Don't Stress It! - Lesson 8

Hacking Yourself to Better Yourself

Welcome to The Feel Good Life! A newsletter about health, prevention, empathy, and hope. I’m Dr. Mariana and you have just arrived to my practical and medically-guided course on managing stress. (To get started with the course, go here.)

Hello! Welcome to Lesson 8

What. A. Journey! BRAVOOOOO.

You’ve made it to the last lesson of this course on beating stress with healthy habits. As you now know, understanding how your body works and what it really needs, is key to hacking your health and your life.

You have learned what the common stress pattern looks like; how sleep, movement and proper hydration can enhance all systems to allow you a calmer, nicer life; and finally, how habits are the key rock-solid foundation to a good physical and mental health.

To end our journey with a bang, we will reflect on our own habits, and dive deeper into the science of movement, where you will realise why the most basic needs matter the most.

In today’s final lesson you will learn:

1. Going Full Circle: See Yourself In The Mirror

2. The 4 Things You Need To Realise About Your Body

3. Challenge #8: The Step Challenge

---

See Yourself In The Mirror

---

To start this lesson, we’re going to go full circle.

Remember this lady from lesson 1?

"She’s someone you know and admire. You wish you had her energy, her ability to hustle. Everyone admires her ability to get so much done every day. She works part-time in a demanding role - which she’s great at - and then she goes home and works on a side-hustle that she loves, something she’s been building for years (and everyone knows it’s going to really take off at some point)...It’s not any one thing that’s stressing her out. It’s everything, all at once, and she’s not coping."

As you now know, there are three things she's doing that are severely impairing her ability to cope with stress: 

1. She’s not drinking enough water. She’s getting some of her daily requirement from the junky snacks and too-strong coffees she’s consuming to keep herself going - but she doesn’t have a water-drinking habit, so, no water.

2. Her sleep patterns are a mess. Her sleep debt is through the roof and she’s never relaxed enough to sleep through the night and catch up - plus, she often stays up until 2am, wired on coffee and Red Bull, so she can hit her deadlines. But she doesn’t have a sleep habit - so she’s approaching sleep bankruptcy.

3. Apart from that 10 minute drive to work, she sits in a chair all day.

We already know what she could do about 1) and 2) - but what about all that sitting? She’d be the first to tell you that she just doesn’t have time to go to the gym or go for a run or any other form of exercise. She has no room in her schedule for it. None!

Well, today, we’re going to make room for it.

---

---

*DRRRRRRRRRRRRRING*

That’s the alarm, going off next to her ear. It’s 7am.

She doesn’t move.

Her loving (but increasingly concerned) husband gets out of bed, goes to the bathroom, has a shower, goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. He knows she’s exhausted, knows she needs the extra sleep because she was up working until 2.30am - but he also knows she has to get up. A cup of tea is the gentlest way he knows of waking her, so he brings her one, along with a kiss on the forehead, before he heads out the door and goes to work.

She sips the tea, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Ugh. She feels terrible. She HATES mornings.

She pulls out her phone and checks her e-mail - and immediately gets sucked into yet another frustrating work-related crisis.

Problem is, work’s over an hour away. She can’t do anything until she arrives, so right now, a sense of dread and frustration settles over her - so she decides to lay down for another twenty minutes, seeking a little delicious oblivion before the madness starts...

But now it’s 7.45, and she has to leave at 8.15.

Getting ready takes 15 minutes. She’s too rushed for breakfast, so she knocks back a painfully strong cup of coffee while she’s skimming through some work-related documents. Then, hurriedly, she dresses. With mere minutes to go, she rushes around, grabbing all her work stuff, heads out the door and climbs into her car. She’s at the end of the road before she realises she’s left a critical work folder on the kitchen table, so, cursing she turns the car around and drives back…

---

Okay. Let’s stop there for a second, and count the bad habits that are heaping stress on her:

1. She only gets 4 hours of sleep.

2. She tunes out the alarm (because she’s so tired; because her brain has got used to it).

3. She’s completely dependent on her husband to wake her up, which isn’t great for her self-esteem.

4. She checks her work e-mail while in bed, inviting work-related stresses into her home life even before her waking-up hormone Cortisol kicks in.

