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Many of my clients have come to me, not only for weight loss but to feel better overall. Many have lost their energy and enthusiasm for life and they want it back! Feeling lethargic all of the time and losing your mojo IS NOT A NORMAL PART OF AGING!! I hear people say, “I’m getting old…..” This is such a silly excuse for feeling crappy!
It’s just easier to say, “I’m getting old,” than to change your old habits that are sucking the life out of you! AND buying your way to more energy, and a healthier body is just not an option. We’ve all tried it, and as easy as it sounds to “buy” our way back to feeling young and vibrant. The truth is, there is NO such miracle product that can erase the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle. You have to live a lifestyle that makes your body thrive to feel great and look great. But the good news is that lifestyle doesn’t have to be so strict that you can only eat rice cakes and tuna. Hormones are one of the key factors that can make your feel young and actually tell your body to make new and younger cells! Baby cells equal feeling and looking younger!
Balancing your chemistry (your hormones) through your everyday are actions that will lead you to either feel old or ageless. Some of these choices include:
- What you put in your mouth,
- How much you move throughout your day,
- How much you exercise,
- The amount of sleep you get at night,
- Who you surround yourself with and
- How you handle stress
When your hormones are happy (balanced) you will have more energy, you’ll feel less frazzled and you’ll look forward to getting out of your bed in the morning!
Your body makes its very own super power hormone that is responsible for making you grow taller before you hit puberty. After puberty, this hormone increases the mineralization of your bones, helps to maintain your muscle mass, supports cellular growth, stimulates the breakdown of fat and more. Wondering what this super power hormone is? It’s called Growth Hormone (GH), nicknamed the youth hormone, for good reason. Growth Hormone is also referred to as Human Growth Hormone (HGH).
Growth hormone is one of the most important ingredients for many of the processes in your body that keep you strong, young and vibrant. Studies show that lowered levels of GH can increase your fat stores, break down your muscle (which will lower your metabolism-your fat burning engine), lower your energy levels, steal your libido, and leave you feeling emotionally volatile.
Growth hormone replacement therapy has become a popular way to replace low GH levels. However, our bodies are just not that simple. As much as we’d all like it, we can’t simply buy health! First, there’s not enough research concerning the long-term effects that GH therapy can have on your cardiovascular and metabolic health. Second, scientific research hasn’t been able to confirm whether or not GH therapy can increase your risk of cancer, tumors, inflammation, diabetes and more unnecessary inflammatory based diseases. Third, taking in external GH can inhibit your body from making growth hormone, which would mean that you would become dependent on GH injections until you go through a process to wean your body off of the external GH. These injections are VERY EXPENSIVE and let’s face it, the fake stuff just doesn’t compare to what your own body can produce!
Studies show that as we age, our bodies tend to make less growth hormone. However, the lack of exercise and sitting on your butt for hours at a time, chronic stress, deep abdominal fat, and lack of sleep can all decrease your growth hormone levels WAY more than aging. And if you are aging AND sitting on your rear for 9 hours a day, you are creating a catastrophe! Add a diet of highly processed foods that are high in sugar and you’re going to feel lethargic, moody and you’re going to continue to store leads of fat in all of the places you don’t want fat! Ain’t nobody got time for that!!
Here are four ways you can get your mojo back by naturally enhancing your own growth hormone levels.
Learn To Manage Stress Now
Stress is inevitable in our lives. We can’t control the actions of others, we can’t control the weather or how people drive. In fact, there are many events and people in our lives that have great potential to make us feel stressed, that we can’t control. Stress that goes unmanaged, leads to increased cortisol levels and increased cortisol for long periods of time will lower your GH levels and make you feel “old.”
To prevent stress from stealing your mojo, a first step is to stop feeling stressed that you are stressed! We all know that stress is bad for our bodies and it is inevitable that we will all always have some form of stress in our lives. In fact, no stress is ALSO stressful for our bodies. Stress is the thing that makes us get up and move. It’s responsible for change, and excitement and even happiness. If everything were easy we would never experience relief and happiness. So HOW you perceive stress can actually make stress worse or better. Modify your perception of stress and start eliminating unnecessary stressors in your life.
