Bitesize Biohack Why it’s so Important to Tune Into Yourself

11:29AM Dec 6, 2022

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Intro

Dr. Libby Weaver

Keywords:

angela

restorative practices

women

body

exercise

diaphragmatic

episode

stress

nervous system

high performance

adrenaline

bite size

burn

breath

cases

workouts

stress response

adrenal function

week

fuel

When you're not producing huge amounts of adrenaline, you can use your fat efficiently as as a fuel again, welcome to the high performance health podcast with your host, Angela Foster,

the show where we talk about everything you need to break through limits and achieve a high performance, mind, body and lifestyle.

Hi, friends, and this week's episode of Bite Size bio hacks, I

want to share something that I think is really important to grasp, especially at this time of year, especially when we're so busy with Christmas shopping, family coming over entertaining all the different things that we have to fit in. And this is coming on the back of two years really of stress for many people, for everyone. It's a universal experience that we've been through over the last few years. And now from an economic perspective, if you listen to the news, things don't, they seem a bit bleak. And I think it's easy for us, particularly as women to take on too much. So definitely turn off the news will be my first thing. But apart from that, there is a really important point here, because what I'm seeing when I look at lots of women's Dutch tests, for example, is that in some cases, they have very, very high stress levels, when I look at their cortisol, but then in other cases, they're not they haven't got very much freely available cortisol. And it's almost like the body is trying to sort of defend itself and make less available because inherently knows that that woman's body needs to slow down. And then in other cases, what I see is very kind of flatlining of the cortisol rhythm. And this can be really difficult because it's a real challenge then to get out of bed in the morning, and to feel energised and be able to get on with everything you have to do. So if we want to live our best lives, we definitely need to be managing our adrenal function, and really understanding when we are in an acute phase of stress. And when our bodies started to compensate, and really anticipating and getting there and taking action, before we move into exhaustion, because it's so much harder. As you know, from my experience with burnout, and you may have had this experience yourself, it's so much harder to turn that ship around. And so one of the things we need to do is actually to slow down. And when we are pushing too hard all of the time. Not only is it impacting our adrenal function, but often is impacting our metabolism, we can have dysregulated, blood glucose, it can lead to higher insulin. And interestingly, it can also lead to quite a lot of belly fat storage. And this is when I see many women they're struggling with that they're disappointed, and so they end up adding more on so doing more workouts, really to try and compensate for that and try to get rid of the fat. And often they'll add in lots and lots of HIIT workouts. And actually that can just put more stress on the body. Sometimes what we need to do is actually to really dial things back and it sounds counterintuitive. But by engaging in restorative practices, like yoga and breath, work and long walks, we actually end up burning a whole load more body fat as well. And we give our body what it needs to recover and to feel better. And so in today's bite size episode, I'm going to be sharing with you a clip from my interview with Dr. Libby Weaver. She makes this very important point. It was a super popular episode if you want to go back and listen to that episode is episode 105. But in this clip, I think she kind of summarises what I'm saying here. And as I say, if you want to go back and listen to the full episode, it's episode 105.

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That's a very wise approach, I think that we need to tune into ourselves. So rather than follow some kind of prescription from someone else, or some sort of old fashioned model that we might have, I've got to burn calories and work really hard. That's a fast way to burn out with all of the things that women now juggle. And so I think there are times that so our focus on building muscle mass is incredibly important because from the age of 30 onwards, as you said, Angela, if we don't do anything to counteract it, we start to lose our muscle mass from 30 onwards. So, weight training, I think is very important. But I do agree that it's very important to do it in a way where you're not pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion, because then that's counterproductive, you'll end up making a whole lot of stress hormones that goes against what you're trying to achieve. I also think that if someone's in in stage three stress where their cortisol levels are actually very low, restorative practices are the most powerful thing they can do. Because they their body needs to get the message that they're safe, because we need to remember adrenaline says you're not safe, which has a big flow on effect to our thyroid, our adrenals, our digestive system, our ovaries. So when we have to create a sense for the body, again, that it's safe, and a breath in breath, focus practices do that. So what I meant to say when I talked about the tai chi, and there are many breath focused practices, when we do long, slow diaphragmatic breaths away, you're doing tai chi, in meditation in restorative yoga, for example, when we breathe diaphragmatic ly you communicate to your body that you're safe, because you activate a part of the nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the beautiful calm arm of the nervous system. And when when we are living on adrenaline, and we're doing short, sharp, upper chest breathing, that drives what is called the sympathetic nervous system response. And so many rushing women, when I wrote rushing woman syndrome, essentially, its sympathetic nervous system dominance, it's as if you get stuck with that sympathetic nervous system activated, your breathing is usually very shallow and rapid, and it just perpetuates the whole stress response. Whereas the diaphragmatic breathing, the restorative practices communicate to your body that you're safe again, which is incredibly restorative for your energy to your nervous system, and also to your body feeling safe to use fat as a fuel, because when you're not producing huge amounts of adrenaline, you can use your fat efficiently as as a fuel again. So it sounds counterintuitive to women who are used to go go go to think What do you mean, I could do yoga and use my body fat more effectively, I'm not burning as many calories. And I know, there's so much more to it than that you want to communicate safety to your body, because when the when inside you that chemistry knows it's safe, you'll use it that very effectively as a fuel. So I think as far as exercise goes, I always look at what is where's the person at. So stage one, stage two, stage three of the stress response. And also what do they want to get out of their exercise. So the three things I personally identify as wanting to get out of exercise, I want strength, because I always want to be able to carry things. I love gardening. And really, it's really satisfying, when you can lift something really heavy. Just manage it all by yourself, that's fine. So I want to, I want to maintain my strength. I want flexibility. I always want to be able to put my own shoes on, I never want another human to put my shoes on. I want to keep my driver's licence forever. I don't want to have it restricted because I can't turn my neck anymore. So I think flexibility is the second thing I always want out of my exercise. And then the third thing is energy. And I want to qualify that because sometimes we will get energy from a gentle walk. Sometimes we'll get energy from a brisk walk sometimes called get energy from restorative yoga. So that's where that third one, I think we need to be very honest with ourselves about where we're at if I've had a really busy big week With a lot of tasks on my plate, I might have chosen for my week to look like that. But my my week has had there's been a lot of movement. I'm gonna do restorative practices, and maybe some whites rather than I'm not doing anything that's go go go.

Thanks for listening. Remember to review and subscribe, you can grab the show notes, the resources and highlights of everything Angela mentioned over at Angela Foster performance.com. You can also snatch up plenty of other goodies, including the highly helpful Angela recommends page which is a list of everything she personally recommends to optimise your mind, body and lifestyle.