5. She has an extra 20 minutes of sleep - not bad in itself, but it means she’s rushing for the next 30 minutes. Rushing is supremely stressful.

6. She doesn’t have breakfast, and drinks coffee on an empty stomach. Terrible idea - it could easily lead to gastritis, heartburn and stomach ulcers, among other more severe problems, such as high blood pressure.

7. She’s forgetful with important work documents - leading to even more rushing.

You could probably spot a few others (and I’ve deliberately left one out, which I’ll talk about later), but let’s stop here for the moment.

All these things create stress in her life.

Because she’s operating in “firefighting mode” all the time, her body is employing all its emergency resources to cope - and until now, it’s done an incredible job.

But it’s not enough. And most importantly…until how long?

So, how could she fix all of these bad habits before her body breaks down completely?

---

The face of unhealthy habits…

---

According to Charles Duhigg, author of The Power Of Habit, the best way to fix a bad habit is adjusting the habit-making formula by doing the following:

1. Keep the trigger (what we’ve called the no-brainer).

2. Change the habit performed.

3. Keep the reward.

So, how would this work here? Let’s take an example:

“She checks her work e-mail while in bed, allowing work-related stresses to intrude on her home life.”

At first sight, this seems natural (who doesn’t do it, right? - you might think), but also weird. Why does she want to worry about work stuff? Surely she wants to avoid thinking about work stuff, if it stresses her out? What kind of reward is that? So why does she keep doing it? But the sad truth is, this is what normal modern life looks like for so many.

My bet, as a doctor, habit-nerd and fascinated observer of human nature, is that her brain craves stimulation first thing in the morning. When she wakes up, she wants to have something to think about. Something important.

The problem here is, she’s choosing to think about the wrong thing.

The solution could look like this:

Trigger: wake up, and lay there thinking - until brain starts yelling “feed me information”.

Old Habit: check work email first thing in bed.

First Part of New Habit: refuse to check e-mails in bed.

Obviously this requires willpower at the beginning. But if work e-mails inevitably give her a sense of dread and spike her stress levels the minute she opens her eyes, there’s a deep, deep well of relief that she can tap into there. If she resists this temptation, it will make her feel good - once she’s got over the resistance in her mind…

And the best way to do that is to swap her phone for a notebook - the paper kind.

---

»»» Hack Yourself to Better Yourself «««

---

Remember she has a side-hustle in the evenings? Well, she loves it. It’s her passion-project, her baby, and she loves everything about it. It’s slow work, but she’s building herself a little online empire that will one day replace her day-job. That’s where her real heart is.

And it’s why she stays up late at night - because she can’t find any other time for it. The tragedy is, when she does find time for it, she’s exhausted. Once she’s finished work for the day, run chores, come home and dealt with things round the house, she’s absolutely beat. She tries to work in the evening, but everything takes at least twice as long because her energy reserves are zilch, and her perpetual sleep-debt is starting to kick in.

But she loves this side-business.

So she fuels herself on coffee at night, gets 2 hours of work done in about 5 unfocused hours - and goes to bed at 2am.

Now, here’s how we hack this bad habit for her:

Second Part of New Habit: When she wakes up, she spends half an hour working on her side-hustle, writing notes in a beautiful notebook.

Now, the first activity of her day is working on the thing she most loves, instead of the one she dreads the most. Because she loves it, it’ll be much more likely to get her awake in record time, and it will fill her still-sleepy thoughts with things that excite her and fill her with joy - instead of depressing, stressful things.

It’ll replace a source of stress (something negative that she can’t do anything about until she gets to work) with something that alleviates stress (something positive she loves doing and that she has complete control over - giving her a sense of optimism and hope).

That extra fully-focused half-hour in the morning means she can work an hour less in the evening - and go to bed a little earlier, so she wakes up a little fresher.

In other words...

She has started to break the cycle that is ruining her health.

And maybe, if that’s working out for her, she could try waking up 45 minutes earlier, or an hour - so she’s spending less and less time working in the evenings, gradually clawing back more and more of her day, gradually relieving a source of terrible, depressing stress…

So let’s take a look again at her (hacked) formula:

Old Trigger: wake up.

