eating, and whereas some of you may cope with bad news and difficult times by turning to cakes and pastries, I find that when I am overworked (100hrs plus a week rather than my customary 80hrs!) I get lazy with my good nutritional habits and have Domino’s on speed dial. This has happened more than a few times in the last few weeks due to the opening of our new London personal training gym and although I can get away with it due to a certain level of leaness it is certainly not something I would recommend if you value either vanity or clear headed thinking. Nothing will make me lazier, less productive, and consequently more stressed than going crazy in one evening on 2 large pizzas, 2 servings of waffles, and 3 serving of double chocolate chip cookies! Yep, it would seem that my very guilty secret is out of the bag.
Nick's invoice from Domino's leaves him reeling!
So with my own occasional terrible eating in mind I decided that it was high time to remind myself of the crucial role that smart nutrition has in mitigating stress and enhancing our ability to work hard, work long, and work under pressure. There are some basic rules that we must all follow, plus a few tricks that will ramp up your overall stress coping mechanisms:
1) Control blood sugar with small, frequent meals
2) Eat protein, eat good fat, avoid simple Satan sugars and junk such as sweets, pastries, and yes waffles, pizza and cookies!
3) Stay hydrated
4) Use “smart supplements” such as phosphatidylserine, adaptogenic herbs such as Rhodiola Rosea and Holy Basil, and always take your extra omega 3s.
There is a full in-depth article on this subject (How to Beat Stress with Nutrition & Supplementation) at our main London personal training website where I go into detail as to exactly how you need to eat in order to deal with the stress of modern living.
I am now off to our Liverpool Street personal training gym to do some anti pizza weight training and sled pulling!
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