A few weeks ago, Kristen Perillo wrote an article discussing the cumulative effects of stress on her life. You can read this here.
She’s a full-time teacher and personal trainer and was struggling to balance end-of-the-year school mayhem, family losses and maladies, and her own personal training and nutrition goals. The accruing stress eventually reached a boiling point, and she decided she couldn’t continue this path. To temper the storm until July, when school lets out and she can catch a breath, she decided to slow her “summer lean six pack” goals from a sprint to a jog. She cut out one day of boot camp and strategically added calculated portions of food back into her “diet.” This eased some of the stress, and come July, she will add those variables back in and continue her path.
I have no doubt Kristen will reach her goals. Sometimes you need to take a step back from your fitness endeavors to deal with, well, life! In the long run, this will have zero effect on Kristen’s results, but I don’t think she told the whole story.
Kristen is mentally and physically at a max level of stress because she has been lifting weights four times per week, participating in boot camp 3 times per week, teaching full time (if you’re a teacher or grew up with teachers, you realize the job does not end in the classroom. Love you, Mom!), personal training more than part time, dealing with family losses and sickness, mothering fifteen or so dogs/cats/anything cute with legs and a tail, following a nutrition plan, and dealing with a slew of other stresses all packed together in a can of whoop ass for… oh, I don’t know, over six years, non-stop!
PS. This is why she is successful.
Everyone has stress going on, and you’ll always find someone more stressed than you, so I’m not trying to compare Kristen to anyone. Someone may have three kids, an asshole boss, dying family members, anxiety, depression, phobias, sicknesses, three jobs, and who knows what else? Everyone has shit. However, some people are organized and handle their shit, while others let their shit handle them.
I train a lot of amazing people. I have clients who have every one of the stressors listed above, and they manage to figure it out. Why? Because they care. They care about their health, they care about their bodies, and they care about looking a certain way. So they get organized.
Getting organized could mean a lot of things—meal prepping every Sunday, cutting out television time, packing the night before, telling your children “no,” not staying out too late, or not eating the ice cream even though you feel it’s a family experience. I reminisce fondly about walking to the ice cream parlor with my parents when we were kids, but I could not have cared less if they partook. If you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you what flavor they got. This list can go on forever.
Chances are, you’re not as stressed as you think you are and don’t really need ANY break from fitness. If anything, you need more. I thought I was stressed to the max and had no free time, then I tore my Achilles. Between balancing a more than full-time work schedule, running a business, a more than full-time training schedule, and a more than full-time recovery schedule, I felt what it was like to actually have 24 hours of your day booked, and I still found time for everything that matters.
I do have a client who is going through an insanely stressful time in his life and has not missed one training session. Kudos to him! I even stayed past closing a few nights last week, for him, because I know what a rough time he’s going through, and he’s so adamant about not falling behind physically.
This article is not meant to lambaste or challenge anyone; it’s simply some food for thought. Are you really that stressed, or are you just not organized? Do you not have time to train 4 times per week vs. 3 times per week, or are you putting that time toward something not as productive? Are you not able to follow your nutrition, or are your physique goals just not as important as eating whatever you want?
I said above that Kristen will still be successful taking a small step back for a month and then moving forward. Unless you’re already putting as much time into training and nutrition as Kristen is, you won’t be successful taking any step back. So instead of reading Kristen’s article and using it to vindicate a lack of organization, why not use it in a productive way. If you have a certain physique or health goal, add more training into your life. Be more diligent with your nutrition. Get organized. Move forward.
This is what will happen:
- You’ll get leaner and healthier. As a result, you will be happier with yourself. Period.
- You’ll get leaner and healthier. As a result, you will feel less stressed with all the stress in your life. Period.
- If you ever hit a point where you are TRULY maxed out on stress, physically and mentally, you can give yourself the grace to take a small mental or physical break, and then when you get back to it, you will continue your path of being wildly successful.
You have my guarantee.
About the author
Chris Rombola
Chris is the owner of Fit House. He's run the training departments at several commercial gyms, and after years of seeing how awful those environments were for his clients, he opened his own studio. He is devoted to getting people strong, lean, and healthy.
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