How To Leverage Attachment Theory In Your Relationship
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How To Leverage Attachment Theory In Your Relationship
Attachment theory has come to be seen in “kids nowadays”’ TikTok circles as almost a sort of astrology, but that’s not what it was intended for, and there’s really nothing esoteric about it.
What it can be, is a (fairly simple, but) powerful tool to understand about our relationships with each other.
To demystify it, let’s start with a little history…
Attachment theory was conceived by developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, and popularized as a theory bypsychiatrist John Bowlby. The two would later become research partners.
- Dr. Ainsworth’s initial work focused on children having different attachment styles when it came to their caregivers: secure, avoidant, or anxious.
- Later, she would add a fourth attachment style: disorganized, and then subdivisions, such as anxious-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant.
- Much later, the theory would be extended to attachments in (and between) adults.
What does it all mean?
To understand this, we must first talk about “The Strange Situation”.
“The Strange Situation” was an experiment conducted by Dr. Ainsworth, in which a child would be observed playing, while caregivers and strangers would periodically arrive and leave, recreating a natural environment of most children’s lives. Each child’s different reactions were recorded, especially noting:
- The child’s reaction (if any) to their caregiver’s departure
- The child’s reaction (if any) to the stranger’s presence
- The child’s reaction (if any) to their caregiver’s return
- The child’s behavior on play, specifically, how much or little the child explored and played with new toys
She observed different attachment styles, including:
- Secure: a securely attached child would play freely, using the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore. Will engage with the stranger when the caregiver is also present. May become upset when the caregiver leaves, and happy when they return.
- Avoidant: an avoidantly attached child will not explore much regardless of who is there; will not care much when the caregiver departs or returns.
- Anxious: an anxiously attached child may be clingy before separation, helplessly passive when the caregiver is absent, and difficult to comfort upon the caregiver’s return.
- Disorganized: a disorganizedly attached child may flit between the above types
These attachment styles were generally reflective of the parenting styles of the respective caregivers:
- If a caregiver was reliably present (physically and emotionally), the child would learn to expect that and feel secure about it.
- If a caregiver was absent a lot (physically and/or emotionally), the child would learn to give up on expecting a caregiver to give care.
- If a caregiver was unpredictable a lot in presence (physical and/or emotional), the child would become anxious and/or confused about whether the caregiver would give care.
What does this mean for us as adults?
As we learn when we are children, tends to go for us in life. We can change, but we usually don’t. And while we (usually) no longer rely on caregivers per se as adults, we do rely (or not!) on our partners, friends, and so forth. Let’s look at it in terms of partners:
- A securely attached adult will trust that their partner loves them and will be there for them if necessary. They may miss their partner when absent, but won’t be anxious about it and will look forward to their return.
- An avoidantly attached adult will not assume their partner’s love, and will feel their partner might let them down at any time. To protect themself, they may try to manage their own expectations, and strive always to keep their independence, to make sure that if the worst happens, they’ll still be ok by themself.
- An anxiously attached adult will tend towards clinginess, and try to keep their partner’s attention and commitment by any means necessary.
Which means…
- When both partners have secure attachment styles, most things go swimmingly, and indeed, securely attached partners most often end up with each other.
- A very common pairing, however, is one anxious partner dating one avoidant partner. This happens because the avoidant partner looks like a tower of strength, which the anxious partner needs. The anxious partner’s clinginess can also help the avoidant partner feel better about themself (bearing in mind, the avoidant partner almost certainly grew up feeling deeply unwanted).
- Anxious-anxious pairings happen less because anxiously attached people don’t tend to be attracted to people who are in the same boat.
- Avoidant-avoidant pairings happen least of all, because avoidantly attached people having nothing to bind them together. Iff they even get together in the first place, then later when trouble hits, one will propose breaking up, and the other will say “ok, bye”.
This is fascinating, but is there a practical use for this knowledge?
Yes! Understanding our own attachment styles, and those around us, helps us understand why we/they act a certain way, and realize what relational need is or isn’t being met, and react accordingly.
That sometimes, an anxiously attached person just needs some reassurance:
- “I love you”
- “I miss you”
- “I look forward to seeing you later”
That sometimes, an avoidantly attached person needs exactly the right amount of space:
- Give them too little space, and they will feel their independence slipping, and yearn to break free
- Give them too much space, and oops, they’re gone now
Maybe you’re reading that and thinking “won’t that make their anxious partner anxious?” and yes, yes it will. That’s why the avoidant partner needs to skip back up and remember to do the reassurance.
It helps also when either partner is going to be away (physically or emotionally! This counts the same for if a partner will just be preoccupied for a while), that they parameter that, for example:
- Not: “Don’t worry, I just need some space for now, that’s all” (à la “I am just going outside and may be some time“)
- But: “I need to be undisturbed for a bit, but let’s schedule some me-and-you-time for [specific scheduled time]”.
Want to learn more about addressing attachment issues?
