Staying Healthy In Stressful Times
Protocol, Tips & Mindset
There was a footnote at the bottom of last week’s article.
I discovered maintaining my health & body composition took a fraction of the time/energy I spent on athletic performance as an elite athlete. This surprised me. It’s a common belief system among the chronic exercisers of my demographic.
Before we dig deeper, I made a video explaining what I mean by Chronic Endurance.
The video explains how endurance athletes grind themselves down. It’s different than the chronic stress we see more broadly in society.
Exercising all the time.
Always tired.
A desire for chronic weight-loss.
These three states lead the athlete into a situation where their bodies breakdown. The decline in health is like Hemingway writing about going bankrupt…
Gradually, Then Suddenly.
Maintaining Health
Many talk a good game with health, family and relationships but… their actions say otherwise.
To achieve BETTER health.
There needs to be LESS of something else.
Just like last time, my approach was simple.
Sleep => go to sleep when the kids do. If you don’t have kids then go to sleep two hours earlier.
Wake Up => wake up before the kids do. If you don’t have kids then apply two hours from your evening life, to your mornings.
Start Every Day With A Win => we have limited control over the end of our days. We have total control of what happens before everyone else gets moving.
It took me years to make the above a habit. At first, I swapped evening beers for morning coffee. Eventually, I added Point Three (Get The Win, Early) and decided to exercise.
When stress is high, it does not matter what you do.
Move the body
Get the win
This was counterintuitive for the Type-A hard-charging person I had created in my mind. I could only see it in hindsight.
Short-term: my morning wins made me feel better about myself, improved my health and made me more pleasant to be around.
Long-term: I was keeping my options open to do more later. At first, I thought my family life would settle in a year, then 500-days, then 1000-days, then I gave up for a while, then the pandemic hit… eventually… things got much better. Took ten years.
When I was deep in it a buddy (with 4 kids) advised… just don’t get fat. He’d gotten fat, with two cans of Guinness nightly on the couch. It took him years to drop the weight. We’d both advise you to drink less.1
As for the specifics… with my mentor (Dr. John Hellemans) we wrote you a chapter on Lifelong Health. Focus on the section called Basic Fitness. It’s a 12-hour weekly commitment. From 2011 to 2021, I hit the minimum most weeks. When things were crazy, I’d be in the 6-8 hour range.
Specific Tips
Strength training is helpful for anger management. I have friends who like boxing classes for a similar reason. Outside classes took time from my week. A home gym and a good strength program were time efficient. My family would wake up to the house gently shaking from my tossing plates and sandbags in the basement.
I wish I went easier with my cardio. In 2022, I had a look at my metabolic fitness. It was awful. Turns out I was going far harder than required for my goals.2
More movement. I was good with the little things… always take the stairs, park as far from the venue as possible, order the healthiest thing on the menu… One change that would have helped is no long periods sitting. Current literature is clear - moving every few hours is beneficial. Coming from an athletic background, I discounted the value of extremely low heart rate movement. I was wrong.3
Eliminate high-energy foods. Sugar, starch and ultra-processed foods. I got this right and it helped manage my weight.
Eat a giant salad every single day. This requires effort and crowds out poor choices. Exercise your willpower to eat a massive salad. Not Eating Doesn’t Work.
Two years after a DECADE of the above…
I’ve recaptured everything I was worried about losing.
Mindset
Each of our lives… right now… has been created by a belief system.
Are you aware of your personal system?
When we are stressed, it’s controlling our actions and responses.
When we are “in it” with kids, work, life or our-attitude-of-the-moment… the stress we feel is created by a conflict between:
Our Perceived Reality.
Our Belief System.
…what is the core belief making me feel stress right now?
TIP => the source is inside us.
Core beliefs that have led me astray…
I had to look a certain way to find love and have friends.
I had to train a certain amount (to find love and have friends)
Winning will make me happy.
Money will make me happy.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
of my belief systems
of my fears
of how I create my reality
…then, when things settle down, create a game where I feel like I am winning.4
Binary is easier. I don’t spend energy considering if the situation merits a drink, yelling, lying, cheating… you get the drift.
If you’re a runner then run (short & easy) 2x a week. This will keep your body adapted to the specific stress of running.
Train your kids. I spent a decade working with my son and building his endurance. At the time it felt like I was making a huge personal sacrifice. If I’d known how beneficial all the slow movement was for my body perhaps I would have chilled out a bit.
Sometimes the only game we can play is to survive to teach others about our experiences. Dealing with toddlers is challenging but doesn’t rise to the level of Man’s Search for Meaning. I read quite a bit of holocaust literature when my home life was crazy. I found it gave me perspective.
This is an amazing reminder of the little things matter... thank you Gordo for the much needed reset here.