144. Handling Stress Like a Badass

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 144 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: handling stress like a badass. One of the most prevalent health issues facing us today is stress. And when you think of stress, you’re probably imagining it being a mental health issue, something that happens in your brain. But chronic stress is actually a major contributing factor to a lot of physical disease here, especially in the US.

The good news is that stress can be managed quite well. The bad news is that most people, even runners, do a pretty terrible job of managing stress. Okay, so in this episode, I’m going to explain what stress actually is, how stress might be affecting you, either positively or negatively. And what you can do to start handling stress like badass, okay?

Different people handle stress in different ways. And the key to handling stress, like a badass really, is having a plan. Most people have no plan, okay. So if you find it hard to come up with a plan for yourself, if you want some help staying on track, you know, with that plan, then consider coaching might be a good fit for you.

With coaching, you and I are going to work closely together to set goals to create a plan, and then help you stay on track to help you work the plan. It’s that simple, right? Simple, but not easy. And just so you know, in my coaching program, I offer both group coaching and one on one coaching, so you get the support from the group.

So you get a supportive group of other runners with similar goals. You know, we’re all here trying to lose weight, get fat adapted, improve our running performance, get stronger, become the healthiest versions of ourselves, reduce stress, all those things. So you get the support of the group and you get the support and personalized guidance from me during our one on one coaching sessions, okay, so you get both in my program and a lot of other coaching programs offer like one or the other. But you get both in my program, okay.

So if you’re someone who is looking for some support, some accountability, some guidance, then I want to encourage you to join the Running Lean coaching project. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started. You have to apply for this program at this point.

Anyway. It’s a short application, there’s a short interview process where you and I will get on a zoom call. I’ll go over all the details of the coaching program with you and we’ll see if this is a good fit. And if it’s a good fit, I would love to have you join me in the program. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners called the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you. Cool. Alright, let’s talk about stress, shall we?

And especially, handling stress and handling stress like a badass. So, the reason I’m talking about this today, the thing that kind of inspired me to bring this topic to the forefront was that I recently took a little vacation to Maine and I had never been to Maine before, beautiful state by the way. And we spent some time in Portland and we spent some time in the Lake District and and spent quite a bit of time on this little lake and it was actually a pretty good sized lake. We did some kayaking and some running.

And there were beautiful apple trees all over the place and we were picking apples right off the trees and eating them. And they all tasted a little bit different because they’re different types of apples and I couldn’t tell you which one was which, but they were all amazing. And it was such a super chill relaxed week. For me, like, there was no stress at all.

Everything was just like, you know, there’s this lake and the woods and trees. And just it was beautiful, you know. And it was funny because, you know, the friend that I was with said, I was commenting on how relaxed I was and how stress free I felt. And she was like, well, this is pretty much how you are anyway, Patrick. And I was like, yeah, I guess I am. You know, that’s kind of how I live my life anyway, I don’t really get wallowed in stress, I don’t get mired down in stress these days, like I’ve really learned how to manage stress well.

But the interesting thing is, most people don’t, most people don’t have any kind of stress management strategy in their life at all. Most people rely on things like vacation, or a trip to some really, you know, forced relaxing place like this beautiful lake that I was at. They rely on those short, short amounts of time during the year to de-stress and to kind of manage their stress and to relax.

And I think this is a problem. Because let’s say you get four weeks of vacation per year, which is I think that’s being generous for most people. But let’s just say you get about four weeks of vacation per year. And you know, we’re talking about 52 weeks in the year. So that’s roughly 8% of your year, a percent of your life that you’re dedicating to purposely and intentionally relax and de-stress.

What about the other 92% of your life? What are you doing with the rest of the time? And this is what really struck me is that most people don’t have any kind of ongoing stress management strategies. And so 92% of their life is spent in a state of chronic stress. And this is a real problem.

Stress is the cause of a lot of issues, not just mental health issues, but physical issues. So a couple of stats I found pretty interesting were that according to the American Institute of Stress, about 33% of people report feeling extreme stress. 33% of people, at least here in the United States, feel extreme stress.

77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health. And 73% of people have stress that impacts their mental health. So let’s just round that up and down to about 75% of people are experiencing some sort of stress that affects them either mentally or physically. And 33% of the people in this country report feeling extreme stress. So this is a big problem. And I’m going to talk about some of the downfalls of stress and some of the ways that this affects us, but understand that we are in general, a stressed out nation of people. Okay.

