Here, I am taking some well established concepts of what constitutes a stress factor in life and am applying a bit of a new spin to them (well, not that new - just a different twist)
I saw the Homeland Security terror color chart recently and it got the wheels turning in my mind regarding the principles of stress as it relates to weight loss, goal setting, and the ability to undertake a fitness program successfully
I've pasted the chart into this entry several times to keep you from having to scroll up and down to think about it ----
--- but basically --- for the purposes of this blog entry -- throw out all the crap about terrorists and lets apply the color chart to how our lives should be led
Green is still Low risk ------- Red is still severe , but the levels in between are the levels that are trending towards ideal , which is probably yellow
---- all stress is not bad , but if you read this entry and find you're hitting on red in almost everything I bring up --- its time to de-compress a bit
- Sugar/Insulin Management
- Alcohol
- STRESS/Cortisol management
Fail to address all 4 of these and there's not a diet,
supplement or exercise program in existence that can help you. (I know , like I said before -- I am my own personal test bed, good and bad )
Rate your overall stress level -- think of the color chart above -- are you a calm and collected green, or are you in the red all the time?
Many things will affect numerous categories and many
categories have crossover such as working in a hazardous environment will be in
both job stress and environment.
•Environment- Do you work in a chemical plant? Live near the
freeway? Get Road Rage often? Have loud neighbors disrupting your sleep(see how
this ties in with relationships too?)? Have a spouse that buys nothing but junk
food when you're trying to eat clean? -- you have a condition Orange or RED environment
If you have a nice view out your office window , work in an environment that rewards achievement over brown-nosing, and are appreciated at home -- your likely closer to the harmonic ideal of yellow
Condition green would assume you only get out of bed to meditate and perform Tai-Chi next to a Hawaiian waterfall ----- hardly any of us are condition green - and while this condition may be a nice place to take a break occasionally, its unsustainable
•Lifestyle- Do you party a little too much,- stay up late and consume more than a few drinks per week? Always out of money? 7 years behind on your 5 year plan perhaps? ------ flirting with the red zone
Are you on track to completing your life's goals ? In bed by 10:30 every night? Sleep well and interact well with your family and friends? ---- that's the yellow zone . a zone that is not without its stresses here and there, but is a sustainable lifestyle
•Movement- This one is a bit tougher to quantify , -- if you are following a regular, vigorous exercise program , I would rate that at a yellow - right in the middle basically. If you obsessively run 10 miles per day at the expense of your relationships, job, - your in the red most likely. If your a couch potato, your probably bluish /green
--- in this category, a bit of stress is desirable , but if you are working out like an Olympic athlete on top of working 50 hours a week, --- there is such a thing as too much of a good thing
•Nutrition- Are you you eating breakfast daily? If not,
score yourself no less than orange, no exceptions. Are you consuming protein,
produce and water every few hours? Are you freaking out about every little
calorie? If you're counting calories and more than 30 pounds away from your
goal weight, go head and mark yourself a red. Are you eating super clean
without thinking about it so you can bring the color down? -good!
•Overall Health- How many medications do you take, trips to the doctor per year, chronic ailments, and how many prescriptions are you on? ---- if your a type-2 diabetic who is overweight and on blood pressure medication - consider yourself in the red, -- If none of these applies except for routine checkups, that would be green --- most of us probably fall somewhere in between
•Mindset- Some people may put spirituality in this category
as well. What's your will to win against all odds no matter what? Do you say
you can't have such and such food or do you say you don't need it? Do you
consider yourself a weak person or strong person? Do you need motivation or are
you overflowing with it? -- perhaps a bit brash and over-confident, or cocky even?
Again -- balance is everything-- being strong willed is often looked at as an asset, but it can be a stressor as well --- if you explode when you don't get your way, or if an employee is "not doing it right" --- you're likely in the orange-red zone. The green zone would be a meek little mouse who gets steam-rolled by life - yellow is the zone of harmonious balance
•Dim-wittedness - Do you frequently forget things at the store you were supposed to pick up? Lose your keys/wallet/sunglasses - etc. frequently ? Unable to multi-task any more or juggle any more routine tasks than you are already juggling? - you got it -- Red zone -- you are a harried mess
A lot of this is time management skills --- what negative habits do you have that throw this off? -- Loafing on the computer playing Candy Crush for hours? -- getting stuck in front of the tv? taking on more responsibility than you can handle? ---- isolate the problem areas and conquer them in the name of reducing your stress level
These are the BIG 3 that cause people more stress than the rest,
•Financial- This one should be self explanatory. If you think about finances once a day or more (Bad OR Good), you're probably closer to the red zone
•Job/Career/Life Purpose- Don't have a career or need a job? Then what is your life purpose? Are you living it? How much stress do your supervisor or co-workers give you? Do you love your job or hate it?
•Relationships- Are they good? Bad? Are you working on improving them or just letting them sit? Relationships with Co-Workers? Family? Kids? Friends? Only you can answer if your in the Red zone, or the much more harmonious bluish -yellow zone -- in this case , yellow and blue do not make green - LOL
jot these things down
- Environment
- Lifestyle
- Movement
- Nutrition
- Health
- Mindset
- Dim-wittedness
- Finances
- Career
- Relationships
Score yourself from the range of green to red
Too many solid red categories or orange categories and you are likely over-stressed. Your body will be producing much more cortisol than someone in the middle ground
------ I doubt very many of us will have more than 1 or 2 categories in the green, but for example, if all your categories were green , you would be the most boring person in the history of the world
-------- Introducing radical changes to your diet and exercise programs adds additional stress to our bodies, and if we aren't achieving harmony in other areas, this additional stress can make some people snap- and its not completely because they're weak - it happens to strong people too
---------- work on taking the Red's down into the orange and preferable yellow level. If you can go blue, more power to ya, but as I mentioned, the human machine is designed to operate under a bit of a load , and some stresses are positive
For example: Before you can add the additional stress of a
strict diet or hard core exercise program , which would bring nutrition and movement closer to the red zone, , you need to be eating breakfast 90% of the time for a minimum of 3
consecutive weeks or the best diet in the world is a complete waste of time
because your consistency is poor.
As well , it would help greatly to bring other categories of stress down a color , or your overall stress level will still be contributing to elevated cortisol levels
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Thanks for reading
As always, you can help us out by turning a buddy onto the blog just by hitting FWD and sending it on -- if you are reading this for the first time and wanted to be added to my subscriber list (I try to do this a couple of times a week) --shoot me an email to Dougmcbride@fitclaimspro.com
--Doug
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