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Your clients may have sought your services as a health and exercise professional because they want to change their eating or improve their physical-activity habits. They may point to their late-night munching, workplace snack foods, a lack of motivation to exercise or sedentary leisure-time activities as barriers to good health, but they rarely consider the impact stress has on their health and ability to meet their goals. Despite this oversight and the fact that stress has become an ubiquitous part of modern life, chronic stress often disrupts health behaviors and has a profound impact on overall well-being.
This article explores the behavioral consequences of stress and highlights strategies you can use to help manage your own stress, as well as boost your clients’ stress resiliency, bringing them closer to their health and fitness goals.
High stress levels have vast implications on mental, emotional and physical health.
“My clients are often sleep deprived, angry, overwhelmed, anxious and depressed as a result of chronic stress,” says Kelly Lynch, LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker/therapist and certified life coach based in Wolcott, Conn. “They tend to exercise very little, emotionally eat highly processed foods, and go through cycles of damaging emotional outbursts as a result of poor coping strategies and little to no self-care,” she says.
“Many of my clients have over-committed themselves,” says Erin Laverone, owner of Vitality Central, a health-coaching organization based in Austin, Texas. “This often leads to burnout and the downward spiral of “screw it” mode, where a not-so-great choice is made out of mental and physical exhaustion, which then leads to many more not-so-great choices, followed by feelings of guilt and even more stress.” Though stress itself is not inherently bad, in excess, it can negatively impact our health behaviors, specifically eating, physical activity and sleep.
Stress impacts both how much and what type of foods we eat. During the early phases of an acute stress response, hunger is often blunted. Hormones that help prepare the body to respond to stress have an inhibitory effect on appetite. However, hormones that surge during the stress recovery period, such as cortisol and other corticosteroids, stimulate appetite.
Interestingly, eating behavior in response to stress differs depending on an individual’s relationship with food. Restrained eaters—those who normally restrict the amount or types of food they eat—show an increase in consumption in response to stress, while those who do not restrict show a decrease in consumption.This may be related to the increased reward value restrained eaters place on food.
Stress also changes the types of foods we crave. During periods of prolonged stress, we are biologically wired to crave foods that offer energy, such as those high in fat and sugar. “Nutrition becomes a little more challenging for clients with high stress, because they tend to get used to eating highly processed foods, which taste great,” says Lynch.
If food is used as a coping mechanism for clients dealing with repeated stressors, and we try to alter their eating habits without dealing with the causal mechanisms, any eating improvements they create are likely to be short lived. By addressing stress as a potential underlying factor driving consumption, we can better help clients create stress resiliency practices and sustainable eating habits.
Feelings of stress and the anticipation of stressful events have been shown to reduce physical-activity behavior. While exercise is a well-known stress reliever, individuals experiencing stress are, paradoxically, less likely to engage in it. It’s also known that stress can increase the risk for developing many chronic diseases, and the reduced participation in physical activity when stressed may at least partially explain this relationship.
Perceived lack of time, a notable stressor, is one of the most cited reasons for skipping out on regular physical activity, as it makes the thought of finding time to exercise feel overwhelming.
“I always call exercise ‘movement,’” Lynch says. “Many of my stressed-out clients are very resistant to the word exercise, because it simply feels like one more obligation piled on their already overflowing plate. A simple shift to [describing physical activity as] movement tends to feel more accessible and manageable for them.”
Anticipation of next-day stress is related to shortened sleep duration and reduced sleep quality. Sleep and stress work in a cyclical manner, such that reduced sleep can increase the perception and effects of stress, and high stress levels disrupt sleep. Poor sleep quality can, in turn, affect a variety of other factors including mood, appetite, energy and exercise recovery.
“Our brains tend to function very poorly in terms of being able to process information logically when we’re tired,” Lynch explains. “With the appropriate amount of quality sleep, we better equip our brains to be able to process information we’re presented with in the most effective ways.”
With its widespread effects on an array of health behaviors, addressing clients’ stress levels and offering resiliency techniques are vital components of comprehensive coaching and training programs. The following evidence-based behavior-change strategies can be used to help your clients build a repertoire of stress-management skills, allowing you to more holistically impact your clients’ well-being.
One of the most useful tools for navigating daily stressors is reframing the impact of these stressors on our lives. A stress mindset involves our attitudes and beliefs about the effects of stress. These mindsets alter the way we respond to stressors, both physically and psychologically. Those who view stress as adaptive report lower levels of depression, higher levels of happiness and greater life satisfaction than their stress-is-detrimental counterparts.
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“I base everything around education, awareness and language,” says Lynch. “By educating my clients on the difference between distress and eustress, for example, they have the opportunity to change their perception of various stress factors in their lives.” When we hear the term stress, we often think of distress, a stressor that is seen as negative or detrimental. Eustress, however, refers to positive stressors that motivate and propel us toward our goals.
