If there’s one thing the world hands us all, it’s stress. Big, small, short, tall, rich, poor, and everything in between. We aaall go through it. Stress is the common denominator that’ll smack you when you least and most expect it, but it’s not just a feeling.. Stress has a physiological component too.
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What Is Stress
“Stress is emotional or physical tension. Stress typically causes the "fight or flight" response, a complex reaction of neurologic and endocrinologic systems that produces some characteristic symptoms.” [1]
We are all quite familiar with the emotional side of stress. You feel anxiety creep in, things tense up, and a mild to severe sense of panic flushes through your veins. This is a natural phenomenon ingrained at birth. It’s for survival, in fact. This response prepares you for “fight or flight,” because your body has interpreted the situation as life or death.
The challenge is most of us are domesticated and via social construct live lives where our body responds to simulated or misinterpreted as “life or death” conditions rather than those of reality. If this happened sporadically we could manage.. Complication is these “simulations” transpire daily.
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What Happens When You Stress And How It Can Contribute To Weight Gain
Stress elicits the release of a hormone called cortisol AKA hydrocortisone. Cortisol is a steroid with quite a few tools in its utility belt. It can levy influence on: inflammation, blood pressure, heart rate, metabolism, blood sugar, water balance, and more.
Almost all cells have receptors for cortisol, which opens the door for this buffet of sway. Cortisol isn’t all bad, it’s there for a reason, yet as with most everything in life.. Excess quantity is an issue. Chronically elevated cortisol levels can impact sex drive, mood, cause further anxiety, and even lead to depression. The shindig becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy; your bodily response to stress causes more stress.
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Other Side Effects Of Stress:
Fatigue
Weakness
Memory loss
Headache
Trouble focusing
Irritability
Reduced sleep quality
Longer than normal exercise recovery
Note: Weight gain is frequently a result of consistent stress because your body may mistake this state for a life-or-death emergency. For survival purposes your body submits requests for energy (calories). In translation it signals that you’re hungry, for it believes you are short on energy for the task at hand. So even if you already have a solid supply of energy (stored body fat) you over-eat leading to moooore body fat and what else? Moooore stress.
Still not impressed? High blood pressure from chronic stress can have you knocking at the door of heart disease if left uncorrected. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in America.
But I’ll repeat it’s not all bad. Cortisol is needed for survival. That sudden urge of adrenaline even overcomes you upon wakeup. Tomorrow morning, listen to your body and you’ll feel that release. It gets you going for the day. I’ll dive more into the benefits of stress and cortisol secretion later.
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How To Know If You’re Chronically Stressed
“Sleep disturbances or changes in sleeping habits (insomnia or sleeping too much), muscle tension, muscle aches, headache, gastrointestinal problems, and fatigue. Symptoms of many preexisting medical conditions can also worsen during times of stress.
Emotional and behavioral symptoms that can accompany excess stress include nervousness, anxiety, changes in eating habits including overeating or undereating (leading to weight gain or loss), loss of enthusiasm or energy, and mood changes, like irritability and depression.” [1]
I’ll pick nervousness out of this bunch and share. You’re you so you know yourself, right? When you go from homeostasis to a constant sense of urgency.. Not a get things done urgency, but a startled, jumpy state you may be stressed. From experience i can say it’s not a good look to do a barrel roll just because your wife came around the corner unannounced.
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What Causes Stress
Stress can come from anywhere:
World events
Local events
Politics
The news
Your favorite team lost to my favorite team
Job
Relationships
Parenting
Being parented
You don’t like the weather today
Traffic
Too many people in the gym
Global pandemic
Social pressure
Personal pressure
Low self-esteem
Social media
Lack of perceived success
Not reaching goals
Addiction
Health conditions
Out of shape
Not seeing results while trying to get in shape
Poor diet
Lack of exercise
And on and on
You can split stressors into two categories: internal and external. Sometimes one causes the other and sometimes they’re married.
External stress comes from events that happen involving you.
Note: A good way to go about life is seeing events as happening involving you rather than to you. People are usually too focused on themselves to spend their days trying to take you down. Never forget we all have a degree of narcissism; others aren’t that worried about you.
