Mike Geary Review

Not sleeping well is another factor that can lead to constant, elevated cortisol levels, which can have bad effects on your body in terms of weight loss (potential muscle loss and fat gain.) Like with stress, it can feel impossible at times to really feel like it’s possible to change how well you sleep, but here’s a few tips if you want to make an attempt at it.

The first thing you should think about is when you want to wake up every day, and therefore when you’d ideally want to fall asleep every night so that you get enough sleep. Even though this is easier said than done, your end goal is to maintain this schedule as much as possible. A lot of us have probably experienced this personally during our school years – I can remember I would be able to wake up by 6am, no matter what. If I stayed up too late, it wouldn’t matter and I’d still wake up at 6am and thus feel kinda terrible. If sticking to a schedule for long enough, your body will get used to it and adapt. It will know when it’s time to go to sleep and allow you to sleep better. It’s also best to try not to force yourself awake with an alarm, but despite good intentions, I think most people can’t afford to take the risk of oversleeping. Besides, if you get set enough in a schedule, the alarm shouldn’t really be “forcing” you out of sleep anyway – your body should naturally be at the point where it will wake up regardless.

Napping can be a decent way to recharge, especially if you’re feeling bad. Just don’t overdo it – You should test different nap times for yourself, but you don’t really need to nap for as long as you may think. It should be possible to only nap for 30 to 45 minutes and still feel refreshed. Also, try not to nap too close to your normal/intended bedtime, so you don’t throw your body’s sleep/wake cycle off kilter.

If you find yourself getting tired way before you want to go to bed (like after dinner,) try to do something minor that will help keep you awake. Do some chores, do some activity that makes you use your brain more, call a friend, etc..if you just sit in your chair watching TV, you’ll be bound to fall asleep, then wake up in the middle of the night, throwing your sleep schedule off.

Also, make sure to avoid doing work in your bedroom. Your bedroom should be something associated with sleeping; you don’t want to be thinking about what work you should be getting done when you should be getting sleep.

Temperature can also affect your quality of sleep and the ability to fall asleep. If you can find a way, keep your room around 60-65 degrees fahrenheit. That is, slightly cool (of course, this differs for different people and what they are consider ‘cold’ or ‘hot’.) If it’s too hot or cold, you won’t be able to fall asleep very well.

Lastly, melatonin is a hormone your body naturally secretes and it is partially responsible for regulating your sleep schedule. It is generally produced less when exposed to light and produced more when in the absence of light (so that you feel less tired in the daytime and more tired in the night time.) Thus, make sure you’re getting decent sunlight exposure during the day if at all possible, and avoid light it when it’s closer to your intended bedtime.

As with the other post, this is just scratching the surface of potentially helpful tips but there isn’t enough room in the world for all of them. I sincerely hope I’ve helped someone out.

As I wrote about previously, having our bodies produce cortisol at a constant and elevated rate isn’t a good thing for our bodies period, even when it comes to losing weight. Keeping your stress level lower will help keep your body from producting cortisol unless it is absolutely necessary.

The first step to avoiding stress is to figure out what is is that’s actually stressing you out. Is it a person? A fear you have? An upcoming event? Not all these things can be dealt with as easily, but at least making a list of things will help you figure out if there’s anything you can more easily avoid.

If you’re on break at work and talking to certain people or listening to gossip annoys you, try using that time to get a little exercise. Walk around outside, walk up and down some stairs, etc. If you didn’t want to talk to them anyway, you probably shouldn’t care what they think either. Besides, telling people you want to get some exercise is never really viewed as a bad thing, especially since getting exercise is really good for you regardless. Exercising also helps lower stress levels!

If you’re stressed out since you have too many things to do, then you have to learn how to say “no” to people. I think a lot of people that are overloaded will refuse to say “no” just because they think they’ll hurt someone’s feelings. Sometimes you may actually do so, but it isn’t a bad thing to simply explain that you have a lot on your plate and simply can’t do something for someone right now. Most logical people will understand this. Plus, if you aren’t ever able to say “no” to someone, that person will come to rely on you and simply keep asking you to do stuff for them, even if it should be obvious that you can’t. It’s best to set someone straight before they build their expectations up too high and tell them that you would like to help them, but can’t always do so.

