Doable and low cost way to reduce stress for fatloss.....

Today's post:  Thursday, 10-5-2017

As regular readers of this blog know, there are two effective ways to remove fat that you can keep off.

1.  Reduced calorie and carb high protein eating plus exercise including some strength training.

2.  Eating in a way that puts you in ketosis with almost zero carbs or close to it and making that your permanent or frequent eating style on a long term basis.

Doing them well and having them work well however only tends to work if you can keep your level of stress in your body quite low most of the time!

There are three reasons for this:

a) Eating bit too much or eating too many foods with carbs or sugars as a stress reliever tends to derail both methods. 

If you have already completely stopped eating the several worst foods and ingredients for harmful carbs & sugars and have already completely stopped drinking all soft drinks, this will be less and you’ll tend to level off rather than gaining fat. 

But you won’t lose as much fat as you could or any at all!  Boo!

b)  Research found that fat you gain while stressed, has a substance that makes it strongly resist being used when you are in a calorie deficit or in ketosis. 

This apparently is part of our built in famine protection.  In the past, when our ancestors were very stressed too often, famine or severe food shortages tended to exist or arrive shortly.

Supplements to lower cortisol don’t seem to help this much.  When you are stressed enough, your body generates so much cortisol it overwhelms them and deposits this locked down fat anyway!

This is true of all your fat it seems. But it has been shown for sure to be most true for belly fat and internal fat that begins to strangle your internal organs known as visceral fat.

c)  We also found and posted on evidence that stress reduces your metabolism. So with the same food and exercise, you burn far fewer calories. 

That can add fat when you would otherwise have lost it!  As I’ve been under extra stress during my cut down weeks, this is exactly what just happened to me apparently.

How to avoid that kind of stress:

Clearly, prudent choices that prevent stressful situations helps to prevent such stress:

Always wear your seat belt.  Brush your teeth well every day.  Obey the laws that are enforced and have harsh penalties.  Be well organized and do the work necessary to be ready for and deal well with known and upcoming challenges.

And, because it gives you more resources to turn off or escape threats, a high, reliable income combined with savings and good credit that is lightly used really helps. 

I’m still working on this one myself.  But those who have it ARE far less stressed and have this level of stress far less often.

It also has been shown to help to frame dealing with a threat as a challenge instead of a disaster

--no matter how severe the threat -- and listing and systematically trying potential solutions.

So does having good relationships with family and friends and capable experts who are sane and will give you advice or help.

No one escapes such stress and many have it often; but when stress is temporary and you overcome it and rest, these fattening effects don’t happen.

BUT that’s only true if your body turns off its stress response so you can rest effectively.

There ARE ways to ensure your body turns off its stress response after you remove the threat or if you cannot yet remove it.

The level of meditation of Buddhist monks and daily tai chi do this best. 

For some people, yoga works.  Less lengthy meditation works but not as well.

These alternatives DO work for some people.  But they take time daily and they have to be done well or they fail to work.

In my view, the best ones are yoga that avoids injury but does cause moderate exercise and increased flexibility and tai chi that builds balance and leg strength and burns calories as you do it.

But both of these require you to have an instructor teach you to do them well.  That takes time and money you may not have.

There are 3 ways that can do more than this that look likely to work:

Two require equipment and are not yet available for home use without a prescription.

*One reads the response of both your hemispheres in your brain to stress and uses biofeedback to reduce the stress level response AND it balances so that both hemispheres are the same.  That’s very important because in many people who react badly to stress one side is severely out of adjustment and one isn’t too bad.  By making them both react well and in concert and exactly the same, it’s quite effective!

*The other one is less high tech and can provide the high heart rate and blood pressure reduction that people and doctors who don’t know any better have used the dangerous and harmful beta blockers to achieve.  I hope it is available soon and becomes the standard therapy!

It works as well for the useful effects; but unlike beta blockers that stay on when people need to exercise or move quickly in an emergency it does not do so! Nor does it have the harmful side effects including directly causing depression that is virtually incurable.

By placing small medallions that induce a heart rate consistent with relaxation on key blood vessels it physically reduces the too high heart rate and blood pressure.

The third one that triggered this post is doable and no-cost! 

AND since it is either always on or something that takes extra effort but only during exercise when you are making an extra effort already, it’s very valuable to know about!

Slow breaths tend to reduce heart rate and stress response. 

AND they have two other important benefits. 

They cause your body to make more red blood cells and add more oxygen carrying hemoglobin on each red blood cell.  Slow breaths put less oxygen into your blood so your body compensates enough to supply you with the oxygen you need anyway.  That means you have more reserve when you do intense and rapid exercise.

Taking slow breaths increases the CO2 level in your blood.  It’s not widely known.  I didn’t know it until this past Monday, but slightly high CO2 in your blood is directly calming and stress relieving.

Very low CO2 creates a feeling of panic or severe anxiety.  That I had heard of because it happens when people hyperventilate; and the treatment is to breathe into a bag so that you bring up your CO2 level.

I had tried various methods to breathe more slowly from using a Resperate to counting as I breathed in and counting as I held my breath and counting as I breathed out.  That last one can help if you are suddenly too stressed.

But invariably, I’d forget to do them often enough to do much good or not have time to do them when I most needed the effect.

The surprising solution is to be breathing slowly through your nose ALL the time! 

It’s just like setting a thermostat that is always on.  Once you get used to it, you just set it once well and keep doing it all the time.

Instead of having to do something extra, you just have to resume it if you find you have stopped!

Even better, there is no extra time used for a treatment or dollar cost to use it!

During exercises where you move rather than strength training with low reps, you build your oxygen reserve best by continuing slow breathing through your nose until you literally feel like gasping for air. 

As this practice increases your oxygen reserve and you increase your mental control you can do this longer and at more intense exercise levels. 

Since Monday, I’ve been using it on my fast abdominal exercises and brisk walks.  It does take concentration at first and as you approach your current capacity; but it clearly works!

Yes there IS a book on it:

The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You Become Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter    by Patrick McKeown

      Published:  Nov 29, 2016

It’s too early to tell if it will help my fat loss though it certainly looks likely to do so. 

But it IS surprisingly doable.  AND, I can tell it will increase my fitness level with the same exercises I already do!