Take a Deep Breath...or Five

One of the most underestimated things for your health is simply slowing down and actually deep breathing. This is also true for those trying to lose weight.
Stress management makes a major impact, but it is often looked over because it doesn't seem like a big deal.
In this episode we talk about the benefits of deep breathing, and give you some helpful tips to help make stress management more tangible and trackable.

If you have questions, or topics that you want to hear about, head over to our Instagrams https://www.instagram.com/nucrewnutrition/ or https://www.instagram.com/themomminnutritionist/ and send us a DM!

If you are interested in working with us in Metabolism Makeover you can sign up here! https://metabolismmakeover.co/programs/metabolism-makeover/earlybird/?affiliate=mocktailminutes

Featured Mocktails:
Pickleball Cocktail - https://www.instagram.com/jigsaw_health/ use code Brianna10
Cure - https://www.instagram.com/cure/

Click play, sip back, and be empowered.

Transcript

0:23

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of Mocktail Minutes. This is Bailey. And this is Brianna. This week I am drinking, what am I drinking? Oh, my Cure Electrolytes, the berry flavor, and I also put a little bit of creatine in there. That's funny. I have creatine too. I'm doing the pickleball electrolytes from jigsaw and they have like a blue raspberry. So I put in a little bit of lemonade. It's actually really good. And then creatine because back on my strength training and I'm sore. It's because I keep doing well and then stopping and then doing well and stopping. Weird. I don't know why you're sore. Weird. Yeah, that's exactly why. So mystery. So yeah, I'm like, creatine, help me build, build my lean muscle. But anyways. I think it really does help with the recovery too. Mm hmm. I feel like it makes such a big difference. So whether that's real or placebo doesn't matter because it's working. So yeah. Got a creatine in today. Which creatine do you use? I use the thorn. Yeah, just like the powdered one. That's what I use too. It's pretty cheap and it like lasts forever. I only do like a half a scoop. Yeah, it lasts forever. It doesn't taste like anything. Like I, one day, one day this week, I put it in my coffee. Yeah. You can't even taste it. Usually I put it in my smoothie and then some days I just put it with my electrolytes. super convenient. You can't taste it. Oh yeah, right. And then I think we have plans to do an episode on that because I don't think we have done one yet. But talking about creatine and its effects. Yeah. I think we should add it. I think it's on our list. This isn't an episode on creatine, but it's like one of the most studied supplements, so. So we'll do an episode on it. Stay tuned. Today though, we are talking about deep breathing. It's a little different, I feel like, than what we typically talk about because we do a lot of weight loss and whatnot. And so you're probably thinking like, Oh, are you doing a mindset podcast? But I mean, if you've been listening, we do talk about mindset all the time. And sometimes I feel like I even think for me personally, like when it came to deep breathing, journaling, all these things, I always thought it was a little too woo woo for me, but. It's super beneficial. Yes, it's beneficial. It's effective. It's not difficult to do. It's free. Yeah. And honestly, like, you know, it all comes full circle because if you are someone struggling with weight loss or health or whatever it is, your stress and just your stress management is huge. Like it is really difficult to be over the age of like, really 25. Like before that, you might get away with it, but like over the age of 25 and like have really poorly managed stress and then just think it's not going to have repercussions and you're going to be able to lose weight and you're going to be able to, you know, sleep well and have a good mindset and all that. Like it's just not realistic. So it does have some things to do with the weight loss. We have to stop just brushing stress off. Like it's, we use stress so commonly and talk about stress so often. Like the amount of times, even for myself, like people ask like, Oh, how are you? How's work? How's this? And it's like, we're stressed. We're busy. Like that is our automatic response that it has just become part of our lives. And. Number one, we're not doing the things to take care of it and be proactive about it. Number two, sometimes I feel like maybe it's not so much stress, but we're not putting the right emotion or the right feeling to it. Like maybe it's more overwhelmed or confusion or we just don't know how to process it. So that comes with like learning and sitting with your emotions too. And I also think it's just really normalized, right? Like it's so normalized to be hustle mentality. Go, go, go. I'm stressed. I'm busy. I'm doing all the things. Like it's almost strange if someone was like, Hey, how you doing? And you're like, I'm doing great. I'm so relaxed. I've just spent the day, like not doing much, like that's just not. So we're kind of wired to be like stressed. And then also. That's just what we, that's like our default, I talk about this in my busy professionals ebook that I'm writing is the stress piece of things because I feel like we often use it as an excuse as well as like, we are so stressed out. Like