As the old saying goes, “how fast time flies when you’re having fun,” I’ve lost track of time and forgot to update this blog. these past two weeks were loaded with work and other responsibilities. Prioritizing work, rest, and destressing activities, I’ve stopped working out to use the time just to chill and recover.
Which brings me to some studies that I’ve read in the news.
Stress can make you fat.
Source: http://www.usnews.com/health/family-health/heart/articles/2009/08/05/social-stress-sends-body-fat-to-the-stomach.html
Though this is old news (Aug. 2009), it still applies today. Stress, or in the study mentioned above, Social Stress, causes you to produce more cortisol (the stress hormone), which results in production of more fat, especially in the midsection, also known as visceral fat or belly fat. High volume of belly fat has been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases. In short, here’s how it goes:
Stress -> Stress Hormones -> Belly Fat -> Heart Attack -> Death
So what should you do about it? Simple. Don’t stress yourself.
But that’s easier said than done. We are made to believe that stress is part of life, and we should learn to manage it. But if you really think about it, stress can also be removed from our life if we just simplify our lives. Again, easier said than done. It’s hard to change our lifestyle because we’ve been so accustomed to it. Most of us are afraid to change because we’re not sure if we can handle it. OR, we just won’t get out of our comfort zone.
So the compromise is: Gradual forward change.
Forward means, it’s not one step forward, then two steps backward. It’s doing small steps towards permanent positive change. Real change doesn’t happen overnight, remember?
How do you do it? Ok, i’ll save on word count here, so just see the bullet points below:
- Identify major goal and be specific, don’t generalize.
Example: Lose 30kg of body fat by Sept 30, 2010. - Identify things you need to do to achieve the major goal.
Example: Exercise more, eat less but more frequently, sleep right, minimize stress. - Make those required things minor goals.
Example: Your first minor goal is to have more exercise in your schedule. Once you’ve done that, you move on to eating less amounts of food, but more frequently. - Make it a habit.
Once you’ve made it a part of your daily routine, you won’t notice it that much. It’s like brushing your teeth: you do it everyday, 2-3 times a day, and hardly notice your spending time and effort on it (if you’re too lazy to even brush your teeth, that’s a different problem).
I’m on bullet point number 3 now, and failing regularly. There’s nothing wrong in failing, it’s normal. We all failed in some point in our lives. What’s important is that you recover fast, and learn more from your failure. One advise I read somewhere that I really liked goes something like this,
Fail fast so you can move on and grow faster.
So with that said, weeks 8 and 9 were my failures, but week 10 onwards won’t be. Small steps, small wins, small positive changes.
