Personal Trainer tips: Rest, relax, and lose fat!
Typically when most people think about a good fat loss strategy, the mind immediately goes to diet and exercise; primarily eating less and exercising more. This is the typical dieter mentality.
The trouble with this is that when you start exercising more, the body perceives this as stress. Exercise might feel like a great stress reliever for you, and it definitely is on an emotional level, but on a physical (hormonal) level the body reads it as stress.
To cope with the demands of exercise, the body pumps out the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. These are the same hormones that are released when we experience stress in day-to- day life: work stress, family stress, financial stress, etc. So, when you throw the body from the day-to-day stress straight in to the stress of the gym, you end up with a body which is overwhelmed with stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline).
These hormones are fantastic is short doses, but over prolonged periods of time will start to make the body feel tired, hungry, cravings for sugar and more likely to store fat around the tummy.
We recommend that all our personal training clients have a stress reduction strategy in their life, which we call ‘R&R Workouts’. If you can do R&R Workouts daily, that’s perfect, but as a minimum you should be indulging in R&R at least 3 times per week.
Here are some examples of R&R Workouts:
Massage
Taking a long bath
Sauna / Steam room
Quiet reading
Taking naps
Watching a funny film
Foam rolling (SMR)
Walking in nature
Drinking herbal tea
Restorative/Hatha yoga
Meditation
Playing with pets
R&R workouts help to calm the nervous system and reduce stress hormone output. The lower your stress hormones become, the easier you will find it to stay motivated to eat well, exercise, lose fat and feel ultimate wellness.
If you’d like more advice on how to manage your stress levels for more successful fat loss, our personal trainers can help you, call 0117 403 7600. Visit our Facebook page for more great tips.