Figure out what is absolutely necessary for you to get done and what isn’t. Yes, not all things are absolutely necessary and sometimes we simply do things because we have non-financial obligations. However, it is a good idea to get a clear, concise list of essential, 100% “must do” and check it off before worrying about other stuff. You don’t want to get into a state where you can’t figure out what it is you have to do because you have ten billion things on your list, and then end up getting nothing done and worrying about it even more.

If you feel that to reduce your stress, you need to ask someone to change something about that that annoys you (well, something that you feel is changable,) don’t forget about compromise. You may not see things about yourself that annoy others, but allow the negotiation to be two ways – tell them what it is you’d like to change, but allow them to tell you about something they want you to change too.

There’s a billion other things out there but I wouldn’t be able to fit them all into a readable article. I hope some of this stuff can help at least one person, as mundane as they may sound!

It’s certainly easier to say than to do, especially if either of the above are an issue in your life. However, recent studies have shown that both lack of sleep and stress cause your body to produce elevated levels of cortisol.

What is cortisol?

Cortisol is a natural hormone produced by your body. It is mostly responsible for allowing your body to react in high-stress situations, such as the ability to ignore pain, givng you quick bursts of energy, heightening your immune system, and so on. While this can be a good thing when it comes down to “fight or flight” situations, not getting enough sleep or other prolonged stress can cause your body to continue producing cortisol at higher levels than normal and cause it to do so for an extended period of time.
Exposing your body to high levels of cortisol for a long enough period has shown to cause muscle loss and sometimes even fat gain, which is absolutely devastating for anyone trying to get into shape.

Over the next couple days I’ll delve into my own personal experiences and also do some research so I can find tips for sleeping better and reducing stress, then I’ll share them with you.

I wonder how many people shy away from cooking for themselves or others simply because they think people expect you to be a “gourmet chef.”

Let’s be honest: While eating food at a good restaurant certainly can taste amazing, knowing how to make food taste like that requires a lot of experience cooking, a lot of fresh (and expensive) ingredients, and some good recipes. However, no one should expect themselves to immediately be able to cook like that, or feel like it’s necessary to eat food of such a high caliber all the time. And, honestly, when you get home and you’re hungry, it’s not like it REALLY matters that you’re not going to be eating a steak cooked with and paired with fine wine – even simple food cooked at home can taste pretty good!

In short, don’t be dismissive of the idea that you can just toss simple stuff together to make a meal. If you could cook beef wellington, that’d be great, but so is tossing some meat, a can of soup, and maybe some vegetables in a crockpot. Or perhaps making a quick casserole out of rice, soup, and meat. There’s a lot of possibilities, but if you think people are just going to turn up their noses at something so simple, then you’ll be missing out on a lot of easy, tasty, and quick meals you can make for yourself or others. Just because those baby back ribs at your favorite restaurant are so sinfully delicious doesn’t meat you can’t try buying some pork/beef ribs and either toss them into a crockpot with bbq sauce or shove them in your oven and baste them. It may not taste exactly the same, but I bet it’ll still be something you’ll be looking forward to all day!

Plus, if you’re using your freezer to make things ahead of time, you can often cut down on prep time whether you’re making something simple or making something more complex!

So get cracking and try something simple! Maybe some chicken and rice? Maybe a casserole? Maybe some crockpot stew? The possibilities are endless!

Sometimes, rarely, we can quickly force ourselves to change undesirable habits. This is usually the case when we enjoy A but want to switch to B, but find out we actually don’t have any real problem with B (and actually enjoy it.) As much as I thought I’d hate water, when I forced myself to drink nothing but water for a few days, I got acclimated to it pretty quickly. However, I consider this to be a somewhat rare occurrence, and not something that should typically be done if you want to successfully break bad habits.