Learning strategies that help you manage stress is a key to relieving the effects of stress on your body. Set up boundaries in your life that protect you from the people in your life that tend to cause you stress. It is ALWAYS your own choice to surround yourself with people who suck your energy! Some of those people may be family members. Here’s the good news, you don’t have to dump them. Instead, you can set your boundaries and stick to them.
Start choosing actions that reduce the effects of stress on your body like meditation, massage, yoga, Tai Chi, long walks (strolls) with someone you love, hobbies and way more.
Get Your Sleep
In college (and for years after) I believed that I was tough because I didn’t “need” a lot of sleep. I worked so hard to keep up with all my responsibilities, my kids and starting my business. I was completely exhausted all of the time. In fact, I began to think that the groggy feeling I walked around with everyday was just normal. My quality of life sucked too! I was too exhausted to enjoy anything and I was unwilling to miss out on enjoying my family sometimes.
So I began looking for solutions. I began learning about productivity. I took workshops, read books, listened to Podcasts and I heard the same thing over and over again. Get a lot done in a little bit of time by working when you are NOT exhausted and have energy to enjoy your family! Sometimes the simplest problems are hardest to see when you’re in the middle of the problem.
Growth hormone is made and released during the deepest stages of sleep. In healthy people, GH is released in the first period of stage 3 sleep somewhere between the hours of 10pm and 2am. When you are awake all night, you do not release GH at all. That’s why everything hurts the next day. When you start going to bed and at 10pm you get that “second wind,” it’s because your body released melatonin to set the stage for GH. Try to get to bed before 10pm every night and I guarantee you will begin to feel better. You’ll make better decisions, your body will feel better, you’ll burn fat more effectively, you’ll be more enjoyable to be around and you’ll get more done in less time!
Drop The Sugars
When you eat too much sugar you keep your insulin levels high, which signals your body to store fat. Research published in the Journal of Metabolism showed that elevated insulin in obese people inhibited the release of GH. Chose to eat clean instead. Replace processed and sugary foods with veggies, fruit, clean protein and good fats like avocado and nuts. Eating clean can taste good! Trust me and try some of our recipes! http://www.momentumfitness.com/category/nutrition/
Eating clean increases the amounts of vital nutrients, vitamins and minerals intake and then have available for your body to use, which provides you with natural energy, naturally detoxes your own body (which is what your body was made to do) and balances out all of your other hormones including insulin, cortisol, ghrelin, leptin and WAY more!
Exercise Every Day For At Least 30 Minutes
Research also shows that exercise, more specifically high intensity interval training (HIIT), is the one of the most effective ways to naturally raise your GH levels. Let me preface this; you don’t have to workout at high intensities every day. Over training becomes a stressor over time and will actually contribute to lowering GH. High intensity workouts two to three days a week are perfect. The other days should be moderate and lower intensity workouts.
Although general strength training has been shown to increase GH levels in women and men women’s bodies, women’s bodies tend to respond better to intense strength training with less rest and in a specific amount of time. The quickest example for this type of workout is metabolic/burst training, which mixes strength and interval training.
Okay, there’s one more natural method of raising GH. This method is newer and more complex that the scope of this article. I want to touch on this because you may hear about it in our world of misunderstood, quick weight loss strategies. Intermittent fasting combined with intense exercise together also increase natural GH production. But these two behaviors can be over done. They only work to a specific point and if taken too far fasting and vigorous exercise can 
become a stressor to your body. Your body could interpret the wrong message and your brain could then think you are beginning to starve to death. At this point everything moves in the “store” not “burn” direction. Intermittent fasting is complex topic. It’s not meant for every one and should be practiced only under the supervision of a professional fitness coach or nutritionist. Here’s a link for more quality information about (CLICK HERE) by John Barardi PhD. if you’d like to learn more.
If your mojo has disappeared, know that you have the power to get it back. The four strategies listed above are simple but not necessarily easy. If you are serious about making changes in your life and living agelessly make sure to find a REAL support system with people who want the best for you and professionals who are highly trained and truly care about you. Team Mo-Mentum is a highly educated and passionate team that works tirelessly everyday to provide you with the most up-to-date strategies that are tailored to fit your needs and help you achieve your goals. Our culture is one of support, motivation and play! If you’re new to Mo-Mentum come in any time and we’ll help you get on your path to ageless living.
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