I’ve got only 5 weeks now until I head back to the USA to attend the Perform Better fitness conference for the third straight year. Over the 6 weeks I’ll be away I’m going to visit a bunch of my friends’ gyms and spend time with their clients, train as much as my body allows, attend business meetings and rest.
I’m planning on doing a lot of resting.
I bring this up because I need a holiday. I’m approaching the point where I’m exhausted and in desperate need of mental and physical relief.
I need to be detached from the computer and my phone where much of my business is done. I need to do a whole bunch of nothing.
Doing nothing is exactly what many of us need.
So over the last few months, I’ve been talking to my clients extensively about holidays.
When was your last one?
When is your next one?
Where are you going?
What are you going to do?
How long can you make it?
It seems so many of us are so BUSY all the time that between work, jobs around the house, family and a few fun things here and there, we run out of time for ourselves.
We just don’t have enough time to wind down and this leaves us stressed.
But it’s not stress in the traditional sense. It’s more a feeling of exhaustion, being overwhelmed, irritable, tense, decreased sex drive, getting headaches and migraines and tight muscles.
It’s a very bad form of stress.
Stress can be a good thing. It can help us perform better under pressure to meet a deadline and it can help us escape a potentially life threatening situation.
But too much of a good thing and the body reaches a point of burn out and stops working properly. This 
point is often called adrenal fatigue and makes many things go bad for the body unless you get some serious rest and address the stress that’s been causing all the problems.
Beyond adrenal fatigue things can go downhill in a bad way. Stuff like heart attacks, diabetes, chronic fatigue and digestive disorders can wreak havoc on the body and leave you picking up the pieces for months or even years afterwards.
Now I don’t want you to get anywhere near this point. I’m here and it sucks. I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody. But because I’ve been through it, I see the warning signs and you might not.
So what has all this talk about stress got to do with weight loss?
One of the other side effects of stress is weight gain or the inability to lose weight.
It is very common for people who have been losing weight to reach a point where it just stops. They plateau for no apparent reason and quite often end up in front of me asking for help. This is the hard bit.
It’s easy to just say exercise more and eat less but we all know that just isn’t true.
Food quality is as important as food quantity.
Exercise intensity is as important as exercise amount.
What about sleep? Are you getting enough of that? If not, you need to sort it out!
It’s often what goes on outside of food and exercise that can be disruptive to fat loss.
It is this important!
Work should be giving you 4 weeks of paid holidays a year. If you work for yourself you need to figure out a way to take holidays too.
There are so many people that I talk to who haven’t had a holiday in over a year and are desperately in need of one, just like me. So start thinking about your next holiday and book it in.
If you can’t take a holiday right now, think about when you could get away for a weekend.
If a weekend is out of the question, meditation, yoga, qi gong, a walk in the park or bushland, or a picnic in the park where you can catch a few z’s under a tree may be your best bet.
Check out the graphic below to see what else stress is doing to your body. It is a serious issue and may impair your weight loss efforts, unless you can get it under control.
If you think you need help with stress in your life and need some ideas, just let me know and I’ll discuss it with you. You can also read ‘The Stress of Success’ by Dr John Tickell for a bunch of good ideas.