we can't do another thing. I am stressed. So I can't focus. I am stressed. So X, Y, Z, and we do use it as an excuse. And I think sometimes I always hate saying the word excuse because I don't want it to be like a negative connotation. But. I'm going to start using it. I think more because packs a little bit more punch where we do make a lot of excuses for ourselves, to be honest. So brushing off stress is no longer. An excuse to not take care of yourself because there are so many simple solutions like the deep breathing that we're going to get into because, and this does come back to weight loss because deep breathing alone, it's not like if you deep breathe, you're going to start losing weight. Like. It's not like a direct solution like that, but when we combine it with the other lifestyle practice, it is going to contribute to your overall health and wellbeing and support your weight loss effort. and it's just a. It's very effective, and we have a lot of research to show this. It is effective at lowering our stress response and helping us to chill out. And I, you know what, I think it's fine to say excuses because I feel like this is where a lot of people get stuck in a rut, right? They are, they are stressed and they don't know how to manage it. They manage it poorly, and that's usually where the excuses come in. I'm stressed, so I'm going to order in tonight. I'm stressed so I'm gonna have a glass of wine. I'm stressed so screw going to bed early, I need to unwind with some TV or like I'm stressed. I'm not going to do whatever it is. We make more poor choices that aren't really what we want to be doing. And we use stress as the excuse. And then it's like a vicious cycle where those things stress us out more. And then so we keep coping the same way. And it's like, I will agree. I feel like Mindset and, you know, breathwork and meditation and all that stuff. I also was like, this is woo woo. But at the same time, when you start doing it and realizing, wow, like, it's a really small thing that I'm doing and it's actually helping. Like, you might as well try it. Because it's better than doing what you're doing right now. That's what I tell people. And it's so simple. Why not do it? It's not costing you anything besides, it's the own stories you have in your head that is like, Oh, I'm going to feel stupid and silly doing this. Who cares? No one is watching you. Like literally no one cares if you are meditating in your house by yourself or if you're taking five seconds to breathe in your car. Nobody cares. And honestly, I think Lindsay helped me realize that it's not just woo woo freaky people things when it comes to these pieces, because when she explains everything, I love Lindsay's mindset calls. We need to get her on another episode because she just spews amazing call outs. And I was, I listened to her Zoom call the other day from Metabolism Makeover M3 group where she does Mindset Mondays. And she was talking about like, like consistency and kind of like excuses we make, just a lot of different pieces. And it really resonated with me, but anyways, let's get into the benefits of deep breathing. And again, we're already, already all doing this. Okay. We already have to breathe, right? So, but deep breathing, it helps to trigger the body's relaxation response, which helps us to reduce stress. So it's activating that parasympathetic nervous system that counteracts your stress response. There is, I, I think Huberman, Patea, like there is a ton of people right now that are like, okay. do like having podcasts or doing things on on this like topic and they do such a good job. I mean, if you can listen to a three hour podcast, yes, go ahead. And you want to know all the science, they will tell you, but like, this is research. Like we can control Our stress response. Most people are not deep breathing. I just like want everyone to think about this for a second. Have you ever like been busy and then you kind of get done with whatever you're doing and you're like, and you kind of like sigh and then I don't know if I've been like really breathing. Like we do not deep breathe. That's something that we have to tell ourselves to do. And so we just spend all day shallow breathing. And so, yeah, but go ahead. Well, I like it too. It's kind of a little digestive system hack. And I tell a lot of people this, especially my working people who have a job that's like kind of go, go, go all day. And then we get to lunch and either. We're powering through lunch and skipping, which that's another issue. Or we're just trying to get lunch in super quickly. We're super stressed out. So doing something like taking five deep belly breaths before you eat deep breathing will actually stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is what we want to be simulated when we're trying to digest our food. It's our rest and digest phase. We don't want our body. In fight or flight where we're pulling more blood towards like our arms and legs when we're trying to digest our hard boiled eggs, that's when we get the bloating, the discomfort, because our bodies just not focused on digest, digesting. It's focused on fight or flight, running away from a bear type of thing. and I think people don't understand that like I don't think like I think we hear rest and digest and it's like okay cool But I don't think people really understand We need to