Maintaining fitness of a lifetime, and better health - Overtraining & Adrenal Fatigue (Part 1)

Gyms are booming everywhere, locally and internationally. We now have more gym memberships all over the world, then ever before. We have many more people joining the gym, as part of improving health and fitness, and of course, getting in shape and achieving a better physique. The question is, how much truth people actually realize what is going on to the body, especially when it comes to regular gym sessions, or even doing excessive exercise and training?

As we live in the 21st century, a busy hectic lifestyle, some people don't even have time to break for lunch, having their meal while attending their work, and you should realize the ones walking on the streets and malls texting and using their phones (being hit by a bus or fall into a drain would be a sight). While majority of people try to squeeze their time doing the things they are interested (such as facebooking and mobile networking), spending hours on preparing meals and exercising daily are no longer a viable option. Apart from weekdays, some still walk the dog and enjoying the 60 mins jog in the weekends.

While more people hitting the gym more often then before, in this case, Malaysians. The question remains why we are officially the fattest nation in Asia? Shouldn't most Malaysians stay lean and in shape? Doesn't make sense isn't it? If exercise more can make one stay healthy, lean and sustainability fit, then Malaysians and most nations with gym memberships would reflect a totally different statistics ain't it? 

We have heard from people all over the place, fitness and health magazines, and even your personal trainer, to "Get More Exercise" or "Train Regularly".  Even better, now we have mobile phones and watches which can tell you how many steps you take in a day. This is becoming comical as we now dependent on electronics to tell us how to move and exercise. From getting so called dietary healthy advise from dietitians and nutritionists to brainwash us to eat more grains and processed foods, to personal trainers beating the crap out of clients draining those poor folks adrenals and energy, and here we go, "My smartwatch or mobile phone tells me to take 10000 steps today in order to lose weight!".

I remember years back, I used to be a regular gym goer, bounced from membership to another, gyms after gyms, trying to check out their facilities and equipments, hoping the new gym would look and feel more luxurious then the one I joined. For the guys, they prefer gym which has lots of working professionals good looking ladies flooding the place. Else, what's the point of pumping those irons and flexing those biceps right? Well well, what happen to health and fitness? Why are we so derailed and off course from the truth of exercise, fitness and health?

In this  topic, I'm not going to discuss about 6 pack abs, big arms or even how many miles you can hit down the road. I will reveal what physical stressor is all about, how about our body adapt and response to stress and the missing puzzles from conventional wisdom. As most people are chasing the 'short-cut fix' from pills to 'insanity' exercise programs, the world has seriously gone mad. Our great grandmother didn't even exercise and she was lean and healthy. What gym? What calorie? 

First of all, if you wan't to lose weight in a healthy way and achieve sustainable fat loss, you need to get rid of the 'calories in calories out' mentality. The whole theory of burning calories from the exercises you perform is simply old school and misleading. If this entire calories madness is true, we would all be lean and look like fitness models and achieve 12% body fat right? Female adults trying to go on diet more then ever, reducing calories and eating low fat diet. Overweight and obese folks are trying to lose that excessive pounds by joining gyms or even running marathons. In fact, we have more people participating in marathon and triathlon then ever in the history of mankind. We have more gym memberships since primal ancestors step foot on planet earth. Guess what, none of our caveman ancestors nor great grandparents generations ago knew what exercise nor treadmill is about. Calories in calories out? Nah, never heard of it. 

Before we dive into fitness, exercise or health, let's have an overview of what stress is all about. Let's understand how the adrenals work in our body. It's sometimes shocking to know that some people beat the crap out of themselves in the gym trying to stay 'fit' and healthy, but they do not even know the little pair of 'stress-making factory' located on top of their kidneys.  Nonetheless, they don't even know what stress is, and how their body react to what happen whenever they do 90 mins of Crossfit drills, run 20km, RPM class, or even long steady-state treadmill jog. The point is, it doesn't matter which type of exercise you perform, it is what you do to your body, in terms of how the brain communicate with your adrenals to secrete the amount of stress hormones. We call it the HPA axis. 

Stress, can be regard as purpose of survival or normal, but could be harmful and abusive to the body physiologically if we are not aware of what we do to our body, chronically, if prolonged for longer period or years. If you are hardwired with the mentality of 'burning calories' to lose weight and be healthy, you are setting up yourself for adrenal fatigue and other related chronic health problems. Especially the ones with stressful lifestyle and poor diet, regular gym sessions or exercises could turn out to be the final nail in the coffin. I'm sure you heard from some of your friends who gain weight and felt even more exhausted after joining the gym or started some sort of youtube workout programs. 

Just about every medical and health professional would agree that exercise is an essential component of any healthy lifestyle regimen.  You would be hard pressed to find a disease that does not list “exercise” as either a preventive or a therapeutic treatment. Doctors, dietitians, trainers will tell you to exercise regularly, workout more often,  in order to lose weight and achieve better health. But do these professionals assess and evaluate your lifestyle, stressors, and state of digestion (diet)? The answer is most likely NO. In fact, most fitness instructors or personal trainers don't even though what exercise is all about. Is it all about workout only?  The approach of 'burning calories' is NOT the answer to losing body fat in a healthy way without compromising the thyroid functions and metabolism, as well as accelerate aging and draining the adrenals.  

The law of thermodynamics, explain the theory of energy in and energy out, in this case, calories expenditure from exercise (workout). When we talk about workout, it is all about expending energy from so called "excess of calories consumed" in the body. If this is true, imagine the need to run for 5km daily in order to burn off that extra few hundreds of calories consumed on each day! Our basal metabolic rate itself, is already 70% of our total caloric requirement. What does that tells you? Common sense will tell you that most of the survival functions in the body requires most of the energy, in this case, it's calories from foods. By just heart rate, breathing, pulmonary functions, resting, and for most vital functions to work, our body need approximately 70% of calories daily. 

Imagine you cut down your calories or having the urge to burn off the 'extra' calories. You are further depleting your body of nutrients and in energy deficit state. Your thyroid functions will slow down if you perform long hours of exercise, on top of your daily stressed out busy work schedules. Stress hormones over-spilled! Cortisol up, thyroid functions down. It's all about survival mechanism.

Stay tuned for part 2.