“As awareness increases around what eustress looks like,” continues Lynch., “we then have the chance to shift the language they use to describe those experiences. We have given such a huge amount of power to the experience of stress and how negative we believe it is. However, if we shift the language we use to describe stress, we also begin to shift the experience of it. Language helps us put ourselves back in the driver’s seat of our lives, instead of letting our emotions choose the direction.”
“Reframing is a big part of my coaching practice with clients,” explains Laverone. “Your frame of view shapes your attitude and how you interpret your life. I often ask clients to look for the learning opportunities in their problems and to focus on what super powers they can bring to the situation, rather than dwelling on potential negative qualities,” she says.
Mindfulness continues to be a hot trend in the wellness and high-performance worlds, and for good reason. Mindfulness is shown to improve emotional regulation, reduce reactivity to challenging situations, and lower stress and anxiety levels.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic, defines mindfulness as, “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” With this, any activity where an individual directs their attention to the present moment experience, without evaluating it as good or bad, is considered mindfulness.
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Your clients don’t have to eschew all worldly possessions and sit silently for hours to reap the benefits of mindfulness. Mindfulness exercises can be done while washing dishes, driving, taking a shower and even exercising. Further, specific techniques can be utilized to enhance mindfulness. Two such techniques are the body scan and sensory meditation:
Engaging in mindfulness practices outdoors can be particularly beneficial. “Sunshine, fresh air and the sounds of nature are very helpful in calming many people’s minds and providing some time for regeneration,” says Laverone.
The body’s stress response is governed by the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), the part of the autonomic nervous system that is responsible for fight or flight. When activated, it increases heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure and sweating and sends blood away from the core. It can also arouse feelings of anxiety. The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), often referred to as the “rest and digest” component of the body’s autonomic nervous system, has the opposite effects, reducing arousal, conserving energy and sending blood to the digestive system.
Chronic stress can lead to repeated activation of the SNS, making a person feel jittery, anxious and exhausted. Stimulating the PNS reduces these sensations and promotes restoration and calm. One of the simplest ways to stimulate the PNS is through the breath.
“In the heat of the moment, you’ve got to breathe,” says Laverone. “Being able to focus on and rhythmically gain control over your breathing is shown to have profound positive effects on your physiological state, which in turn allows you to better control your emotions, feelings and thoughts, leaving you with better behavioral control,” she says.
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A variety of breathing techniques can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, thereby reducing the perception of stress and anxiety:
Journaling and other forms of expressive writing have been shown to improve psychological well-being, reduce depressive symptomology, and improve blood pressure, lung, liver, immune function and pain sensitivity.
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Expressive writing can be done regularly to work through daily stressors or less frequently to process bigger life events. For clients who have a penchant for writing, any kind of emotional expression in the written form can help
Stress can hinder our clients’ behavior-change efforts and diminish their overall well-being. By encouraging them to reframe stress, recognize its impact on their daily lives and incorporate strategies to increase their stress resiliency, you can help your clients improve their mental, emotional and physical health.
“The biggest point I emphasize to all my clients when it comes to stress resiliency is that simple is better,” says Lynch. “When working with really stressed-out folks, simplicity is like a breath of fresh air.”
Mental Well-being Certification
Expand your expertise with the Mental Well-Being Certification. This course empowers you to incorporate mental health and well-being strategies into your training for a more integrative, self-care approach to client care. Focusing on the four pillars of mental well-being—exercise, nutrition, connection, and mindfulness—you'll gain the expertise to help clients manage stress, improve mood, and build resilience through fitness. This 20-hour certification is designed for health and exercise professionals, equipping you with the tools to confidently address mental well-being within your scope of practice. With evidence-based research and practical coaching techniques, you'll learn to support clients' mental health and well-being, foster stronger connections, and create an inclusive, supportive environment. Whether you're expanding your services or deepening client engagement, this course prepares you to meet the rising demand for mental well-being coaching in the fitness industry.
Chronic stress is a major issue affecting mental and physical health, but you can help with this course designed to help health and fitness professionals create stress-reducing movement sessions. In this transformative course, you'll discover the science behind stress and its impact on health and performance, and learn how to incorporate movement, mindfulness, and meditative breathing into your sessions. You'll gain a variety of stress-reducing exercises to use with your clients and learn how to offer unique stress reduction classes to keep your clients coming back.
A Holistic Approach to Mental Health
As the conversation around mental health grows, health and exercise professionals have an exciting opportunity to positively impact people’s mental well-being and overall health through services and programming while staying within their scope of practice. From nutrition, movement, breath, sleep and connectedness, there are many ways to help clients focus on their mental health. This course offers insight from five industry experts who share their knowledge about various factors of wellness that can impact your clients’ mental health. Through each session, you’ll learn how to expand your offerings and assist your clients in their quest for better mental health and wellbeing.
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