 First question is from Kiki Murphy 13. What are some ways you can deal with the inevitable constant stress? That is causing hormonal imbalances even when you eat right exercise and get adequate sleep. All right. Well, there's your neg commercial Actually, that's no that's not that's that's very true. There are things you can use that'll help balance out or help your body deal with stress I know we work with a company called Ned that makes hemp oil extract It's actually the one of the only ones I actually feel when I take it and that can help their supplements like ashwagandha Ashwagandha can also help but here's the here's the here the big rocks Here's the big thing that's gonna help now this person asked the question and they mentioned Eating right exercise and sleep and then they said I have a lot of stress essentially That's causing hormonal imbalances. Well, here's the beauty of a fit and healthy lifestyle Use it like a tool to optimize your life. Whatever's happening in your life So, what does that mean if your life has a lot of stress at the moment? Then you can modify your nutrition your exercise and your sleep to help your body deal with that stress So if you're very stressed out that means you're probably gonna want to sleep more your workouts are gonna be more focused on mobility flexibility Feeling good your diet is gonna be you know higher in foods that are nourishing and healthy to the gut To your digestive system into the body, let's say your butt Let's say your life is low stress at the moment things are going great Well, now you can push your workouts You can push the sleep a little bit and get away with a little less sleep You can push the diet and bulk or cut aggressively because the rest of your life is allowing for that So this is how you want to view those things, you know, I've gone through periods of my life where They were very very stressful. I'm not going to the gym trying to hit PRs I'm not going to the gym trying to you know go beast mode when I go into the gym when I'm stressed out I'm thinking to myself What can I do to help my body deal with the stress that I'm dealing with at the moment? It usually looks like Mobility lighter movement flow type movement things where I'm kind of making myself feel better I also think there's a lot of value in scheduling like days that are and Whatever it is that you you use to decompress so whether you're a yoga meditation You read go by the ocean and go to the mountains get a massage like This is something that Katrina really hacked in with me Early on in our relationship was I can get really really Focused on the business and work and and even though I love what I do Can become stressful because you got a lot of a lot of moving parts, right? And and I can always I put myself off, you know, I'll eventually get to the massage or I'll eventually take a vacation I'll do that where she she knows me so well that she can feel That coming on even before I think I can feel it coming on And so she will actually in the calendar will already put like we're going away phones are going away We're gonna go stay at our favorite place by the ocean and do things like that or are she just in fact This was just what two two weeks ago I came home on Friday and we had you know a massage therapist at the house ready for me to go And I didn't even know that I was gonna have a massage so she'll do things like that to help me Decompress even if I'm not like saying oh, I'm all stressed out so I think Either having a person who can support you and do that with you or you Making a conscious effort to like kind of look at your calendar ahead of time and go okay I need to every so many weeks and it doesn't have to be expensive You actually just be open space, right? I know I know I said things that are probably expensive like staying at a nice hotel on the beach or doing a massage It doesn't have to be that it can literally be like just go for like a long walk somewhere in nature that you really like whatever just You know having it though on the on the books that you're gonna go do this and the intent is for you to Really kind of let go of all the outside distractions and be present with yourself but one thing that Kind of came to mind for me that I know Really helped a lot too was and I've told some of my clients to kind of do this and to jot down and make a List of things potentially that were stressing you out And so having some sort of like an inventory You know of stress, but but really for me it was it was about eliminating a lot of like the chaos a lot of the chaos chaotic elements so Ways that I could get ahead, you know in work or I could I could accomplish things in a timely manner And address things when I need to address them instead of put them off that actually like was increasing a lot of the stress That would accumulate and I would carry that with me like throughout the rest of the week And so to to be better about like what Adam's saying in terms of like scheduling myself Yeah, if I schedule that I'm gonna have this day where I'm gonna I'm gonna walk I'm gonna I'm gonna get all these types of like de-stressing type activities I I have to be able to have this one window to really hammer out all the the needs And to get it done you just reminded me of something else too just and that you know Sometimes the things that cause like this low level stress or even sometimes high level stress is Something that you're not addressing and it just keeps resurfacing and so I've talked before about like how I used to train myself to be better at self-awareness at night time I used to lay in bed and kind of go back in my day and think of all the moments that were ups and downs or in this case We're talking about stress or talking about the times that were I was frustrated or irritated or stressed out I would go deeper into why I felt that way sometimes It's because you have something Underlining that is not that you're not dealing with and so it's it's surfacing as as like work stress or daily life stress and Working and practicing on self-awareness was one of the things that helped me get to the bottom of that So for example, you're going through your day and you feel all stressed out at work. Well, what was it exactly? That happened at work that made you feel quote-unquote Stressed out and then unpacking that and being like, well, why does that bother me or why is that maybe it's because I'm insecure about Exactly and in fact 99% of the time that's exactly what I'd find out Sal Is that like there was a deeper rooted insecurity or fear that I had in my life That was surfacing as stress at work or stress and a relationship or stress and other other places But that wasn't really the root cause of the stress It was because I kept burying it and then it would it would emerge in other parts by the way oftentimes that comes out in physical ways too right oftentimes if you're not dealing with some kind of Emotional stress and you're just kind of burying it. It can it can look like pain back pain injuries You'll often see if you hear massage therapist talk about this Well, they'll work on someone they'll find a tender area They'll push it and work on it and then the person will get this emotion or they'll start crying Trapping in a place in their body. They're trapping it somewhere in the body This actually legit can happen. Yeah, so here's my protocol was stress. So I'm gonna give you a little bit more specifics Here's what I do. I don't go on a cut and I don't go on a bulk I don't go on a cut because well my body's under a lot of stress Cutting your calories below maintenance is an additional stress. I don't want to add a stress I also don't want to bulk because I know when I'm stressed if I try to bulk that turns into garbage food It turns into heavily processed food, which isn't gonna benefit me So I tend to eat around maintenance and I also focus on foods that are very easy easy to digest for me For me that looks like meats Fishes no fried foods. If I do eat carbohydrates, it's it's rice if I do eat vegetables They're very well cooked so that they're pre digested why? Stress for me affects my gut does this for a lot of people So I focus on that with my workouts my intensities at 50% I'm doing full-mate range of motion stuff I'm doing more stretching. I'm taking my time in my workouts sleep with sleep I'm paying more attention to the two hours before I go to bed blue light blocking glasses I'm trying to bring my body down. I might take I might take you know Ned sleep or some melatonin do that before I go to bed to get better sleep when I do those things My body's far more resilient to the stress that's happening in my life When I don't have that stress then I can push the bulk to cut the hard workouts and less sleep But if I'm not doing if I have a lot of stress, I got to optimize those and that's why I said use them as tools Modify them to optimize your life