New Habit: ignore e-mail (ideally, ignore the internet completely until she gets to work), pick up a notebook and work on her side-business.

Old & New Rewards: stimulated brain; happy heart; lingering sense of optimism from starting the day doing something enjoyable; more enjoyable morning routine; less work to do in the evening when she’s tired; much less stress: better sleeps.

And in a month’s time, she’d wake up and think:

“Ah. This feels great. I LOVE mornings. They’re my favourite part of the day."

The face of hacked habits and happy self.

---

Morning routine: hacked! There are many ways to fix her morning routine so it’s way less stressful - and many ways she could do the same to the rest of her day. And so can you. Can you see any resemblance to your own routine? Anything you could do to hack your habits and better yourself too? :)

Now what about exercise and that whole sitting-all-day thing?

If she’s already struggling to fit everything in, how can she add physical activity to the mix? Well…

Keep the trigger.
Change the habit.
Keep the reward.

Remember the “non-exercises” list from last time? Easy movements that you’d barely call exercise, but to the body, each set of movements mean a whole activation of the muscle-hormone axis that keeps you calm, motivated and happy.

Movements such as:

Standing up

Sitting Down

Walking Around

Getting Out Of Bed In A Different Way

Picking Something Up

...and Putting it Down Again

Bending (At The Waist, At The Knees, Some Other Way)

Taking The Slightly Longer Way Round

Getting Off The Bus Or Train Slightly Early

Taking The Stairs Instead (Not The Elevator or Escalator)...

These, and a million other tweaks, could add little bursts of physical movement to your day that can really start to add up over time.

To fill your life with enough “non-exercise” easy moves to make a difference to your health, you’ll have to find something that works - and that will require lots of fun experiments.

For example, maybe getting off the bus or the train 2 stops early will feel like too much of a chore - unless you made a deal with yourself to use those extra 10 minutes of walking-time to listen to your favourite music, or catch up with one of your friends on the phone, a different friend every day. (Ever feel guilty you don’t catch up with your buddies enough? This could be the perfect habit for you!)

The trick is to alter your day without breaking your day. 

Let’s be honest about one thing: trying new things is hard. Trying to change yourself is hard. Why? Because the brain works best with old habits and unchangeable circumstances it can control. The brain just wants to keep you safe by doing what it already knows. That’s the brain’s function: to protect you.

So of course going to the gym, for most beginners, breaks their day and challenges their brain. They have to pack a bag, they have to travel there, do the workout, travel back, then they have a nap or a shower...and suddenly half the day is gone.

The more it breaks your day, the much less likely you are to keep doing it.

However you introduce these tiny bursts of physical activity into your day, keep them small, so your brain don’t struggle while you’re trying to make some changes.

And don’t worry, they’re not too small for what you’re trying to achieve here. Wrenching the lid off a jar of gherkins won’t give you a body like Jillian Michaels or Hugh Jackman, and the energy-levels of the Road Runner. Here’s what we’re actually trying to achieve here:

1. A habit of tiny bursts of physical activity that will make you more physically active, period. Do these enough times, and you’ll want to take the stairs, you’ll want to get your bicycle out the garage and take it for a spin. These are seeds which will sprout. (Many people try to shortcut past the seed stage - and that’s why they fail).

2. As we saw in the last lesson, any amount of physical exertion will help trigger the BDNF + endorphins = WOOHOO! response, which is fantastic for reducing your stress levels and increasing your calmness and focus levels. And if you fill your day with these tiny moments? You’ll surf a wave of good feelings and subdued anxiety, right through the day - all the way into bed.

Every little helps.

(As long as you find the way to keep doing it.)

---

The 4 Things You Need to Realise About Your Body

---

Here are a few things you may not realise about your body’s physical needs, and that your body wants you to know.

1. You Need To Move

Your body works best when every part of it is put to work.

Take your lungs. When your breathing increases, you take in more oxygen - and your heart rate increases, pumping that oxygen (carried by your blood) to all the places it’s needed, including your brain, making that brain fog vanish.

