Stress and the effect it is having on each of us can no longer be overlooked.

Stress and the effect it is having on each of us can no longer be overlooked.

From depression to weight gain, to immune system suppression, to a lower quality of life, these are just some of the things my clients have to

Stress management is just as important in your health and fitness journey as your nutrition, cardio, and weight training programming.

In fact, my 16+ years as a coach of whose base is 65% female can say stress management might be the number 1 thing a woman should consider, whether starting a diet and exercise program for the first time or picking items back up after a failed attempt(s).

It is hard; actually, it is tough to tell a person, hey, everything you think you know about health and fitness you need to throw out the window.

You cannot always outwork your problems, and in fact, all that effort is making something known as your allostatic load (your body’s total capacity for stress) become taxed to the point of creating problems for you with your health.

Eventually, all that hard work you are doing puts you in a position where not only do your results stop, but you end up getting fatter and sicker!

This is because your body recognizes stress, whether from your girlfriend, job, cardio, caloric deficit, food intolerances, etc., as simply stress. You can only take so much before things break and results go backward.

This where HRV monitoring is a handy tool in helping some clients better understand their body’s ability to recover and adapt to stress which our body is designed to do.

Still, in our quest for having it right now at all costs, we overdo it, and well, you end up more frustrated and circling more L’s than W’s.

I know now, more often than not, I am programming fewer training days, less HIIT, more steps, more calories, more emphasis on micronutrients, better sleep schedule.

Yes, even inconsistent wake and sleep times can cause cortisol, a stress hormone, to go haywire which might be a source of your belly fat due to the fat-storing hormone HSD and the role cortisol plays with it.

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to take a step back and re-evaluate your plan.