Still can't lose the belly fat? This might be the reason

We all have stressful lives. We know that. But at the same times, we need some amount of stress in our lives. Otherwise, our lives will be boring as hell. Also, we will have low motivation in lives and thus, cannot fulfill our true potential completely.

However, too much stress in your life can be detrimental to your health. I believe you should know this. I cannot be wrong about this. BUT, what most people don’t know is how stress degrades their health. Even more people don’t know that stress can be the reason your body keeps holding to that stubborn belly fat.

I strongly believe you know that stress contributes to high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease. AND THIS IS TRUE. Here is what actually happens. When your stress level goes up, more free radical compounds are formed in your body. Just as I said in “Cholesterol, VILLAIN or FRIEND?”, these compounds create inflammation within your body, particularly on arterial blood vessels. Consequently, this will require the cholesterol to action as a “band-aid” or a healing substance to cover and heal the inflammation (which also means it gets deposited on arterial blood vessel walls). Finally, this will cause a heart problem and hypertension. Again, don’t blame the cholesterol here, it just does what it does best, healing the inflamed arterial blood vessels.

The one thing to blame here is the formation of free-radical compound, which is caused by many factors, such as STRESS. So, that is one reason why you should limit your stress level. If one reason is not enough you, here is another one. STRESS MAKES YOU FAT, or at least, STRESS PREVENTS YOU FROM BEING LEAN AND/OR MUSCULAR.

Here is what happens when you have a high level of stress (and this is what most people don’t know, so your are privileged to discover this). High level of stress increases the production of, so called, “fat-storing” hormone, Cortisol, in our bodies. This hormone promotes fat storing in the body (which is not what we want to get lean and lose fat, right?).

There is a scientific explanation regarding this “behavior”. In the past, most stress our ancestors had was due to lack of food. Therefore, when they got stressed, their bodies naturally stored more fat by producing more Cortisol hormone, just in case they could not find any more food for a long time. Since we are their descendants and we belong to the same evolution line as them, we have inherited this behavior, although in our case, lacking of food is not the source of our stress for most of the time.

Even worse, not only this hormone promotes fat storing, it also creates “catabolic” environment in your body. Catabolic environment promotes muscle break down and prevents muscle building. Again, there is logic behind this.

Like I said in “How many crunches/sit ups per day is the best -> NOT IMPORTANT”, muscles are the most energy-inefficient to maintain. They require A LOT of energy to maintain. Since Cortisol is produced primarily because the body thinks there is a scarcity of energy (food), it promotes “Catabolic” environment in the body which will cause more muscles to be broken down and make the body more “energy-efficient”.

So, not only that stress causes us to store more fat, it also causes us to lose muscles. Since we lose muscles, we will store even more fat because we lose our fat-burning/calorie-burning machine in our bodies. This will soon become sick cycle.

Therefore, control your stress level. If you feel your work has already given you enough stress or you are stuck somewhere in your work, just stop for a while. Take a walk and relax, do something else for a while. Keep your mind off the work. Then after some time, go back to your desk and start working again with fresh and clear mind. And even better, sometimes, you can actually work more productively when you are relaxed and out of stress and more often than not, once your mind is fresh and clear, you can find that the problem you were stuck with before is actually simple and easy to solve. The key here is just to KNOW WHEN TO STOP, when things already get “TOO HOT TO HANDLE”

That is what often happens to me. Aside from working as a Personal Trainer and Sport Nutritionist, I also work as a full-time software engineer. As a software engineer, the primary task involves programming, which can be VERY VERY stressful when you find some problems in your code/script/program and you don’t know where the problems are (even one single problem is STRESSFUL ENOUGH). You have done everything you can think of but the problems are still there. You are stuck with them. But here is what I do. I say to myself, “OK. It’s time to stop now. This is getting out of hand. Probably, I just should not solve it now. Let’s stop, and do something else.” After that, I take walk (to the toilet most of the time), take some water, go back, try to do other office works (Quite hectic, isn’t it? I have more than one project to deal with sometimes). Once I feel ready, I go back to the “problematic” code and somehow, everything looks clearer and now I can see the problems and solve it.

So, are you stressed out right now? If you are, have courage to say, “OK. It’s time to stop. Let’s do something else.” That is where most people have trouble with, they can’t stop, they don’t know how to stop, and they don’t know when to stop.

Till next newsletter, keep working hard (at office and gym), BUT DON’T GET STRESSED OUT, instead, ENJOY LIFE.

TobiasKG
AMFPT Certified Personal Trainer
AMFPT Certified Sport Nutritionist
Creator of RoadToSixPack.blogspot.com

Cholesterol: FRIEND or VILLAIN??

In my previous newsletter, “The real criminal in our food chain”, I talked about how bad trans fat is. It can transform seemingly “healthy” or “not so bad” food into “junkier-than-junk” food.

Now, let me talk about another common misconception circling around our society today, CHOLESTEROL. But first, let me warn you, everything you are about to read from this point onward will really shake your belief about cholesterol. You might even have argument with yourself, your friends, or your personal doctor who have been telling you A LOT OF BAD THINGS about cholesterol.

For me, CHOLESTEROL is not that bad. In fact, I am glad that I have cholesterol in my body because simply it is good to have it (I know, I know. After reading up to this point, you will most probably think, “This guy is insane!! He is glad to have cholesterol and now saying it is good!!”). Well, just read on and at the end, I am pretty sure you will AGREE with me.

We all know that heart disease, failure, heart attack, and hypertension have been one of the leading killers in today’s world. THAT IS TRUTH. But blaming cholesterol for all that?? That is not really fair. Here is why.

As science continues to improve, more and more evidence has shown that the ARTERIAL INFLAMMATION WITHIN THE BODY is the root cause of heart disease. The inflammation itself is caused by many personal factors, such as stress, smoking, viruses, consumption of refined/hydrogenated oil (which contains trans fat as I have mentioned), an imbalance of omega-6 polyunsaturated fats to omega-3 polyunsaturated fats in the diet, excess refined sugars, etc.

Although it is true that cholesterol is the one forming plaque/arterial deposit (which is mostly being blamed for heart disease), not so many people understand why it does that. When ARTERIAL INFLAMMATION occurs, the cholesterol acts as a HEALING SUBSTANCE. It responds to arterial inflammation by getting deposited in combination with other substances, forming “arterial deposit” which acts as a healing agent on the artery.

Basically, as long as you have internal inflammation, this plaque will be formed regardless of your cholesterol levels. In other words, if you don’t have any inflammation inside your body, high cholesterol level will just keep circulating in your body without forming “plaque” in your artery. Therefore, it is more important to control your artery inflammation rather than trying to lower your cholesterol level.

You may ask, “If cholesterol is actually good, why are medical industries pushing everyone to lower their cholesterol?” Well, one innocent answer would be because it is based on flawed medical studies from decades ago that have never been validated since it has been there for a long time. Another reason is because with such misconception circling around in society, “cholesterol control” drug companies will be able to sell their products more easily.

Still not convinced? Check these out: “The Hidden Truth About Cholesterol Lowering Drugs” by Shane Ellison and “The Cholesterol Myths” by Dr. Uffe Ravnskov (MD, PhD).

So now, don’t worry about the cholesterol levels anymore. Let’s start worrying about the level of artery inflammation in our bodies. You can check the level of your artery inflammation by CRP or homocysteine tests. More importantly, you can control it by living a healthy lifestyle.

Finally, here is to a life in healthy lifestyle

Tobias KG
AMFPT Certified Personal Trainer
AMFPT Certified Sport Nutritionist
Creator of RoadToSixPack.blogspot.com