We are a nation of people who do not deal with stress very well, and are a nation of people who are mired down in stress. You know, 75% of the people in this country are reporting stress that affects their physical and mental health. This is a big problem. Okay. So, before we get into, like how stress is affecting us, let’s look at what stress is okay.

So, stress according to the Googles, according to the dictionary, stress is a physical, chemical or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation. Stress can be a state that you are in, especially one of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existing equilibrium.

So I’m going to like put my own spin on this and just say that basically what we’re talking about here as stress as a physical, emotional or mental tension, that alters our equilibrium, that puts us off balance, that takes our body out of homeostasis; our body and our mind. Okay. So we are no longer in homeostasis, which is where everything is working properly and we are imbalanced, okay.

And we have to understand that there are different types of stress. So stress can be acute stress or stress can be chronic stress, acute stress is something that is very short term, and usually pretty intense, like, lifting heavy weights. So if you do a heavy benchpress session, or you do some sprints, you know, sprint intervals, high intensity interval training, that would be considered acute stress, it’s very short term, it’s very intense.

And it is actually a good form of stress, okay, because it leads to adaptive responses in our body, then we have chronic stress or long term stress, long term or chronic stress is something that is on going like you are going through a tough time at work, and your boss is constantly, you know, on you to get this project finished, and you’re under this deadline.

And, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks of stress over this project, a big project you have to get done. Or maybe you’ve had a death in the family, or going through a divorce or something like that, that can cause long term stress. Okay. And chronic or long term stress can be bad, like this is not the state that we are supposed to be in as human beings, let’s, let’s look at how stress has evolved. So when we were back in the, in their caveman days, or whatever.

As human beings, we would encounter some sort of form of stress like a saber toothed Tiger, and our body would release all these chemicals in the form of the stress hormone cortisol, cortisol gets pumped out in reaction to stress. And that cortisol leads our bodies to get into that fight or flight, state fight flight or freeze state.

And so our body will produce more glucose and our senses will be heightened, more adrenaline will be produced. Because we’re ready to fight or flight, we’re ready to like take action. And so our body’s preparing us to take action to do something about the saber toothed tiger in front of us. Do I run? Do I just stand here? Do I fight this thing?

And so your body’s preparing you to fight that your brain is to your brain is just like on high alert at this point. Okay? This is an acute form of stress, because in a second, that stress is going to be gone. So let’s say you choose to run away, you will see that saber toothed Tiger and you’re like, you know, Screw this, I’m out of here. And you bail and you run like the dickens away from that thing and you hide in a tree or cave or wherever you do. Saber toothed Tiger realizes that there’s gonna be no human snack today. So it leaves the area and you come out and you’re like, Oh, good. stress hormone goes down, glucose levels return to normal, your heart rate gets back down to normal, your brain chemicals return to normal and adrenaline is reduced.

And all those things that happened in response to stress the state of stress that your body was in. Now everything in a very short amount of time. Now everything goes back to normal, you’re back in homeostasis, you’re no longer out of equilibrium, you’re back in balance. Everything is working the way it’s supposed to. This is acute stress. And this is the way our bodies are designed. This is the way that we have evolved over millions of years to handle stress. This is good.

So where our bodies are supposed to work. Then we have the other type of stress, which is chronic, ongoing long term stress. And the interesting thing is that a lot of this is just stuff that we are dealing with in our day to day lives. like sitting in traffic, or, you know, we look at our phones and we open up our inbox, our email inbox, and there’s hundreds of unread messages, and it just makes us feel so stressed out.

So, the email, our email inboxes, the new saber toothed Tiger, or sitting in traffic or worrying about the divorce you’re going through or worrying about that big project you have to at work, or whatever it is that’s going on in your life that is causing this on going consistent long term stress. Chronic stress can cause the same physiological problem. So increased cortisol, increase in blood sugar, increase in adrenaline, that heightened awareness, but it doesn’t go away, it stays that way.

And when your body is in that constant state of fight or flight, your sympathetic nervous system is on high alert. And this is a bad place to be this is, this is not good for you, it’s very hard to to lose weight, if you’re if you’re, you’re going through chronic stress because the constant constant elevated glucose levels, will will cause your insulin levels to be raised and you’re constantly in that fat storing mode. So chronic stress is really the cause of a lot of mental, emotional and physical disease.

