Make Pleasure a Priority

 

I get so many enquiries about how to reduce stress and is stress causing my excess midsection fat?

Personally I don’t believe stress is the ultimate bad guy. Intermittent periods of stress can be very beneficial, it’s the chronic stress that is the demon. Chronic stress can invite tissue breakdown and hormonal havoc.

The following is a typical example of how the stress response is operated as it’s intended survival mechanism:

  • An individual is faced with a stressor

  • A complex hormonal cascade ensues, and the adrenals secrete cortisol

  • Cortisol prepares the body for a fight-or-flight response by flooding the body with glucose, to supply energy to escape or fight

  • Cortisol narrows the arteries while the epinephrine increases heart rate, both of which force blood to pump harder and faster to help you deal with the situation at hand

  • The individual addresses and resolves the situation

  • Hormone levels return to normal.

However, in our ever-stressed, fast-paced lives, our bodies are pumping out cortisol almost constantly and this results in:

  • increased visceral fat storage - this is the dangerous fat around our organs and often shows up as swelling around the mid-section of our bodies

  • increased muscle wasting

  • reduced calcium absorption - osteoporosis dangers

  • increases appetite and may stimulate cravings for high-calories choices

  • hindering of the release of fat from fat stores to be used for energy

  • blocking progesterone conversion to testosterone = low libido

  • blocking pregnenolone conversion to DHEA = flat/tired/fat & frumpy

  • increased risk of insulin resistance via the ignorance of the functioning of insulin

  • Accelerated Potassium loss and possible inhibition of sodium balance and thyroid health

I’m sure you can image what goes on in a cortisol-flooded, stressed-out body when food is consumed; digestion and absorption are compromised, indigestion develops and the GUT mucosal lining becomes irritated and inflamed.

The problems is, nobody wants to read or hear this as it stresses us out to know that stress is so harmful. I hear this as I was a self confessed cortisol junkie! I’ve done many things to tame this addiction to the fast paced life. I have been testing my cortisol patterns and much to my delight my new formula has been a huge success in balancing my own circadian rhythms of cortisol and its apposing hormone - melatonin.

Diet is important and I will discuss this in a further Blog. Coffee, alcohol and high GI foods are probably not your friend if you are experiencing any of the above.

Stress Harmony Blend is my new product that assists your body and buys you time to deal with the emotional and lifestyle contributions to leading a holistic and happily balanced life. My Stress Harmony Blend is a beautiful Turmeric and Adaptogen Blend that modulates cortisol and aids in lowering inflammatory responses in the body. This includes mediation of inflammation in the GUT!

There’s absolutely no reason why you cannot enjoy this delicious Turmeric Blend each and every day but personally I recommend a four week period of enjoying this elixir 2 to 3 times daily (morning and afternoon, if you can manage - morning, midday and late afternoon that’s the gold standard!).

Pick up my Blend at Crossfit Ballina and experience the joy or spicing up your world by balancing your cortisol levels.

 
Leanne de Groot

My contribution is a union of nutrition, mindfulness, meditation, breathwork & movement intertwined with behaviour change and how it impacts a life worth living.

As a health and fitness professional, I want to shift the paradigm toward one of self-love and self-care instead of an aesthetic insecurity-based industry. Let’s move away from the trail of being overweight, body shape dissatisfaction, the daily dose of pharmaceutical and social drugs, persistent envy, unhappiness, anxiety, depression, and a life full of pressure to keep up, skip steps, and rush.

Living without awareness and intention creates pressures that we are not doing, we are not moving fast enough, as bosses, workers, weekend warriors, friends, lovers, parents, siblings, or grandparents. We have to be able and willing to step outside the pull of unhealthy and unhealthful cultural norms and make the critical space to do our meaningful thinking.

The first thing I need people to take in is if they are going to work with me or read my work because for me this re-frames the core of moving through all obstacles we have around stress, rush, health, weight, etc … The very blantant truth is that living under the guise of society’s expectations - is not living.

We have been fed a narrative that stepping outside or away from norms is the wrong way to exist and this narrative furthers unhappiness, unhealthiness, pressure, and a life that is too fast to enjoy.

Wherever we are, this is life—it’s happening right now, and I’ve decided that I am not going to rush through it and I invite you to join me today …

https://www.bodyfuel.org
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How to Want to Want to do, what it Takes to get Nutrition Results

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Are gut microbes human's best friend in the war against being over-fat?