The model I use for training, health, body composition is based around “stress.”
But this is not the same way that you are conditioned to think about the word stress
Rather, let’s call it “excitatory state.”
We live in a heavily overstimulated environment. We have dysfunctional breathing patterns (over-breathing), coupled with a scarcity mindset around food, with diets like the Paleo diet, Keto diet, Atkins diet, “I quit sugar” etc etc having become so common.
This has led to a “clean eating,” hypo-metabolic, overstimulated section of society. In this state, a person can exist with very little food coming in, excess body fat (usually abdominal in males), poor sleep, anxiety and chronic pain.
This means that for many people, a cookie-cutter, standard exercise model will not work to “get in shape” in the long run, it simply exacerbates the issue.
What many people don’t understand (and why they get frustrated with their health journey) is that their nervous systems are chronically in an “excited state,” creating tension in the nervous system. They are running their system on overdrive, without enough resources to support it. They also don’t realise this is happening (the fish is the last one to discover water).
The easiest path lies in down-regulating the nervous system ALONGSIDE a training model that doesn’t over-stimulate the sympathetic nervous system.
This means that long term (multi-year) results WILL NOT come if nutrition and lifestyle factors that help to down-regulate the nervous system aren’t included. You can cut out as many foods as you like and do bootcamp after bootcamp, but in the long run the tension in the system is too great and the body will break down.
There is a way easier path, starting with awareness. If we can become aware of the level of chronic excitation in the nervous system (via breathing, sleep, pulse, temperature and others), then we can start to dial the whole thing down.
When we dial it all down to a calmer state, then managing health, body composition and general physical performance gets a lot easier.
