5 Stress Management Strategies for Improved Fat Loss

There’s no denying how prevalent stress is in today’s society. In fact, according to the World Health Organisation, stress has been classified as the health epidemic of the 21st century. Whether it’s work-related stress, financial struggles, relationship troubles, or even physical stress placed on our body during an intense workout, it’s no secret that stress can present itself in many different forms!

Yet, contrary to popular belief, stress is not entirely bad. Stress is technically our most important survival mechanism… after all, it’s what helped keep our hunter-gatherer ancestors alive thousands of years ago. Likewise, in today’s day and age, stress is also extremely beneficial for helping us meet those work deadlines, train harder and lift heavier, and check the road before crossing for any potential threats. So, what’s the downside? In today’s society, most of us are struggling to find the ‘off button’ for stress, which is having a detrimental impact on our physical and mental health…and in many cases, our ability to lose weight!

First things first, how on earth does stress impact weight? During periods of heightened tension, the stress hormone, cortisol, rises. As a result of this, increased cortisol may also cause higher insulin levels and drop blood sugar, causing you to crave sugary and fatty foods. The result? Well, when we’re stressed, we’ll often eat the wrong types of food in excess!

With that in mind, here are our top five tips for stress management:

Tip 1: Exercise
Exercise is one of the most effective ways to combat stress, while simultaneously working on your physical health. As ironic as it might sound, putting physical stress on your body, by way of exercise, can relieve mental stress.

Did you know that people who exercise regularly are less likely to experience anxiety, as opposed to those who don’t exercise? And here’s why:

• Sleep – Exercising regularly can help to improve the quality of your sleep, due to the way it physically exhausts your body. As stress and anxiety are known to negatively impact sleep quality, this can help to alleviate the symptoms.
• Endorphins – Did you know that exercise helps to release endorphins, which are chemicals that improve your mood and act as natural painkillers? Additionally, exercise is also suggested to lower the body’s stress hormones over a prolonged period, including cortisol.
• Confidence – Who doesn’t feel better after breaking a sweat? When you exercise regularly, you’re likely to feel more confident and comfortable in your skin, which ultimately enhances mental wellbeing and reduces stress.

Whether you’re new to exercise or a gym veteran, the best way to find a sustainable and enjoyable exercise routine is to base it around something you love. Love to run? Start your day with a morning jog. Love feeling refreshed? Try hitting the pool for a few laps. Not much into traditional sports? Why not join your local yoga or pilates class. Love strength training? Head to Dukes Gym!

Tip 2: Get your sleep right

When you’re experiencing stress, you’re more likely to lay awake at night restless and unable to get a good night’s sleep. However, the lack of sleep also causes stress, which means it’s a never-ending cycle. The cherry on top? When we lack sleep, we crave a quick source of energy, such as sugary treats, which often leads us further away from our health and fitness goals. Not to mention, a lack of sleep may also interfere with key appetite hormones, ghrelin and leptin.

So, how can you improve your stress by improving your sleep cycle?

• Two to four hours before bed – Avoid any intense exercise that will make you alert and buzzing. Also, avoid large meals that will keep you up at night while your body works hard to digest everything.
• One hour before bed – Reduce the amount of artificial light surrounding you by dimming your lights or putting a lamp on. Also, switch your screens to night mode. This will help to increase melatonin, which helps to get you into a sleepy state.
• 30 minutes before bed – Switch off all electronic devices and screens. If you need your phone alarm for the morning, simply switch your phone to aeroplane mode to minimise any distractions that may disrupt your sleep!

Tip 3: Take time out for yourself

Do you often get caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life and forget to take time out for yourself? Whether it’s the mental stresses associated with work deadlines and pressure, the physical stress of exercise, or the mental and physical stress of raising little ones, there are many reasons why we just sometimes don’t find the time to put ourselves first. However, the downside is, without our ‘me time’, our happiness, motivation, and potential for success greatly diminish.

When you subject yourself to extreme pressure and stress day-after-day, without taking time out to recuperate, you are not only preventing yourself from performing at your highest level, you’re also exposing yourself to a greater risk of illness and disease. Truth be told – your body will not perform or look the way we want it to if you’re constantly subjecting yourself to physical and mental stress. Not long after the mental symptoms kick in, the physical symptoms will start to show!