be in a kind of calm and relaxed state to properly digest our food This is very important. I have met so many people that are like I have chronic blow I have chronic this I have like acid reflux. Like I just don't feel good after meals and One of the first things I asked them is Are you rushing through your meals? Like is mealtime kind of like a relaxing time for you? Are you just kind of, you know, and so that's where we start. Like, let's take a couple of deep breaths before a meal. Chill out a little bit throughout your meal and like, just see how that kind of helps because you cannot properly digest food. If you're like, go, go, go, go, go. Cause that's just not something your body is prioritizing. Like we say this all the time. Our body is really good at adapting. If you're in like high stress and like, I got to go, I got to finish work. I got to do all this. Your body's going to like put its efforts towards doing that. It's going to be in that high stress fight or flight mode. It's not going to be in rest and digestion. and sit down to eat, like, make it a meal time, and we're not saying you have to sit and eat for an hour, but I mean, get 15 minutes in, 10 minutes in, where you're sitting and you're eating, you're being in that rest digest mode. Other things I just want, I want to add this because I had somebody that was like, I can't do that. She was, she was kind of mad. She was like, I can't do that. Right. Like, okay, well like, let's do other things. Then if you can't sit down and eat, you have to be doing stuff. Make sure that's the only thing like you're doing right. Like, don't be like watching your phone or doing other things. Like if you can't take a whole, you know, 20 minutes to eat, you only have five. Okay. Well then for those five minutes, I want you to like sit in silence and eat. Yeah. if you're having issues, what you're doing right now is not working, so try something else. Other things that helps with enhanced focus and concentration where we're talking about like workplace type things. So it's going to essentially, calm your mind and reduce your distractions. Obviously that's super helpful in the workplace and even again, doing it at that lunchtime, we're halfway through our day, just gives you time to refocus. Yep. Come back. Be more productive. I would say too with that is like just to improve like oxygen, oxygen. I can't say the word oxygen. I knew that was going to be an issue, but it, it basically increases the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream, which helps you get more to your brain, better blood flow to your brain. And it helps to increase your clarity. And your energy level. So both of these are important, right? Like it's increasing focus, increasing concentration, but then it's also increasing that clarity and the energy level, all things that we all need throughout our day when we're working or when we're just, whatever we're doing, we need all those things. So the fact that, you know, some deep breaths, maybe set a timer. I have some people set timers, like literally breath timers, kind of like how your Apple watch will remind you to like. You haven't been standing, you know, or like, whatever. Remind yourself, okay, I've been sitting at my desk. I've been bombarded with like all these stimuli. I'm going to breathe. There's something on your watch that you can, like, it tells you when to deep breathe and I must have accidentally, I must have turned mine off or something because I never have it pop up. I did too. But Josh's will pop up, like, when his heart rate gets out of whack or anything, it'll tell him like, yo, breathe. When I first got my Apple Watch, this was a while ago. It was like a couple of years ago. I did turn it off because I was getting prompted all day. Ooh, it looks like you need to take a deep breath. I'm like, ew, you're annoying. Turn it off. You're right. I do need to turn it back on because if it's prompting us, that's like one of the nice things about technology, right? It's trying to help you out. And I feel like a lot of us get annoyed with the Apple Watch, but. I turn that off and the the stand, like loud, loud environment, loud environment. I had to turn off because it'll go off in my house. I'm aware it's loud in here. My kids, like maybe every time it's loud, I should take a deep breath. But anyway. Yes. Help your brain. And with that, I mean, it also does help with anxiety and depression management. I mean, I'm not saying that deep briefing is going to take away your anxiety or, you Depression, but it's another tool in your toolbox, especially, I mean, I've had panic attacks before. I mean, what's the first thing we tell a kid when they're super worked up, like, hey, like, take a deep breath. Why don't we tell that to ourselves? Or why don't we do it for ourselves? Right? No, it's, I think we like, innately know that these things help and then we don't pay attention. It's just one of those things, like, we're so used to it that we don't. You know, but the other thing you could do is help to lower blood pressure. And similar to like blood sugar management, I think being mindful of your blood pressure is really useful for everyone. All right. Like we need it. So consistent deep breathing, it can help to lower your blood pressure by promoting relaxation and reducing the workload of the heart. Okay. So we are telling our