This is just one process among thousands, tens of thousands, millions. I could talk about how your bowel thrives on that extra oxygen too, helping clean your body and prevent the buildup of toxins (plus, a clean bowel strengthens your immune system, so you’re less likely to get ill). I could bring in the kidneys, the heart, and the stomach…

Because as we’ve already seen in previous lessons, it’s all one thing. In a functional sense, your entire body simply works better when you’re more physically active than normal. The same happens when you get proper sleep and hydration; you just feel better. See how it all connects? I hope you do by now!

The problem is that modern life, including the workplace, has changed our physical behaviour - and it’s changed our idea of what a normal amount of activity is.

If you’re sat down all day, you’re doing something that humans are not designed to do.

If you’re not moving your body enough, it starts to malfunction:

• Lumbalgia (Lower back pain)

• Sciatica

• Leg pain

• Feet & plantar pain

• Neck pain

• Shoulder pain

• Joints pain

• Headaches

• Acidity and reflux

• Constipation

• Lethargy: no energy, and a dull, muffled feeling clogging your thoughts

In almost all cases, these are warning-signs from your body that you’re not moving enough.

You need to move. That’s the bottom line. No movement? Big problem.

---

2. Resting Is Good. Resting Too Much Isn’t.

That’s right. Too much rest can actually take your energy away.

Waking up naturally early? Good.

Taking 20-minute power naps? Fantastic.

Doing nothing all day? ALERT!

Occasionally, it’s okay. But when you do this more often than not, you start feeling too tired to do anything else, and your body feels confused. The real reason you don’t have any energy when you did nothing all day is because you didn’t feed your systems the right (minimum) amount of energy to stay nicely sharp and active - and you’ll only get that energy back by actually getting up and doing something.

Completely counter-intuitive, right?

And yet tested and proven. 

---

3. Your Body and Brain Need To Get Outdoors

When your skin is exposed to sunlight, your body produces Vitamin D (which helps you absorb calcium and strengthen your bones). Pretty much everyone knows this one.

But what about the other health benefits of being in the outside world?

National Geographic investigated - and the results were mind-blowing. It turns out that the mere act of seeing the outdoors can reduce stress:

“Compared with people who have lousy window views, those who can see trees and grass have been shown to recover faster in hospitals, perform better in school, and even display less violent behaviour in neighbourhoods where it’s common. Such results jibe with experimental studies of the central nervous system. Measurements of stress hormones, respiration, heart rate, and sweating suggest that short doses of nature—or even pictures of the natural world—can calm people down and sharpen their performance.”

-  Florence Williams, National Geographic

The same is confirmed in this study by the AMA (American Psychological Association):

“The stress reduction hypothesis posits that spending time in nature triggers a physiological response that lowers stress levels. A third idea, attention restoration theory, holds that nature replenishes one’s cognitive resources, restoring the ability to concentrate and pay attention.”

So, even though this is no secret, it’s clearly difficult for many people to actually make time to spend outdoors in the busyness of modern life. This is where understanding your own patterns and learning to hack your own habits will reap infinite benefits in your longterm physical and mental health.

---

4. Your Mental Health Depends Big Time on Movement

We’ve all been there…

When you’re sad and alone, or bored, you don’t want to move.

However, this is when you need to break the cycle and get moving the most.

Why? Because, as we have learned, movement activates your happy hormone system, giving you a mood and energy booster, clearing your mind and uplifting your motivation.

So, when you’re sad and alone, you need to move.

When you’re bored (of yourself; of your surroundings), you need to move.

In the same way that happens when you’re fascinated by other lands, other cultures, other lifestyles, other ways of living and being in the world, to go explore and experience all of it, you need to move.

When something really needs to change, you need to move.

When you’re not where you want to be (literally, emotionally, vocationally), you really need to get moving.

Movement is the human equivalent of a reset switch. With computers, when they glitch, we turn them off and back on again. When humans glitch, they need to get moving.

One of the best feelings of life is confined to women alone. When a pregnant mother feels her baby move for the first time, it’s...beyond overwhelming.

Because Movement is life.

Want to live life the way you’re meant to live it?

Now you know what to do. ;)

---

Image from Runners World Magazine

To end this lesson, I’d like to teach you my favourite way of getting moving. An easy, non-exercise. It's not for everyone - but those who can, should. 

Let’s go for a walk.

