Strong & Lean Australia

From the archives. Still relevant today

IF YOU STRESS DAILY, YOU NEED TO DE STRESS DAILY.
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What's the best way to de stress?Some say yoga, some say meditation, some say exercise, some say Netflix, some say reading, some say social media detoxing.
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People tend to recommend what works for them and think it will and should work for everyone. That's a rookie suggestion.
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Again, like exercise, it doesn't really matter as long as you are consistent with it. And as long as it doesn't involve drugs or excessive amounts of alcohol. They are stressors. Because they are poisons.
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Most of us now days need to consciously dedicate time to switching off from the pressures of life DAILY. You aren't just going to relax on your own anymore. We don't love (live) those sorts of lives anymore.
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Most people don't fail because they don't know what to do. They fail because they built a plan that only works when life is perfect. Life doesn't work like that.

Over the last 22 years of coaching, one concept has helped more of my clients stay consistent than almost anything else: The Minimum Effective Week.

I wrote a full article explaining how it works and why it might be the missing piece in your fitness journey.

The Minimum Effective Week: The Secret To Long-Term Fitness Success Struggling to stay consistent with exercise? Learn how the Minimum Effective Week helps busy adults build strength, lose weight and stay on track.

If you’ve spent years trying to control food, here’s the thing: the more you resist anxiety, the stronger it gets.

People with disordered eating often try to manage their internal world by tightening rules around food. It's a control mechanism. When an “unsafe” food, ingredient, or a perceived loss of control occurs, the nervous system pushes them toward stricter choices to regain autonomy.

Meal plans don’t solve our deeper issues with food. Often, they just create new ones. There's a lot of people out there deathly afraid of foods...

Challenge the health industry's “purity rules” through flexible eating. Reversing these beliefs requires gradual exposure to previously avoided foods, paired with cognitive restructuring that is designed to help reduce anxiety and build tolerance to flexibility.

The more exercise in mid- and late-life, the less Alzheimer's and all-cause dementia, adjusted for all known risk factors. Interestingly, the main take aways were :

• Staying active in midlife can cut your dementia risk by up to 40%. More activity, bigger benefit.
• Late-life exercise also helps: the most active older adults showed a similar drop in dementia risk.
• Early adulthood exercise alone didn’t show strong protection. Midlife and later years matter most.
• Benefits were seen across activity types and intensities. Moving regularly is what matters.
• Keeping up physical activity as you age may be one of the most powerful steps you can take for brain health.

If feelings can’t be felt, they’ll be fed. Next time a craving hits, pause for 60 seconds, breathe deeply and ask yourself “What emotion would I feel if I didn’t eat right now?”.
This can be uncomfortable but be curious and see if you can find a pattern to the feelings. This is where the real work starts....

Why discipline is the wrong lens to look at dietary lapses and binge eating. Framing them as a willpower problem ignores the neurobehavioral loop that drive it.

Meal plans can stabilize physiology but don’t change the beliefs around being in control and perfect. They ignore the emotions involved such as shame and anxiety and the the reinforcement loop of binge/relief/guilt/restriction that occurs.

A large component of healing is tracking when and why urges appear.
Identifying the thought to emotion link.
And working with a professional to reframe beliefs and build regulation skills.