The National Institutes of Health says that continued stress on your body from routine, from routine stress, you know, from chronic stress can lead to serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, anxiety disorder, and other serious illnesses. And according to the American Psychological Association, chronic stress is also linked to six of the leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide.

So this is a real serious issue. Chronic stress is not something to take lightly. And it’s not something that can be fixed by taking a vacation once a year. All right, this is something that we have to manage on an ongoing basis. Okay.

The other side of this, the kind of good type of stress the acute stress is, is different. And when you put stress on your body by lifting weights or doing high interval training, this actually leads to adaptation, it leads to muscle growth, it leads to improved speed and endurance as a runner. It even leads to improved ability to fight off diseases. So I think this is really fascinating that, you know, there’s two types of stress, there’s good stress, bad stress. And if you want to learn more about this, I did a podcast episode called Good stress, Bad stress. And you can go back and check that one out. It’s episode number 81. And it’s just called Good stress, bad stress. And I go into a deep dive about the different types of stress and how they affect us.

But this idea that stress is more than just a mental or emotional issue is really fascinating. Okay, so we definitely have to pay attention to stress, and we have to pay attention to the way stress is affecting us.

And are we purposely putting our bodies under acute stress like, you know, lifting weights or doing interval training to build strength or to build speed or to build endurance? Or is our body under this constant type of ongoing chronic stress where we’re just kind of always in that heightened state of awareness and that heightened fight or flight mode, like we because that’s not good for you? Okay?

So, it’s important to manage stress, and I just don’t think we do a very good job of it, okay. And when it comes down to what stress really is, it’s a physical or an emotional response. And it can be good or bad, right? We’ve talked about acute stress being good. And we’ve talked about chronic stress being bad, but even emotional stress can be good or bad.

So, you know, the stress hormones, like cortisol that get released, can help an animal to adapt to their environment to become more aware to become more resilient, with the same types of stressors that they experience in the future. So the same way that we can adapt from acute stress. from a physical standpoint, we can also adapt to acute stressors from a mental and emotional standpoint, think about going through a tough breakup, or a death in the family or something like that.

When that happens to you, you become more resilient and less fragile. For the next time that that same kind of thing happens, okay? It’s the same principle as lifting heavy weights or doing interval training that builds stronger, more resilient muscles. We’re building a stronger, more resilient, mental and emotional state, when we go through certain types of stressors in our life, and we get through them relatively quickly, okay. But just understand that this idea of chronic stress really is affecting our lives profoundly. And we have to be really diligent about managing stress. And most people don’t do it very well.

Most people handle stress by doing things like stress eating, or stress and drinking, you know, and, and, and these are coping mechanisms that they’ve developed over the years. And sometimes they’ve, they’ve been doing them since they were, you know, young children even. And it’s a way of, you know, drinking or eating over stress is a way that we’ve just trained ourselves to manage stress.

The problem is that, you know, when we deal with stress, with alcohol or with food, it really doesn’t have the effect we want it to have. Like, we think that you know, drinking alcohol is gonna make us feel relaxed, right? It does for a moment, but then it has that opposite effect, when the alcohol wears off, we get more stressed out, just because it has that counter effect, right?

Same thing with stress eating when we eat. Because we’re stressed out, we feel a little bit better temporarily. It’s like, oh, I’m feeling really stressed out, I’m just gonna eat this whole gallon of ice cream right here, half gallon of ice cream, whatever it is, I can eat a gallon of ice cream at once. Love to do that. But you know, you eat the half gallon of ice cream, and you’re like, Oh, this feels so amazing. And it just feels so good.

But then you feel terrible afterwards. And you gain weight and you can’t, you just not functioning properly and you have that big sugar crash and, and then all of a sudden you feel terrible about going off, you’re bland and like you just you know, I shouldn’t have done that. And you just become even more stressed out about the whole thing.

Okay, so stress eating and drinking are not good coping mechanisms, they are not good stress management strategies. Okay. Another way that people don’t really realize that stress affects them is that they may not sleep well at night. And that can put their body into a state of chronic stress, just not getting a good night’s sleep every night can cause chronic stress that in itself can cause stress.

