Skip to main content

Banishing Stress

As much as people complain about stress, they go out of their way to create it. They over-schedule, overspend, under-sleep, and under-nourish themselves. I'm still working on getting enough sleep, but I've found some ways to reduce other sources of stress.

Poor diet will affect your mood. Contrary to what's written by a lot of self-help authors, your mood isn't just a matter of attitude. Your brain is mostly made of fat and cholesterol and requires various nutrients to run properly. It needs glucose, but the glucose needs to be in your bloodstream, not your stomach in the form of carbohydrates. (Your liver can make glucose out of protein.) Drs. Phinney and Volek describe how low-calorie, high-carb diets can affect the brain in The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living. (The short answer: depending on how much you exercise, you can mentally and physically hit the wall.)

If for example you decide to eat 1200 kcal per day, composed of 25% protein (75 grams), 25% fat, and 50% carbohydrate, your daily carb intake totals just 600 calories. That's more than enough to keep your liver from making ketones, but it's just barely enough to feed your brain. But, you say, your liver can also make glucose from some of the protein via gluconeogenesis, which is correct, but that totals less than 50 grams (200 kcal) per day....But what happens if you decide to jog 5 miles in 50 minutes (which consumes 100 kcal per mile). Typically in this setting, people start to feel lousy (see "bonking" below)....[Upon bonking, or hitting the wall, I]f at this point you do not immediately stop and eat, the bottom falls out of performance capacity and you feel profoundly depressed.
If you're at work or puttering around the house, the same thing happens, but in slow motion. Even disciplined people lose their grip due to poor diet. During Ancel Key's starvation experiment at the University of Minnesota in the 1940s, two men--pacifists who grew up in the historic peace churches--got into a fist fight over a piece of macaroni. Another subject, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not, chopped off a few of his fingers. "Starvation" in the experiment was a calorie and macronutrient balance typical of some of today's popular diet plans. For further reading, check out The Great Starvation Experiment by Todd Tucker and my post on the book, The Diet Cure by Julia Ross (Jimmy Moore podcast here) and my post Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food.

Turn away from a problem for awhile. An article about high-intensity training remarked that the American way of solving problems was to work harder and longer. Sometimes that's what needed, especially if you already know what needs to happen and it's a matter of doing it. But it doesn't lead to insight. How many times have you had to leave a problem for a number of days, and on going back to it, a solution came to you? Or you saw the problem wasn't worth worrying about in the first place?

Set up an emergency fund. Having bills you can't pay is a tremendous source of stress. If you don't have an emergency fund, create one at your bank and set up small automatic transfers to it every month or every payday. (A human at your bank will do this for you if you ask.) I'm sure this is one reason I haven't had too much stress from my accident a month ago: now that the bills are coming in, there are funds to pay them.

Find ways to spend less. Even things that tend to be expensive can be brought under control. Over the weekend, my niece got married in a simple but beautiful ceremony. The wedding was at the house of a family friend, and everyone had cake and punch afterward. (Two friends on mine were married in a similar fashion last year.) They're just as married as if they'd put on a production worthy of Broadway, both couples had a happy wedding day, and they didn't start their marriages under a strain of extra debt. (I've heard of couples whose wedding debt outlasted the marriage.) And, dare I say it, someone who gets cold feet can think about the upcoming marriage instead of the huge outlay of money for wedding expenses (the sunk cost fallacy).

Ignore what's supposed to work, and do what really works for you. Girly relaxation stuff isn't chocolate for my soul. If a candle-lit bubble bath de-stresses you, that's terrific. But to me, sitting in a hard tub full of water that's getting colder by the minute, knowing I'll have to scrub the tub and put away a bunch of candles later isn't relaxing. (Nor is worrying about the towels catching fire.) I also detest romantic comedies that don't make any sense (that is, pretty much all of them) and crying gives me a sinus headache. Dancing is my stress reliever of choice. And if I had a fireplace, I'd chop my own wood. Video games are underrated, at least by the fill-every-minute-with-useful-or-enriching-activity nerds. In practice, throwing yourself into something is an effective de-stressor, and might even save your life. A video game developer who suffered a mild traumatic brain injury created a game called Super Better when she started feeling like she had no reason to live.


Labels:

Comments

tess said…
great post, Lori -- you're so right...!
September 04, 2012
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Tess. Big, costly weddings in particular never made any sense to me.
September 04, 2012
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more

Collagen-filled Low Carb Burritos

Low-carb, grain-free Mexican food is hard to find, but it's easy to make your own at home. This recipe has an authentic ingredient: carne de lengua, or beef tongue. Don't be put off: beef tongue is tender, delicious, and full of collagen. Look for it directly from farmers in your area. To cook it, cut it in 1" to 1-1/2" slices and pressure cook for one hour. Enjoy the delicious broth as a bonus. Ingredients 1 slice cooked beef tongue, peeled and cut into small cubes 1 egg wrap (I use these  from Egglife) 1/4 cup cooked black or pinto beans Chili pepper Oregano Garlic (powdered or minced) Cumin Guacamole (with no emulsifiers) Salsa Shredded cheddar cheese Sour cream or homemade cream cheese  with no emulsifiers  Put the egg wrap on a plate and put the beef and beans down the middle of it. Sprinkle with the herbs and spices. Wrap, turn over and microwave for 1-2 minutes. Spoon salsa over the burrito and sprinkle with cheese. Add guacamole and sour cream or homemade crea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...
17 comments
Read more