Try incorporating the following ‘me time’ tips into your weekly schedule:

• Recovery time – Dedicate one day a week or a month to ‘recovery time’. This should be time spent relaxing and unwinding. For instance – Get a massage, go to the movies alone, read a book, listen to a podcast… whatever it is you love doing to unwind, make it a staple in your routine!
• Learn new skills – We spend so much time bettering our skill set to progress in our careers, but how much time do we really spend improving our skills to better ourselves as people? For most of us, the answer will be: never. So, we urge you to find a skill you’d like to learn – whether it be photography, drawing, running, a language – and commit to it for six months. Never underestimate how important learning is and how much it can influence our mental health!
• Change up your routine – It’s easy to become stagnant in your routine and your attitude when you do the same things at the same time every day. Whether it’s your workouts or your downtime, try switching things up to keep your routine fresh and exciting.

Tip 4: Run your own race

There’s no denying that social media is an extremely effective and beneficial tool for helping us to connect with new and old friends, discover new places to eat, and unwind while laughing at the never-ending stream of memes. However, in today’s society, the downside of social media is starting to outweigh the positives: It’s starting to replace one-on-one human interaction. I mean, let’s be real – receiving a like on Facebook or Instagram just isn’t the same as catching up with friends in real life. The enjoyment is fleeting!

Believe it or not, stress can present itself in several ways, and it’s not always just work, finance or relationship-related. More often than not, it stems from confidence and self-worth. As such, comparing your progress to what others post on social media can be very damaging. With the advent of Photoshop, FaceTune and Instagram filters, social media gives us an unrealistic expectation of how our lives should be, or, how underwhelming our gym progress might appear to be in comparison to your social media buddies.

However, in actual fact – seeing the progress of others should inspire you, not demotivate or irritate you. If social media is having a negative effect on you, switch off and focus on your own progress…after all, everyone is running their own race and it’s probably time you did the same. Better still, those 30 minutes you spent scrolling aimlessly through your feed could’ve been much better spent working towards your goals, meditating, reading or just simply unwinding.

 Tip 5: Incorporate supplements

Do you feel like you’ve tried just about everything and are still unable to reduce the stress from your life? Perhaps it’s time to call on the help of a friend. Yep, we’re talking about supplementation!

If you’re looking for the right solution to enhance energy, improve wellness and reduce stress, it’s important to find one that won’t leave you feeling scattered and run down once it wears off. So, what do we recommend? * drum roll * Project U Vitality!

Just like all things in life, maintaining optimal vitality requires ongoing maintenance of your internal health. Thanks to Project U Vitality, ensuring your body has all the goodness required to boost your brain functionality and overall health, just got that much easier.

So, what can you expect from this formula?

Simply put, Vitality is designed to stimulate brain function, support gut health, boost energy, enhance mood and lower cortisol!

Project U Vitality contains Apple Cider Vinegar to aid digestion, support gut health and act as a natural antibacterial and antioxidant. As well as Lemon Balm to also support digestive health and to help increase GABA in the body, which may have a calming effect strong enough to help lower cortisol levels and reduce anxiety. Additionally, Moringa Leaf Powder is rich in antioxidant properties and natural anti-inflammatory benefits, and Reishi Mushrooms boast powerful immune-boosting and mood-enhancing properties.

This impressive formula doesn’t stop there. To supercharge Vitality, a combination of powerful nootropic and brain-boosting ingredients have been added. Huperzine A has been added to help boost memory and neuro function, Cognizin Citicoline to reduce age-related memory impairment and boost attention, and Tyrosine to improve alertness and mental performance. Lastly, the key ingredient, Lion’s Mane, has been added to help relieve symptoms of anxiety, boost immune health, reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, and to help speed up recovery from nervous system damage.

The topic of weights vs cardio has been an age-old debate with the common misconception that lifting weights will make you bulky and big and a lot of cardio will cause you to strip high amounts of fat. However, nutrition plays a pivotal role in fat loss, using exercise as a tool will assist fat loss further and there are both pros and cons of choosing either cardio or weights.