body, Hey, let's relax a little bit. We're fine. We're sitting here. Maybe our brain is really busy. Maybe we do have a lot to do, but we could take a deep breath because yeah, we can tackle these things better without being so worked up. Yeah. So then it also, I mean, with the relaxation part, it can help with getting better quality sleep because when it comes to sleep, the quantity is important, but also the quality of sleep. So deep breathing before bed is going to kind of let your body know, Hey. Let's calm down. It's just going to bring you back down a little bit which is going to help that quality and also the duration for that sleep too I, I think that's one of the gosh, what's the term that Huberman uses for it? It's like the physiological sigh or something like that. It's like an actual way that has been shown to like help with sleep, especially if you're someone who's like, has a hard time falling asleep. It's like you take a deep breath and then you take. Another one on top of it. And then you like let it all out. It does work because there's, I have times where like, I have a hard time falling asleep and I will say like, it does help, it just helps to chill you out. And here's the thing, even if it doesn't help initiate that sleep right away, like Bailey said, it's going to help with the quality of sleep, you know, like rest and digest. And we have a sleep episode coming up in like two weeks, I believe, that we have planned out. So we'll dive more into sleep on Why the heck should you care? Because it's another thing. That we as humans, we brush off. I can sleep when I'm dead. Ugh, no. I used to say that. And now I'm like, 9 o'clock, let's go to bed. Yeah, I'm like, ooh, that function is starting at, I'm sorry, 8 o'clock? Yeah, I get it. I can't go. Sorry. My sister made fun of me the other night. She was hanging out with us and it was like 8. 45 and she asked if we wanted to watch a movie and I was like, hmm. I don't know if I'm gonna stay up. She's like, what? Sorry, I'm boring now. But sleep is so important. But yeah, we'll get into it. Other things, I mean, deep breathing helps support your immune system because you're reducing those stress hormones and improving Promoting your relaxation. So it's going to help your body just function more optimally when your body is functioning well. Well, guess what? It's going to fight off infection and boost your immune system. And I really think this is another one too, where it works so well for a couple of reasons. Like you're getting a lot more blood flow to, you know, your stomach and your intestines and you know, all that good stuff. All those organs that, you know, we all know, like our immune system, our gut is super important for that. So keeping a healthy gut, but then also I feel like just reducing stress helps to make you not, I feel like it boosts your immune system. And I'm sure there's like really science y reasons behind this, but, you know, We know chronic stress like runs you down. Mm-Hmm. You know, like, I mean, think about anytime you've ever been super like stressed, it's so easy to get sick. I feel like that was like one thing I used to struggle with a lot when I was super, super stressed. It's like, gosh, I feel like I'm always sick. I always have a cold. I always have something going on. It's like I always think I'm like your body kind of forcing you to slow down and slow down. Yeah. I see that happen in so many people, especially my sympathetic running. People that eventually your body's gonna make you slow down. Yeah, it's tired. and I would say the last thing I mean kind of go along with that too pain management So again, it's not just gonna be like, oh I can breathe and now I have no pain type of thing But when you're deep breathing you have that relaxation you're reducing that tension So it can help especially with chronic pain when you're not so tense And stressed all the time, which is, I mean, it's definitely a hard part because having like a back injury or a knee injury or whatever type of injury that stress in and out of itself. So getting worked up and tense about it. It's not helping. No, so let's promote that blood flow and rest and digest mode. I feel like recover should be on there too. Like rest, digest, recover. when it comes to stress management and like using techniques like this, I feel like people have a little bit of a hard time because it's not super tangible, right? It's like, yeah. You know, I can calculate how many minutes a week I work out. I can calculate how much, you know, how many grams of protein I get in a day or how many hours of sleep I get at night. And so people kind of just like, eh, okay, I need to breathe, right? Like maybe I'll breathe every now and then. And I feel like that they kind of like push it off because it's not super tangible. So I always tell people make it tangible, like set those timers on your phone. Like, so every time it goes off, like you can know if you, if you set five timers on your phone, And then you did three to five deep breaths. Then you know how often you were like practicing this deep breathing. Right. But sometimes we just need reminders and I'm going to tell you, like I get a lot of feedback of people being like, wow, I didn't realize like how much I wasn't deep breathing. And that's just true. We don't like naturally deep breathe all day when we're like in our routine. So set timers on your phone, make it tangible. The other thing, You could do for some like immediate like right now stuff is like think about the times in your days where you are most stressed or you like hold a lot of tension in your body. I always use the example of driving because I feel like everybody is stressed out when they drive. Like you just know you are. And so as when I started doing it was like, okay, when I drive, every time I'm driving to school, pick up or I'm driving to work or whatever, like I'm going to some really intentional deep breaths on my drive and it helps. And if you can lower Your stress response and the duration of that stress response in a really stressful time. That is going to be beneficial. 