Back to external stressors. When your kids forget to flush the toilet that’s an external stressor. When your gym closes on behalf of Covid-19? External stressor. Girlfriend decides to call it quits; external. Soon we’ll get into how to handle external stressors, but remember it’s all from the world outside of your direct control.
Internal stress comes from within. From self-propelled thoughts and actions. All about how you frame the world and your expectations as well as your mindset. Internal triggers can be fear-based. For example, how you may feel about public speaking. Or your thoughts on the future.
Are you afraid of not reaching your potential? Uncertainty is a big one and even matters you can’t control like how a stranger perceives you. Your thoughts on others’ thoughts about you are internal. Could be your attitude or outlook on life. Do you look for the positive in circumstances or jump right into what’s wrong? Allll internal stressors.
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How Stress Impacts Muscle Building
Hypertrophy AKA muscle growth is certainly hurt by chronic stress. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone. Catabolism means to breakdown; it breaks down muscle tissue. This is natural in that even during a standard weight training or HIIT session you release cortisol as an answer to the physical stress. Yet you don’t want to work out for too long since the longer you go the more cortisol is released. It starts to become more harmful than helpful. Chronic stress mimics this scenario chronically. So imagine the ramifications on the gains.
Then there’s the impression on your central nervous system (CNS). The CNS runs the whole show. Whatever you do comes from that command center. Exercise taxes your CNS whether high intensity training, weightlifting, and to a lesser degree steady state cardio.
If action vs. Recovery is done improperly these essential fitness factors are enough to crash your CNS and lead to a state called overtraining, which means your ability to recover isn’t keeping up with your body’s demands.
Stress adds to the demands on your CNS. the more you place on your CNS, the longer it’ll take you to recover from training. Workout recovery is where hypertrophy occurs. Tear muscle tissue, repair muscle tissue larger than before. Chronic stress can hinder the repair process alone. Then there’s the aspect of stress impacting sleep.
Lack of sleep? Impairs the recovery process. Aaand takes away from energy, leading to trash workouts. Trash workout? Less output, less calories burned, less fat loss, less muscle growth, more stress, and round we go.
Note: If you’re one of the ones that doesn’t eat when stressing you’ll fall victim to muscle loss due to not supplying your muscles with the energy (calories) they need to maintain.
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How To Respond To Stress
You can’t stave away stress indefinitely. We need it, but we don’t need it all the time. The bright side of stress is it can motivate you to get your stuff together. I try to use it as a tool. If I notice I’m stressing I tend to take time and process. “What is on my mind?”
When I identify the issue, I work on a solution. Even if the solution isn’t an immediate fix the beginning of one relaxes me. Sometimes the solution is “There’s nothing I can do about that,” which is also comforting. Takes a lot of self-reflection and isn’t something I fell into overnight. Isn’t even at the point of mastery.
However I’ve come up with some of my best ideas under duress. Try to frame stress mentally as “There’s a problem I am now aware needs solving.” Without stress being a red flag in your brain you may’ve missed the issue. The issue could be tangible like pay a bill or psychological like needing to learn how not to allow yourself to be offended if a stranger incidentally stepped on your shoe. Whether psychological, physiological, or career-wise stress can help you strike gold if you can follow the mental breadcrumbs to the source and find a solution.
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Ways To Manage Stress:
Exercise (Not only for standard health and tension release, but enhanced fitness lowers your pulse rate. Lower pulse rate by default lends to a calmer response to stress.)
Meditation
Solid eating habits
Unplug from electronics
Spend some time in nature
Counseling
Don’t treat the symptoms treat the cause
Solve the problem
Change your pattern of thinking: Do your thoughts serve you or deter you?
Being positive.. Not naïve; positive
Accept what you can’t control
Control what you can control
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So It’s About That Time
Stress is part of life, accept it. Don’t stress that you’re stressing. Don’t fight it. Acknowledge it and adjust according to the why. Use this natural response to pressure to your advantage. Doing so will not only help you get rid of stress; it’ll improve every aspect of your life. Put those muscles to use and Be Great.