Also, not sleeping well can be a byproduct of stress. So if you’re not sleeping, well, you’ve got to look at that and look at the stress in your life as a cause, or the cause of stress in your life. Okay, so getting enough sleep at night is extremely important. Right? And real real, the real problem we’re dealing with here is that there is no ongoing stress management, do you have an ongoing stress management system in place? Or do you just like deal with stress when it shows up, because if you’re the kind of person who just wants to deal with stress, when it shows up, it might be too late, you might be just like, too far gone. You know what I mean? It’s maybe too much for you, okay.

And people use time off, they use vacations, they use the weekends, to blow off steam or to let your hair down, or to unwind or relax or whatever. And the problem with this approach is that you can’t just de-stress on the weekend or on vacation. And using food or alcohol, as stress management tools does not work either.

And I know so many people that have used food or alcohol to manage stress, and it’s an ongoing stress management strategy that does not work. It has the opposite effect that they’re looking for. So we want to handle stress differently. We want to handle stress like a badass, right? The way you handle stress like a badass The first step is to be proactive, not reactive.

You can’t react to stress in your life and then decide, well, I better come up with some kind of strategy to deal with this, you have to be proactive, you have to have a regular, ongoing stress management practice of some sort. This is not something you just do when you’re on vacation, it’s not something you just do on the weekends. It’s something that you have to do every single day. So first of all, you have to be proactive, and you have to have something that you’re doing every day to help manage stress, what is that? What would that look like for you?

But it depends, but some things that people like to do to manage stress would be taking a walk, going for a run, exercising in some way, you know, cycling, rowing, lifting weights, these are all things you can do every single day to help reduce stress. If that isn’t enough, you know, you can add in other types of exercise, yoga, you can do some hit training, you can do interval other types of interval training.

There’s just so many different ways from an exercise perspective that you can use, that you can do to help manage stress on an ongoing basis that there’s just really the possibilities are endless, right? Exercise is one of the best ways of getting your body taking your body from that state of heightened awareness, that state of fight or flight, that state of stress, and using the adrenaline using the cortisol using the glucose in your system and releasing it, you know, using it for, you know, intense exercise or, you know, whatever that might look like for you even a power walk, whatever. And then, you know, burning it off, basically, you know, burning off that stress.

And then, you know, doing this on an ongoing basis, we’ll just help to alleviate that stress, okay. But there’s other things that we can do, we can use, things like meditation, and journaling. These are great ways of helping to reduce stress on an ongoing basis. So this is something that you can do every single day, and just get in the habit of doing okay.

The other thing you have to do is if you want to handle stress, like a badass is you have to stop using food and alcohol, and drugs and other external substances as stress relievers, because they do not work, they have the opposite effect, they come with a bunch of baggage, they come with all the negative side effects. You know, if you’re using alcohol, for example, as a stress management tool, you are risking a lot more than just you know, maybe not reducing stress very well.

But you can find yourself more reliant on alcohol on a regular basis and using alcohol more regularly. And we know that, you know, using alcohol regularly will kick your body out of that fat burning mode and keep your body in fat storage mode. And your running performance is affected negatively with alcohol use, you know, for several days afterwards. So alcohol, drugs, food, we got to stop using these things to reduce stress, okay?

And the other step we need to really get our arms around here is that we need to learn how to manage our minds and our emotions, we need to learn how to manage our brains and our emotional response to things. When it comes to things in our environment that stress us out, like you know, that project at work or that divorce or whatever it is, a lot of times it’s not the event itself that’s causing the stress, but it’s our thoughts about it.

And we have to learn how to manage those thoughts and feelings. This is called managing your mind or, or managing your mindset around this stuff, right. So if you’re constantly thinking that this situation at work is going to stress you out and the situation with your ex is stressing you out, then you’re going to be in this heightened stress state from a mental and emotional standpoint, and then that’s going to cause the physical reactions too.

And sometimes, if we can do some journaling, if we can do some self awareness practices that will help to build the awareness of what it is we’re actually thinking and feeling in those moments where we feel stressed out. We can learn to manage those things, we can learn to manage our mind, we can learn to manage our emotional state and our mental state. Stress does not have to be detrimental to your health and well being.

Stress can be one of those things that you manage, like a badass, right and I want to encourage you to start doing something every single day to start managing your stress, what could that look like for you? Okay, I want you to start handling stress like a badass Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

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