Staying on top of your nutrition is essential as it is a vital aspect of your fitness journey. Food provides you with energy and also calories. In order to achieve fat loss, it is advised that an individual should be in a caloric deficit meaning they should consume less food than they burn. This is considered a negative energy balance. An alternative to being in a caloric deficit is to calculate your maintenance calories which is the amount you need to consume per day in order to maintain your weight after doing physical activities whether sport, occupational or leisure.  Here is a link that will assist you with calculating your calories (https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macronutcal.htm). To avoid dropping your calories and constantly being hungry, you can utilise weights or cardio as a tool to increase your energy expenditure. This will also result in weight loss, as you will exert more energy than you consume, without starving yourself.

So why should you choose cardio? Cardio exercises are great as it is an easy way to burn calories in a single session, you can do then anywhere without needing any equipment and it is also proven to improve your cardiovascular system. On average, you will be able to burn up to 250 calories in a single session. However, there are many factors that contribute to how much you will actually burn. These factors include; age – as the older you are the fewer calories you can expect to burn, workout intensity – the higher the intensity, the faster your heart rate and the more calories you will expect to burn, overall daily activity – the more sedentary you are, the fewer calories you will burn. You will not need any specific equipment in order to do most cardiovascular exercises. Such examples are running, jogging or bodyweight circuits. These are great to do at the park, the beach and even better if you have a dog to go on runs with. The main benefit of doing cardio exercises is that they will improve your cardiovascular health. You will improve your cardiac output – the amount of blood pumped around your body per beat, which is the product of your stroke volume and heart rate. Having a greater cardiac output will result in a higher amount of oxygenated blood available to your working muscles and thus greater potential output.

Although there many benefits in doing cardio, there are also negatives. Cardio exercises will not help in building or retaining muscle mass. Long durations will put a lot of strain on your joints and ligaments, especially in your legs and most steady state activities usually require the lower body thus you will be neglecting your upper half. Due to the nature of most of the exercises, you will not be putting direct load or stress on the muscles, which will not stimulate them to grow as effective as lifting weights will. Steady state cardiovascular exercises will put your body in a catabolic state, which means the loss of your hard-earned muscles. Long durations of cardio will strain and put stress on the joints and ligaments. Take running for example, it requires the understanding of biomechanics and correct running motion, in order to ensure you can run effectively and efficiently. The most common injury is knee pain which can set you back for a long period of time. In addition, most steady state activities require the use of the lower body, which means you will be neglecting your upper body. This is not ideal as it your body will be disproportioned and therefore a lack of upper body strength, which can affect everyday life tasks.

Weights on the other hand is the best option if you are looking to maintain/build muscle mass as you can actively target specific muscles and there is much more scope to add variations to your routine. Due to the nature of lifting weights, you can directly put load on and target specific muscles selectively for them to grow. Lifting weights stimulates the muscle fibres, causing them to tear during your workout and then rebuild bigger and stronger during your recovery due to a cellular process to form new muscle protein strands. This process will allow you to recruit more motor units and lift heavier over time. You will also improve your posture as you will be able to activate muscle such as your erector spinae and upper back to be more upright. One major benefit of weight training, especially with the older population is to maintain their bone density. Due to the risk of arthritis, it is important to ensure that your joints, ligaments and bones are strong and healthy for as long as possible. Weight training will develop and strengthen them which will be very beneficial in the long run. With a heap of exercises to choose from, you can add many variations to your routine, which will ensure you’ll enjoy your training. Unlike cardio exercises which is limited to only a few options. You can also do circuits or HIIT training with weights to improve your cardiovascular system.

As we are a gym that is strength/weight focused, it is inevitable that we will be biased towards lifting weights. However, if we had to pick some drawbacks, it would be investing time to learn the right form and technique and correct programming will be vital to ensure maximum gains. Learning the right technique will take some time as it is crucial to ensure you prevent injury. Similar to running, understanding the movement pattern and biomechanics of the exercises is important as you will be able to hit the correct muscles or lift the most amount of weight efficiently.

The take home message is that fat loss only comes from a caloric deficit and this can be achieved with the help of steady state exercise and weights. Cardio will help burn a substantial number of calories in a single session, but you will look like you don’t train. Weights on the other hand may take longer to achieve fat loss, but if you want to get a lean and toned physique, this is definitely the more effective option, and you will look like you go to the gym.

Happy training!

When it comes to the body and hormones it is unfortunate, but very common, that oestrogen is seen as the devil and by no means is it that. It’s important to find the sweet spot of balance to have everything in the body running efficiently.

