Threee Things I Learned After Listening To Some Of The Top Researchers In Exercise Physiology

Over this past weekend, I attended the American College of Sports Medicine regional conference in Pennsylvania.

It was a weekend filled with hearing some of the top researchers in the field of exercise physiology talk about the most up to date findings in the world of health, fitness, nutrition, and human performance.

With over 12 hours’ worth of information that I sat through, it would take a week's worth of emails to share it all with you.

Instead, I am going to share with you the 3 most important things I learned that will have the most impact on your health and life.

Let us dive into it.

Stress Is The Speedometer Of Life.

You have heard me say that stress plays a significant role in your health and wellbeing.

Too much of it can wreak havoc on your cardiovascular system, metabolism, gut health, and everything else in between.

You may know that part already, but this next part is what I found interesting.

The speaker talked about how in his own research, they found that the people who reacted poorly to a stressful situation had worse health markers than those that had a more neutral or positive reaction.

He further went on to say that it is not the amount of stress that you experience on a day-to-day basis that takes years of your life off.

But it is how you react to those stressful events that can have the biggest impact.

So you can have something stressful happen every single day; which does happen to many of us from time to time.

But if you remain calm and have a healthy response to that stress, you will have a better chance of not letting that stress cause detrimental health problems.

The Dangers Of Eating Too Little For Females

Thanks to things like social media, unrealistic beauty standards, and celebrities, females have a much harder time with their own body image than males do.

Unfortunately, these influence females to consume way too little food for what their body really needs.

For both men and women, there is a certain amount of food that the body needs to keep the lights on and keep you alive.

But there is a difference between just surviving and optimally fueling yourself so that you can thrive.

You see, when you do not eat enough food, your body adapts.

It adapts to conserve the use of energy to keep you alive, at the expense of shutting down all the non-essential things your body does.

This includes lowering your metabolic rate, your reproductive functioning, your ability to build muscle, support your bone health, and even your ability to focus and stay productive during the day.

All in all, the takeaway here is that females (and males too) need to make sure that they are eating enough food to hit their goals and stay healthy overall.

Sure, you can drop tons of weight in a short period of time by simply slashing the amount of food you are eating.

But is that worth it if you can't maintain or build any muscle, if you can't keep your bones healthy, or if you are chronically running on empty every day?

This is certainly more prevalent when weight loss is the goal.

If you have weight loss goals, I encourage you not to eat as little food as possible.

I encourage you to eat as much food as you can while still being able to lose weight.

I promise that will be a much more sustainable approach for you in the long run.

Exercise Should Be mandatory For Everyone

I have thought about this for a long time now, but I think after this weekend, I fully believe in the above statement.

Exercise is literally one of, if not the best things you can do for your health and wellbeing.

When consistent and personalized exercise is a part of your routine the following things will happen.

1. Cardiovascular health improves

2. Blood sugar stabilizes

3. You keep you muscle strong and healthy

4. Your brain stays healthier as you get older

5. Your bones get stronger

6. Mobility and flexibility improves

7. Your hormones work better

8. You can better manage stress

9. Reduce the risk of things like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and more

There are definitely more things you can add to this list, but I think you get the idea.

Exercise needs to no longer be looked at just for athletes, gym bros, Instagram influencers, meat-heads, and or body builders.

Exercise needs to be a part of everyone's routine so that they can have the best quality of life they can.

Does that mean I expect you to finish reading this email, dust off your running shoes, and hit a mile run.

Absolutely not.

Especially if you have not exercised in a long time.

If you do choose to do that, chances are you will likely get hurt or have a terrible time which is going to make it harder for you to want to continue.

Here is what I expect you to do instead.

Be realistic.

Realistic with your goals, your schedule, and ease back into it.

If you are looking to get back into an exercise routine, you don't need to start out by doing grueling 60-minute workouts each day.

All you need to do to get started is 150 minutes per week.

That can be exercising for 30 minutes, 5 days per week.

Or exercising for 50 minutes, 3 days per week.

If you need some more help getting started, I put together a free cardio cheat sheet for you.

This cheat sheet contains sample cardio workouts with full instructions so you know exactly what to do.

You can click the link below to get started today.

Cardio Cheat Sheet

If you need more guidance as you read through this one page cardio guide, shoot me an email!