What Does Your Morning Routine Look Like?
Have you been wondering what morning routine you could do to fight daily stress in your life? Or what would one look like that could energize you, and put you in your highest state for your whole day? One of the best ways to prepare your body for the emerging stress is by starting your daily routine with breathing and taking a cold shower. These two exercises don’t take too much of your time, yet they provide you with the highest feeling state possible.
Why is a cold shower so beneficial to your body, and how does it reduce stress? After taking a cold shower, your heart rate is significantly dropping by about 20-30 beats less per minute through the entire day. This can fully eliminate any stress you may deal with. So why does it work so efficiently? When you wake up, your body temperature is high, and you are slow. Chances are, the last thing you want is to shock your body with a sudden cold.
Yet, if you do so, in the beginning for at least 30 seconds, or so, your body quickly adjusts by not feeling the cold anymore. So you should aim for at least 30 seconds to two minutes in the first week. So what effect does it have on your body? It awakens your cardiovascular system, your key organ in charge of the infrastructure of your body. The system of our blood vessels, including our veins, arteries, and capillaries are as long as the world, more than twice around!!
A Naturally Effective Way to Eliminate Stressors
These parts of your blood vessels can be trained and made stronger if you make them adapt to stress, by taking a cool shower or bath daily. In this way you allow your vascular system to function the best it can, which in turn allows your heart to pump less, and not be overloaded. The millions of trained tiny muscles in your vascular system help your blood flow optimally by supporting each other. Your heart manages this flow, pumping less, and wiping out stressors.
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Not only does your blood flow run more smoothly, but vitamins, nutrients, minerals, and oxygen can also reach your cells more efficiently. If you are feeding your body cells ideally, you can become incomparably more energized. You could take a hot shower as you used to, and then gradually build up your cold shower habit, starting with 30 seconds, increasing it with 30 seconds each week, until you build it up to two to five minutes each day.
Besides having very beneficial healing effects on your body, adding cold showers to your daily routine can strengthen your mind. Anything you diligently follow through builds your discipline. By training the muscles, your willpower increases, thus you can create more success in any area of your life. If you consistently train your mind and body, you will find you could reach longer and longer time frames under extreme temperatures. Which means you can get rid of stress easily.
Using Your Mind to Improve Your Body Condition
You could use your body as the instrument of your trained mind, to reach its best potential. Think and visualize the outcomes you want to achieve, and consistently follow your daily routine. If you do so, your body will enhance your ability to fight off the various forms of stress, such as hard emotions, physical ailments, burdens or pain, mental stress, bacterial or viral infection. Your mind is the facilitator and your best assistant to overcome any type of stress.
We differentiate two major forms of stress. Oxidative stress harms your body. It affects your cell mechanisms badly and burdens your DNS in its genome creation. Telomeric DNA damage can lead to illness, what’s more, it sabotages longevity. Thus, it produces wrong genome expressions, which can develop cancer. So if you are looking at stress as an attack on your health, you could fight it by learning to deal with it. You don’t need to do anything else.
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Studies involving scientists are currently going on to show how it is possible to protect human cells from damage caused by stress, by exercising breathing, and cold showers daily. Exercising is a kind of positive stress to your body, which can minimize the impact of stressors. When you exercise, quality protein wraps around your cells which act as guards, protecting your cells from hazardous elements, like bacteria, viruses, inflammation, and oxidative stress.
Mindful Eating to Avoid Stress Eating
When exposed to high levels of stress, we can engage in emotional eating. When living a stressful life, your body releases the hormone cortisol to protect itself from stress. As we are aware, prolonged periods of any high state are not good for us, including repeated or long-term stressors. It can lead to an increased level of food consumption, storage of fat, as well as weight gain.
We are at higher risk of overeating in the afternoon or evening when we feel the need to relax and recharge our batteries. If you have a high level of daily stress in your life, chances are, you can turn to food for happiness, or feeling safe. To avoid overeating in the evenings, you should eat healthy, wholesome meals that fill you up easily, avoid snacking, and control your portion size and calorie intake. If you need to restrict your diet, a food journal could help you keep track.
When you crave a specific food, realize if it is related to your daily stress, and ask yourself if you are truly hungry? Drink a glass of water or preferably a homemade smoothie, and watch if you are still hungry. It is a good idea to drink a glass of water every hour, to keep your body hydrated. Instead of snacking, switch to healthier food choices. You could tame your craving for sweet flavor by eating fruits or drinking fresh fruit juice. You could also add nut butter to fruit pieces.
A combination of proteins, carbohydrates, and healthy fats can curb your appetite and could serve as a great replacement for sugary meals. Adding hummus to eggs could be a healthy and convenient food choice rich in healthy proteins. Another trick is eating more veggies, by replacing at least half of your carbohydrates with fresh, grilled, or even baked veggies. You shouldn’t consume too much protein either, about one gram per body kg should be enough.
Endnote
If you don’t skip these routines, but persistently follow through them, you could not only tackle stress, anxiety, and infections, but also change the state of your body, mind, and soul. If you consciously train your body to do breathing exercises daily, followed up by cold showers, and switch your diet to a plant-based one, including freshly made smoothies, you could experience your body state improving a lot within a week already!
You should be consistent for long-term effects! You should always aim to lengthen the time of your regular exercise or add additional exercises at least several times a week to increase core and muscle strength. Fast walking, jogging, pilates, yoga, swimming, martial arts, dancing, interval training, dumbbell exercises, squats, pushups, lunges, planks, rock climbing, gym classes, badminton, basketball, football, volleyball, or any kind of ball games can enhance your strength and stamina.
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