To get a good idea of what the hormone is, let’s start with the basics; oestrogens are a group of steroidal hormones that are found in both men and women and we have a number of different types, or groups. There are three big ones that we will focus most upon;

Oestrone (E1) – The weakest of the 3, E1 can be converted and serves mainly as the precursor to Oestradiol(E2). It is a minor female sex hormone, synthesized from cholesterol and secreted mainly from the gonads, as all oestrogens are.

Oestradiol (E2) – Broadly, when we speak of Oestrogens, this is the one we are referring to. It’s the major female sex hormone, regulates menstrual/reproductive cycle and development of reproductive tissues. E2 is produced in the follicles of the ovaries in women, testicles in men and adrenal glands, fat tissue, liver, breasts and the brain in both.

Oestriol (E3) – Often seen as a urinary metabolite that is measured. Close to undetectable in women unless pregnant, it is synthesized in very high quantities in the placenta. For both men and women E3, like E1, has a far weaker activity in the body.

When it comes to the importance of oestrogen in the body, both men and women have their own levels required for optimum function and they have different roles for each sex.

We obviously think mainly about its role in women, the reproductive processes, libido, and regulation of menstrual cycle along with bone health, mood, brain activity and other things like that.

Whereas in men, oestrogen still has a role when it comes to the reproductive system, just not to the same extent, as the testosterone steroidal hormone governs/regulates it’s input. Oestrogen helps with how well and strong a man’s sperm can swim, the stronger the swimmers, the better the fertility rate. It also helps modulate immunity and has an effect on the cardiovascular system.

So they have similar roles in both sexes, but different interactions with other hormones which facilitate different impacts on the body.

The many ratios in which we see the metabolites of oestrogen, some of the metabolites are considered more protective and good for you, while others, not so beneficial. So, if some of the metabolites are far too high, that’s where you can run in to some health issues. To regulate these potential negative effects of oestrogen it runs through the liver where it goes through a detoxification process to try and get the right ratios in check, suited to your physiology.

If someone is very poor at this detoxification process, both men and women, are likely to notice symptoms of memory loss, lack of libido, decreased mood, greater levels of body fat, decreased recovery and impaired gut function can become impaired to name a few. It’s a hard one to pick apart, but these above symptoms can suggest something is not going quite right.

Now to combat these issues, the best one, in most cases, is a reduction of body fat, this is because of an enzyme called aromatase. Aromatase is what converts testosterone into oestrogen, the more body fat you have, the more aromatase you will have and the more aromatase you have, the more oestrogen you will be likely to produce and/or convert.

To reduce negative oestrogens, we can reduce our exposure to environmental oestrogens; these are very similar to in genetic make-up to the oestrogen receptors we have in our body. These xeno-oestrogens are the “bad” oestrogens that bind to our natural oestrogen and can throw the body’s ratios insanely out of whack over extended periods of exposure.

To reduce this, be mindful and watch out for:
– Plastics,
– BPA,
– Parabens found in cosmetic products and unnatural body lotions,
– Petrochemicals,
– High Oestrogen foods (soy, wheat, corn, conventional dairy & meat)
– Excessive alcohol consumption
– Hormonal contraception’s
– Insecticides

Don’t stress, it’s not the end of the world if you use these things, but it is an accumulative thing. Over time they will catch up on you and begin causing negative health effects.

It can be fixed though, not all hope is lost, it comes down to some simple things:
– Manage reasonable body fat levels, no higher than 15-20% in males and 20-25% in women
– Exercise regularly, the resulting hormonal output will improve the oestrogen ratios in your favour
– Eat a balanced diet inclusive of beans, cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens, varied nuts, pumpkin, artichokes, avocados, berries, chia seeds, coconut based products, lentils, peas and quinoa
– Limit your exposure to environmental oestrogens. Use glass containers, natural products etc
– Maintain healthyfFibre intake to keep your gut in check so oestrogen doesn’t hop back in the blood stream
– Manage inflammation, don’t stress too much, balance the yin and yang in your life

So those are all the key things to really balance out your oestrogen levels in your body. Don’t go crazy on supplements to remove it entirely, it is important. Do the above, get your bloods tested, train hard, eat well, manage your recovery and look after yourself.

Help balance your body.
– Brady