Stress & Lack of Sleep: The Unquantifiable Elements

Stress and lack of sleep are your 2 biggest unquantifiable enemies.  If you over-train your body on top of that all you do is make the problem worse.  Your body is built to handle only so much stress imposed by a lack of sleep, work, or your training routine.  When work and a lack of sleep get overwhelming, adding in training will only make your body fight back and hold onto water and body fat as defense mechanisms.  Your body is getting ready for a war.  A war you, my friend, are putting it through.  Let me share my personal, and as usual; insane example:

Starting in November 2009, I worked managing a brand new studio, goGreen Fitness, and I still held my personal training job from 5AM until 10AM daily.  Once finished there I then worked non-stop as needed for goGreen doing managing, marketing, social media, etc... 7 days a week.  From 11/25 until 1/31 I verified through reports that I had taught 40 hours of Spinning.  40 hours in 60 days!!  Here is the killer.  I didn't over eat, except on some holiday occasions, and primarily stuck to my diet.  If I overate it would make sense that I would have gained 2-4 pounds  No big deal for a 200+ pound man.  But imagine this:  all that riding (I ride hard mind you) and I saw the scale go from 204 all the way to 215.8 pounds by 2/1/10!!  Are you kidding me?  How the hell is that possible????? 40 hours of cardio, resistance workouts at least 1 or 2 times per week and a fairly clean diet?  What gives?  How can I explain this?  My calories in – calories out equation doesn’t seem to work here.

How about average nights sleep of 5-6 hours for that 60+ days?  How about working 2 jobs with the success of a business riding on my conscience?  It was just too much stress.  Now that is bad enough, but I HAD to teach all of those classes to get the business off the ground and my body was not prepared to handle that much cardiovascular training!  My body was facing the perfect storm.  A storm that can never be out-trained or out-dieted.  Do you find yourself in my shoes?  Maybe not as extreme, but over-stressed, under rested and still working out?  My extreme case shows up as 10 pounds of weight gain in 60 days.  But yours may only be 5 or 7 in 5 months. 

It's at this point in life it is wise that you only use exercise to release stress; not try to put more stress on your body to lose weight.  It doesn't work that way.  It only back fires and gets you more messed up.  When you can't escape outside stressors, and you are maintaining some normal type of diet; your only play is to tread water and hold the line on weight gain.  Overtraining or starving yourself adds that extra level of stress your body can't handle and you will go in reverse of the results you desire.  Hold the line when you can't change your environment and you are winning this battle; your own little victory. 

This proves another point:  You need to have your life in order to lose weight.  Weight gain is a symptom of underlying problems; not usually the cause of them.  And the more weight you gain, the more stress you will feel, the more depression will set in.  It's at these times that you are better served by stress management techniques; not overtraining or starving yourself.  Exercise can be one of these tools.  Just try not to make it regular strenuous exercise.

I know these effects are reversible first hand because I personally just ended with a big stressor, I finished working at goGreen Fitness, and I am sleeping more because I just had surgery on 2/2/10 and have already lost weight!  I am more refreshed and relaxed from sleeping all the time while recovering from this surgery and feel better in general.  Even with all of this fluid still in my leg (probably 3-5 pounds of water) I am still down 5 pounds from the day before I went in for surgery.  That means I probably dropped 8-10 pounds in a week.  How?

   1.  Time off from training

   2.  Time off from work / overworking

   3.  I got more than 5.5 to 6 hours of sleep like I had been previously getting

These 3 things all joined forces and allowed me to drop a real 5 pounds in a week.  This should be something to consider.  If this is you and you have too much stress in your life and are not sleeping well; don't fight the current too hard.  The more you fight, the less you'll progress.  You should just be happy treading water until you lower your stress and improve your sleep.  It's again my first hand experience speaking.  I just lived it.  Best of luck to you.  I hope  that you are now aware of these unquantifiable factors.  We may not be able to do anything about them; but awareness is critical.  Only then can you make changes in your life to affect different outcomes.