Stress gets a bad reputation by many for being the silent killer behind many chronic diseases, and that we should do everything to minimise all the stress in our lives so we can live in perpetual bliss and never have a worry in the world.
We need to understand however that our stress response or more commonly known as “fight or flight” has developed over an extremely long time and has been inbuilt as a protective mechanism. This was obviously extremely useful when our main dangers involved being eaten by predators or starving to death. That initial response to danger is now the same response you get to being stuck in traffic, work troubles, relationship/family issues, exercise and sport, injuries, fear, anxiety, lack of sufficient sleep or even something like being in an excessive calorie deficit.
All of these things can be recognised by your body and mind as stresses and therefore will delegate resources to resolve these stresses. We can refer to this reservoir as our “Stress Cup” and we, unfortunately, have a finite amount of resources we can give and therefore recover from.
The key thing you need to understand though is you NEED enough stress in your life to keep progressing and it is not just beneficial but essential with the caveat of being able to recover from that stress and actually improve from it.
Once stress reaches a threshold where it becomes too much and causes negative effects, you have poured too much water into that “cup” and it’s at this point in time that it will start to “overflow” and cascade of negative side effects associated will follow.
Understanding that many factors contribute to your own personal “stress cup” is key here and knowing this can help you make better decisions when life does get very overwhelming.
How do you know if your cup is overflowing?
➡️ Consistently poor disrupted sleep.
➡️ Not recovering from workouts.
➡️ Lethargy and always feeling tired.
➡️ Craving sugar and reaching for poor food choices you normally wouldn’t.
➡️ Constipation or diarrhoea.
➡️ Getting sick more often and feeling run down.
➡️ Losing muscle mass and strength.
➡️ Low libido.
Just like with most things in life, too little of something can be just as bad as too much. Stress is exactly the same, not enough and you achieve nothing, too much and you may feel burnout and things start to spiral out of control.
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it” – Lou Holtz