A lot of Americans don’t go out walking - partly because the roads in the United States are often designed for cars alone, not cars and pedestrians, but partly because it’s simply fallen out of fashion. Europe? Better - and maybe because Europeans are trained to do it from a young age.

Around 49% of primary-school children walk to school in the U.K. (In the U.S., it’s around 13%.)

But the place that's really rocking it? Japan. 98% of Japanese schoolchildren walk or cycle to school. And Japanese people are formidably healthy. There's definitely a connection.

Walking for the sheer joy of walking (instead of wanting to get somewhere) is the lost art that everyone needs to rediscover - especially when it can add years to your life.

Obviously, all this comes with caveats. Staying safe is a must, and walking at night - while invigorating - often comes with its own risks. However, if you’re in a built-up area and you’re worried say about pollution, never fear: the health benefits will outweigh the hazards (also, try wearing a pollution mask when it’s really bad out there).

Walking is low-intensity exercise bordering on non-exercise. It moves you through the outdoors, it activates your whole body, and unlike running, it’s kind to your joints - meaning it’s perfect for any age-group.

It’s also a fantastic stress-buster - and it’s a great tool for tackling depression.

I’ll stop there even though I could go on about the benefits of walking for the rest of the day. It’s my number 1 recommendation for an easy starter healthy-exercise habit, and trust me, you’ll reap the benefits almost immediately.

Promise me you’ll start thinking on an easy, creative way to get you moving throughout your day, ok? Wink wink!

So - is this the end of the course?

Not quite!

Because we’ve covered a lot of stuff over the last 8 lessons, and your brain is probably whirling with it all, in the next email I’m going to sum up everything we’ve covered so far - and then I’m going to give you my best suggestions for next steps, so you know what to do after you’ve mastered all these basic skills.

But first, of course, I have a final challenge for you!

---

Challenge #8: The Step Challenge

---

The guiding mantra of this challenge is:

"If You Can't Measure It, It's Not Happening". 

It's all very well talking about adding extra physical activity to your day - but how much, exactly? How much more than the day before, or last week, or last month? You have no real way of knowing, right?

It's time to put a number on it.

Image from VeryWellFit

Here’s the final challenge for you:

1. Get A Pedometer - the tiny gadgets/apps that track how many steps you take every day. Any pedometer will do. These days almost every smartphone and smart watch will do it for you. There are standalone devices too. If you want to be super-fancy about it, you can use a Fitbit - but it's not necessary. It just has to give you a number at the end of the day.

2. Track Your Steps For 5 Days. Write down each day's total on a piece of paper. Then, after 5 days, add all those totals up, and divide by 5. This is your average.

3. Beat Your Average By 5% Per Day, Compounded, For The Next 20 Days.  Let's say your average number of steps per day is 3,500 (which is the equivalent of walking a little under 2 miles). Okay then! 5% of 3,500 is 175 steps. So every day, you have to increase your number of steps taken by 175.

Day 1: 3500 + 175 = 3675. 

Day 2: 3675 + 175 = 3850.

Day 3: 3850 + 175 = 4025.

etc.

It doesn't matter how you do it. It doesn't matter when you do it. It only matters that you hit your daily target, every day. (And if you're feeling really adventurous, keep going until you're taking more than 10,000 steps per day, which is around 5 miles.) 

Alternately: if you'd prefer to replace steps with something else - say going up and down the stairs at home - how are you going to measure it and track it? And how are you going to keep increasing your daily amount, bit by bit? This is your chance to get creative and put all this course’s knowledge into practice.

Personally, I have been enjoying the Google Fit app, where I can track my steps and add activities aside from walking, whether a circuit at the gym or a weight training session. The app has a minimum points to be reached each week according to WHO recommendations. At the end of the week, the app tells me how many points I have reached. I’ve been loving it because it has made me realise during the last 4 months how consistent I've been with my physical activity - more than I thought. Eventually, it feels like playing a game, racing to better myself every week. It’s been actually fun!

So, your turn to get creative. This is a habit-making skill you now have, yay!

Ready? Set...Go!

See you in our Wrap Up lesson. GOOD JOB, you. :)

Hugs,
Dr. Mariana

---

---

Image Credits: Unsplash, Pixabay.