Jeff's Thoughts

• Why This Picture Makes You Skinny

  28 May, 2014

   

  

  I was recently flown to Queenstown to treat someone for Muscle Activation Techniques and was put up in a great hotel with a great view, plenty of time off and the ability to take some time out. Understanding that I work pretty hard and with 2 boys aged 4 and 2 life can be a bit non stop. However as a fitness professional I like most people like to stay in shape and be a physical representation of the industry that I chose to work in. There seems to be a movement among not only the hardened fitness professional but also the 9 – 5 business man or women that more is better. We live in a crazy world where nothing stops, and unfortunately that has now moved on to us. From dropping kids off, to constantly checking Facebook/emails/phonecalls to work pressure in a tough economic environment, we are without a doubt stressed.

  What makes us different at Studio41 is our understanding of hormone cortisol, it is the hormone released by the adrenal cortex in the presence of stress. But please note that you can still be mentally relaxed and be stressed. Most of the stress that we put on ourselves is from internal drivers. A lack of sleep is probably the biggest stressor we can put on our selves. Also poor food choices that cause inflammation is another bog driver. In fact attending the Australasian College of Nutrition and Environmental Medicine earlier this year, they put foods that contained gluten and wheat (breads, pasta, cereals) on a high stress list.

  Here is the problem. Pregnenolone is used to make your sex hormones (testosterone for a male and oestrogen for a female). However pregnenolone is also used to make cortisol.  We call it the “Pregnenolone Steal” when this is being shunted along the red line in the diagram below. Being stressed will drive down your sex hormones.

  

  You can see by the picture that when you are stressed, the red line is activated. AS LONG AS YOU ARE STRESSED YOU WILL HAVE LOW SEX HORMONES. Common symptoms of males having low testosterone and females having low oestrogen are, Low Libido, Fatigue, Foggy thinking, Memory Lapses, Depressed, Sleep disturbances. As you can see, these are unfortunately pretty common. For these people adding exercise onto a system that is already stressed may actually get a worse result. Exercise is only beneficial if you are able to benefit from it.

  It has also been shown that an increased cortisol output over time leads to umbilical body fat. That is body fat on the stomach. For some reason it has more cortisol receptors on the stomach than other places. So we understand that do get someone lean it is possibly about stopping a long term stress issue. Not simply “Do More”. The irony is – sometimes we get people do less to get a result. Not more. So at Studio41 we make sure that we absolutely take an holistic approach. Because if we didn’t approach sleep, nutrition, rest and recovery how could we maximise our results? We couldn’t. 

  So at Studio41 our personal trainers see our role as helping someone to achieve their health and fitness goals. Not just to train you which I think is a very limited thought process. The outcome is important and understanding when to work hard is just important to understand as the how. 

   

   

   

   

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