What I mean is that if you decide “I want more protein in my diet so that I feel fuller, eat less, and be more healthy,” then good for you – but – if you then go gung-ho and drastically increase your protein intake over a short period of time, you’re probably going to get sick of it. For instance, as much as I know the Atkins Diet is capable of working, the fact that you’re so drastically changing your eating habits tends to end up screwing with your brain, where you might even just want to not bother eating since you’re so sick of what food tastes like. Of course, this brings me to another point – variety.

If you really want to live a healthier lifestyle and avoid fast food junk (that’s probably addicting to you,) then you do need to be in control of how your food is made, i.e. cook for yourself. But, if you’re unwilling to try adding various stuff to your dishes to make them taste different, you’re probably not going to look forward to cooking. You may get demotivated, and your brain will probably start craving all the really bad junk food that much harder, since you’re probably depriving yourself of it and it tastes SO good, right? Thing is, you’re probably also going to struggle with that badly if you try and quit junk food cold turkey as well. Yes, you do want to get to the point where you don’t eat it very much, but you want to phase it out gradually so your addicted brain stops screaming at you for ten seconds. I personally don’t even crave soda anymore. I don’t think it necessarily tastes BAD, but I’d rather just be drinking water, and I’m happy with that. I think it’s helped me, even if just a little bit.

In short, short term diet goals are good.. just don’t make them TOO short, or change too much at any one time. Sticking to changes in your diet for the long term require you to wean yourself off gradually.

If I’ve learned anything from my parents about nutrition, it’s
1) Having parents that can actually cook dinner for you every day is a big step towards keeping you thin (provided you don’t go overboard with eating)

2) Limiting restaurant outings to once a week and rarely ever going to fast food joints also helps a ton and

3) Having a good sized freezer and knowing how to freeze stuff properly goes a long way to cutting down on your grocery bills and food preparation hassles.

As I just talked about yesterday, one of the huge hurdles to cooking regularly is food preparation, planning ahead, and finding the time to do it all. However, if you make good use of your freezer and plan just a little bit ahead, you can always prepare some food on your off time, freeze it, and pull it out whenever you feel like eating it. Don’t be scared of trying it with meat, either, since as long as you wrap it well, the meat will be just fine. I personally try to wrap stuff in cling-wrap as tightly as possible, then wrap it again in cling-wrap or foil. You can also try a plastic bag that is then sealed in cling-wrap, but I haven’t really tried that out enough to know whether some types of bags are better than others to use.

If using a way other than foil, you can also label stuff. Just grab a slip of paper and write down what it is and when it was cooked. Then stick it between the two layers of wrapping.

So long as you wrap your food tightly, you won’t see much, if any, freezer burn. The key is to make sure you aren’t trapping oxygen in with your food, so use caution when using freezer bags or other containers. So feel free to cook up some steaks, chicken, turkey, or whatever you feel like ahead of time, freeze it, and then pull it out to use in a variety of recipes!

One of the biggest hurdles I’ve had to overcome when it came to making myself healthier and leaner was getting over the laziness (and fear) of getting in the kitchen and making actual food. I still have problems from time to time when it comes to simply planning out what I want to eat throughout the week or month and shopping/prepping food accordingly. I’m sure I could save on my grocery bills if I could just think a bit farther ahead, but sometimes you just don’t know what it is you feel like eating until the last minute! (And that, of course, also leads to being overweight – Settling on fast food since you feel you don’t have enough time or resources to actually make something on the spot!)

I’ve gotten better, but there are still some foods I struggle with finding the effort to prepare. Take salad, for instance. Everybody likes different stuff on theirs in different amounts, and it requires so much prep time that it often doesn’t feel like it’s worth it. I know that whenever I get a salad from a fast food or normal restaurant, I should feel like I’m paying way too much for something I could make at home. In the end I just let it fly since I’m the one who’s too lazy to make it for myself!

What foods do you personally feel you’d rather pay for rather than doing it yourself?

Do you have any stories or thoughts about this blog, Mike Geary, or the Truth About Abs? I would love to hear them. You can either post them as a comment to this post or E-Mail me at mail@mikegearyreview.org. I hope to hear from you!

Thanks,

Jamie