Psychology Today: Ten Ways to Heal Your Attachment Issues
You also might enjoy such articles such as:
- Nurturing secure attachment: building healthy relationships
- Why anxious and avoidant often attracted each other
- How to help an insecurely attached partner feel loved
- How to cope with a dismissive-avoidant partner
Lastly, to end on a light note…
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Why You’re Tired & How To Fix It
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This is Sadia Badiei. A dietician by academic and professional background, she’s nowadays hung up her lab coat for a chef’s jacket, and is best known for her “Pick Up Limes” brand. Today, we’ll be taking her advice on managing energy levels with what’s on our plates!
Quick note: our usual medical/legal disclaimer applies, and this article cannot diagnose you from afar, and thus neither can it make any certain prescription; this is for educational purposes, and aimed at being applicable to most of our readers.
There are many possible things that can cause chronic fatigue, and not all of them can be fixed by diet. Your doctor will have access to tests and such that we, being a humble health science publication, do not.
You may recognize her; we’ve featured her videos occasionally, mostly recently:
Pick Up A Zest For Life: 10 Lessons For A Healthy Mind & Body
But, what does she want us to know about living life with more energy?
It starts with balance
Badiei makes the case that we should strive for a nutritionally-balanced diet; that may not come as much of a revelation, but what does that look like for a vegan (Badiei advocates for plant-based eating)?
She recommends that our diet consist of:
- About 50% fruits and vegetables
- About 25% grains and starches
- About 25% proteins
- Modest amounts of fats
- A little of well-chosen dairy substitutions
- Finally, a few judicious supplements to top it off
That does add up to more than 100%, but 1) we did say “About n%” and 2) this is not a bad thing to note, actually, since Badiei advocates (as we do) for focussing more on what we add into our diet, rather than what we take out.
Breaking it down a little further, she recommends making sure to get “the foundational seven”, which is a little like “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen”, but in this case it’s counted on a per-food-type basis.
Thus, she recommends:
- Dark green leafy vegetables
- Assorted other non-starchy vegetables (your choice what kind)
- Fruit, of any kinds (unlike Dr. Greger separating berries)
- Grains and starches (so for example, potatoes are lumped in with rice here, botanically very different, but often fulfil a similar culinary role)
- Nuts and seeds
- Legumes
- Fortified dairy alternatives
For full details including how much of each, and “what counts”, etc, see:
Pick Up Limes | The Nourish Method
Time your carbs
Slow-release carbohydrates, those with the most fiber, are best most of the time, giving us more sustained fuel, keeping us energized for longer after meals—even if we would rather sleep:
She cites: Fiber and Saturated Fat Are Associated with Sleep Arousals and Slow Wave Sleep
Quick-release carbohydrates, those with what’s generally considered a less favorable carb:fiber ratio, are best if we’re going to eat nearer to bedtime. We know, eating before bed is often considered a bit of a no-no, but Badiei bids us indulge if we so desire, as the quicker-absorbed carbohydrates support tryptophan reaching our brain more efficiently, and thus promote sleep onset.
See also: Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
About that fat
We mentioned (or rather, Badiei’s citation mentioned) saturated fat. It is indeed linked with difficulty falling asleep, and/but omega-3 fatty acids, on the other hand, promote better sleep.
She cites: The relationship between sleep duration, sleep quality and dietary intake in adults
While you’re enjoying those nuts and seeds (for the omega-3 fatty acids), you might also note that several also star in Badiei’s list of plant-based foods that are rich in tryptophan, such as soy, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, beans, green vegetables, and mushrooms.
Micronutrients
Badiei’s focus here is on B-vitamins, iron, magnesium, selenium, and zinc. We imagine most of our readers here are taking steps to ensure to get a full daily coverage of vitamins and minerals anyway, but you might want to read what she has to say about iron on a plant-based diet, because the numbers may be different than you think.
The reason for this is that while animal products contain mostly heme iron, which is easier to absorb but associated with a risk increase in some diseases, plant-based foods usually* contain only non-heme iron, which is healthier but not as bioavailable, so if eating only plants, we need more of it:
Pick Up Limes | Iron on a Plant-Based Diet
*If you eat a carnivorous plant, guess what, it’ll have heme iron in it, tangling that food web.
“What if I know I have chronic fatigue for non-dietary reasons?”
Well, that sucks, and we’re not going to pretend the above will magically fix it. However, there are still things that can at least relatively improve your experience:
Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue! Yes, Even When Fatigued Chronically
(it’s a good guide to being able to consistently eat healthily when your energy levels are consistently at minimal, meaning that a lot of common advice becomes unusable)
Take care!
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Topping Up Testosterone?
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The Testosterone Drop
Testosterone levels decline amongst men over a certain age. Exactly when depends on the individual and also how we measure it, but the age of 45 is a commonly-given waypoint for the start of this decline.
(the actual start is usually more like 20, but it’s a very small decline then, and speeds up a couple of decades later)
This has been called “the male menopause”, or “the andropause”.
Both terms are a little misleading, but for lack of a better term, “andropause” is perhaps not terrible.
Why “the male menopause” is misleading:
To call it “the male menopause” suggests that this is when men’s menstruation stops. Which for cis men at the very least, is simply not a thing they ever had in the first place, to stop (and for trans men it’s complicated, depending on age, hormones, surgeries, etc).
