Peak Performance Insider: Why exercise is the ultimate weapon against stress and how to bank calories for the weekend
Estimated read time: 5 minutes
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Now without any further ado…
The Peak Performance Insider:
1. Why exercise is the ultimate weapon against stress
Stress is the body’s natural reaction to challenges.
In fact, stress is the reason we grow outside our comfort zone. No stress means no growth.
And although low levels of stress are healthy and normal, chronic stress—the kind that gives you headaches, keeps you up at night, and eventually makes you sick—is the nemesis of good health.
Fortunately, exercise is the ultimate weapon against this kind of harmful stress.
Exercising releases pleasure chemicals, like endorphins, which are natural stress reducers that enhance mood and well-being.
Pleasure chemicals serve as a reward for essential actions, helping humans and other species survive for millennia.
The brain rewards us like this because if it didn’t feel good to move, we wouldn’t do it.
And if we didn’t move, we wouldn’t survive.
Thus, we are biologically engineered to feel good when we move.
Exercise creates a kind of calm and clarity that helps us escape from everyday stressors, including our jobs, partners, traffic, kids, bosses, parents, and more.
It also improves sleep quality, which is vital for brain function and overall performance.
Making physical activity a regular event even helps create better work-life balance.
What You Can Do: Exercise for 30 minutes every day. This includes brisk walking.
2. How to bank calories on the weekend
Overeating on the weekend is the most common way that people sabotage their weight loss goals.
It’s easy to stay on track during the week when most people have fixed schedules, but once Friday evening arrives all bets are off.
People like to relax and enjoy themselves at restaurants and social events, but both are perfect environments to consume more than you should in the form of comfort food and alcohol.
Here is the easiest way to get around this: Eat less during the week so you can eat more on the weekends.
As long as your total weekly calories are taken into account, you can eat more or less on any given day without ruining your weight loss
That means you can ‘bank calories’ for the weekend.
Banking calories means saving a larger portion of your calories for one particular meal or day of the week.
It’s a useful way to stay on track with your goals while allowing you to have a social life and enjoy the food you love.
So instead of planning to eat the same amount of calories every day, plan for higher and lower calorie days.
Consume more calories on days when you need more energy, e.g., workout days.
And consume fewer calories on days when you need need less energy, such as rest days.
Fat loss is impacted more by the total calories you consume throughout the week than by any single day of heavy eating.
The key is ensuring that the calories balance out in the end.
This means that overeating on a particular day won’t ruin your week, as you can adjust your intake over the following days to compensate.
What You Can Do: Bank calories now so you can enjoy them later.
I hope this helps!
Food for Thought This Weekend
It will cost a lot more to fix poor health than it will to build healthy habits.
Your choices determine your quality of life and you are ALWAYS choosing.
The very least you can do is take care of yourself so you can take care of those you love.
– Menya
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1. Download my free health and fitness guide. When you’re ready to tackle your fitness goals, this is definitely where you should start. It’s the same framework for achieving goals that I use with all of my clients. It also contains 6 habits of highly successful fitness people.
2. Are you an entrepreneur or busy professional who wants to get lean, boost energy, and perform better? Apply for private one on one coaching here.
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