100%. And then, well, I guess for me too, I do do my deep breathing. Usually like once I get home, park my car, I will put my hands on the steering wheel, take three to five deep breaths. And that is super helpful because you're kind of switching gears from work life to home life. And now with my new drive from moving I'm in traffic and it could take me 30 minutes to get home. It could take me an hour and four minutes to get home. So I'm a little crabby. They are, I'm extra needing those deep breaths. Yeah. And you bring up a good point. Like being able to shift gears like that, that is a common stressor for a lot of people. Like we're usually rushing from one thing to the next. So just taking a moment to intentionally be like, okay, work. Bailey's off. I'm going to go in, have my family time. Whatever, you know, whatever my evening looks like, it could be really helpful. But like I said, doing these things, it's not going to directly be like, Oh, if I just deep breathe, that's going to equal weight loss or fat loss. But doing these things promotes your overall health, which I mean, sympathetic nervous system regulation. it does help with weight loss. I mean, there's so many people that are coming and doing all the right things, but we are so wound up and stressed and have that up uptight feeling like we just have a lot going on that it's going to be hard to let go of that weight because we have so much inflammation related to the stress or we are running off cortisol. That's a big one. We are and That's where like stress belly comes in if we are constantly stressed Cortisol is gonna affect belly fat like it's one of the number. It's one of the top contributors to belly fat is too much cortisol and then little, not to freak people out with the cycle, but the more like belly fat, especially that you have, it starts to like, it, it can decide how much cortisol that you're going to basically make. Right. So the more belly fat you have, the more cortisol you make, the more cortisol you have, the more you store fat. And it's like, the more you serve out, the more fat you have in the cycle. This is what then, and people hate that answer. Like whenever I get people who are like, gosh, I just have like really separate belly fat, like what do I do? Like what workouts do I need to do? Like what foods do I need to eat? What? I'm like, well how stressed are you? Like people hate that. boring, but it's true. But needed. Yeah. Boring. I don't wanna do that. Tell me like what workout to do. Yeah, exactly. Right. So it's like, I don't know. And I think maybe that's. I think that's probably the biggest frustration when it comes to things like this, right? Like, we have a lot of tools that can help people and we're even guilty of this too. People want all the shiny things that you could be doing and it's not shiny to be like, I'm working on my stress by breathing, you know, like I am, I'm working on my health by breathing. We're like, you know, you want to be doing like a fancy detox or juicing or like, I don't know, going on this, like eat, pray, love, like trip or something. Right? Like you'd be like, you'd be doing all these crazy things. Like no one's like, You know when someone's like, Hey, what are you doing to improve your health? Like, rarely are people like, I'm breathing, I'm breathing. But it's like so frustrating'cause it's like, that's where we need to live, right? What are the things that we're doing every day? Because that makes the biggest impact on our health and weight loss. And whatever your goals are, what are the things you're doing every day? I can guarantee you, you guys are all breathing. Now let's just do a little bit deeper. A little deeper. You can do it. And you know what? Worst case, you're going to feel better. Bummer. There's literally no negative. There's no negative. So, after you get done listening to this episode, go take three deep breaths. Do it for the next week and see what a difference it makes for you. Tag us once you're, where, when you're getting your deep breathing in. I'll be holding on to my steering wheel, getting mine in. Once I'm parked, of course. See ya. I'll see ya. Bye. I guarantee you I'll be doing that. I've started doing it too at work. Like when I noticed, like whenever like my shoulders start to do this, I'm like, yeah, you'll start to see it, but I guarantee you start with driving. Like you can't go wrong. All right, everyone. Well, thank you for listening to this week's episode. We appreciate every single one of you. And we will be back next week talking about your metabolism slowing with aging. It's a hot topic. Excited. All right. Bye you guys. Bye.