by Madeleine St. Marie
I learned the phrase “self care” in my first semester of graduate school from some fellow students. We used to half-jokingly shout it as a toast when we were raising up glasses of beer, but the fact remained that the idea of “self care” was very important to our survival as graduate students. As you might expect, your time in graduate school can be very stressful, bordering on overwhelming. It was important to take constant inventory of your well-being to make sure that you weren’t red lining (too soon, anyway; all bets were off during Finals). Self care can take several different forms and is often tailored to meet the needs of an individual. My roommate, for example, would listen to music and cook. I would take a bath with candles and work on breathing exercises. It was important to take time out of my day, even if it meant I was putting off school work and other responsibilities, to take time for myself to ensure my well-being.
At this point, you’re probably reading this and saying, “Uh, Madeleine. I hate to break it to you, but this is a fitness?blog. Not a “share your feelings about how hard grad school is” personal blog.” Oh Dear Reader, you are right, this is a fitness blog. But the fine folks at Arena Fitness are not just concerned with crafting workouts that push you to your limit. We’re concerned about the overall healthiness of your life. Of course, physical exercise is important, but so is eating right and managing stress. It is important to recognize when you’re under stress so you can deal with it accordingly and in a healthy way (so not, as I mentioned above, with beer).
But since this is a fitness blog, ?I’ll do you one better: stress and stress’s best friend lack-of-sleep can help ?you gain weight and seriously hinder your body’s capacity to protect itself against germs.
The second point is a bit of a no-brainer: how many times have you, after you’ve been stressed for a long period of time, suddenly come down with a cold? The stress, of course, won’t give you a cold but it will make your body more susceptible to catching it if you’re exposed to the virus. This sort of thing happened to me like clockwork every time a semester ended in college. I’d finish my schoolwork, fly home, and miss the first few days of being social with old friends because I was sick.
As for my first point: although this will be a slight over-simplification of a complicated bodily response, ?when you are under stress, your body produces cortisol. When you’re under a lot of stress, your body produces a LOT of cortisol. The key to help maintain lower levels of cortisol is to relax after triggering your body’s “fight or flight” mechanism. However, if you aren’t managing your stress effectively or sleeping well and sleeping well regularly, guess what doesn’t go down? Your cortisol levels. Guess what has been linked to weight gain? Cortisol. Even better: guess what can help you gain weight in everyone’s least favorite spot, your stomach? You guessed it! Cortisol! Even though it may seem like a completely different topic, self care is an important aspect to anyone’s fitness routine.
I was complaining recently to a friend about my plateau — I have been stuck at a certain weight for about two months now. She pointed out that I have been under a lot of stress for the same time period and have not been sleeping well. She told me that she would put money on my cortisol levels being high and that high cortisol levels have been linked to craving sugar. Apparently my body thinks I am going to die soon, so it’s trying desperately to keep my alive. Thanks, body, but I’m not sure urging me to eat an entire batch of chocolate cookies was the answer.
The point here is to identify existing stress or stressors and to react accordingly. Techniques include physical exercise, breathing exercises, meditation, or even just turning your phone off and taking a break from the world for an hour or two. You can even practice self care by talking to a friend. It’s an important part of maintaining your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, and you wouldn’t be in the gym or trying to eat better if you weren’t trying to take care of yourself in one way or another (trust me: as sweet as your biceps look, if you haven’t worked on the rest of the package, it’s kind of a moot point). So remember to take care of your whole self; how you look on the outside is just as important as how you look on the inside.