Why “the andropause” is misleading:
It’s not a pause, and unlike the menopause, it’s not even a stop. It’s just a decline. It’s more of an andro-pitter-patter-puttering-petering-out.
Is there a better clinical term?
Objectively, there is “late-onset hypogonadism” but that is unlikely to be taken up for cultural reasons—people stigmatize what they see as a loss of virility.
Terms aside, what are the symptoms?
❝Andropause or late-onset hypogonadism is a common disorder which increases in prevalence with advancing age. Diagnosis of late-onset of hypogonadism is based on presence of symptoms suggestive of testosterone deficiency – prominent among them are sexual symptoms like…❞
…and there we’d like to continue the quotation, but if we list the symptoms here, it won’t get past a lot of filters because of the words used. So instead, please feel free to click through:
Source: Andropause: Current concepts
Can it be safely ignored?
If you don’t mind the sexual symptoms, then mostly, yes!
However, there are a few symptoms we can mention here that are not so subjective in their potential for harm:
- Depression
- Loss of muscle mass
- Increased body fat
Depression kills, so this does need to be taken seriously. See also:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
(the above is a guide to managing depression, in yourself or a loved one)
Loss of muscle mass means being less robust against knocks and falls later in life
Loss of muscle mass also means weaker bones (because the body won’t make bones stronger than it thinks they need to be, so bone will follow muscle in this regard—in either direction)
See also:
- Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
- Protein vs Sarcopenia
- Fall Special (How to Proof Yourself Against Falls)
Increased body fat means increased risk of diabetes and heart disease, as a general rule of thumb, amongst other problems.
Will testosterone therapy help?
That’s something to discuss with your endocrinologist, but for most men whose testosterone levels are lower than is ideal for them, then yes, taking testosterone to bring them [back] to “normal” levels can make you happier and healthier (though it’s certainly not a cure-all).
See for example:
Testosterone Therapy Improves […] and […] in Hypogonadal Men
(Sorry, we’re not trying to be clickbaity, there are just some words we can’t use without encountering software problems)
Here’s a more comprehensive study that looked at 790 men aged 65 or older, with testosterone levels below a certain level. It looked at the things we can’t mention here, as well as physical function and general vitality:
❝The increase in testosterone levels was associated with significantly increased […] activity, as assessed by the Psychosexual Daily Questionnaire (P<0.001), as well as significantly increased […] desire and […] function.
The percentage of men who had an increase of at least 50 m in the 6-minute walking distance did not differ significantly between the two study groups in the Physical Function Trial but did differ significantly when men in all three trials were included (20.5% of men who received testosterone vs. 12.6% of men who received placebo, P=0.003).
Testosterone had no significant benefit with respect to vitality, as assessed by the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy–Fatigue scale, but men who received testosterone reported slightly better mood and lower severity of depressive symptoms than those who received placebo❞
Source: Effects of Testosterone Treatment in Older Men
We strongly recommend, by the way, when a topic is of interest to you to read the paper itself, because even the extract above contains some subjectivity, for example what is “slightly better”, and what is “no significant benefit”.
That “slightly better mood and lower severity of depressive symptoms”, for example, has a P value of 0.004 in their data, which is an order of magnitude more significant than the usual baseline for significance (P<0.05).
And furthermore, that “no significant benefit with respect to vitality” is only looking at either the primary outcome aggregated goal or the secondary FACIT score whose secondary outcome had a P value of 0.06, which just missed the cut-off for significance, and neglects to mention that all the other secondary outcome metrics for men involved in the vitality trial were very significant (ranging from P=0.04 to P=0.001)
Click here to see the results table for the vitality trial
Will it turn me into a musclebound angry ragey ‘roidmonster?
Were you that kind of person before your testosterone levels declined? If not, then no.
Testosterone therapy seeks only to return your testosterone levels to where they were, and this is done through careful monitoring and adjustment. It’d take a lot more than (responsible) endocrinologist-guided hormonal therapy to turn you into Marvel’s “Wolverine”.
Is testosterone therapy safe?
A question to take to your endocrinologist because everyone’s physiology is different, but a lot of studies do support its general safety for most people who are prescribed it.
As with anything, there are risks to be aware of, though. Perhaps the most critical risk is prostate cancer, and…
❝In a large meta-analysis of 18 prospective studies that included over 3500 men, there was no association between serum androgen levels and the risk of prostate cancer development
For men with untreated prostate cancer on active surveillance, TRT remains controversial. However, several studies have shown that TRT is not associated with progression of prostate cancer as evidenced by either PSA progression or gleason grade upstaging on repeat biopsy.
Men on TRT should have frequent PSA monitoring; any major change in PSA (>1 ng/mL) within the first 3-6 months may reflect the presence of a pre-existing cancer and warrants cessation of therapy❞
Those are some select extracts, but any of this may apply to you or your loved one, we recommend to read in full about this and other risks:
Risks of testosterone replacement therapy in men
See also: Prostate Health: What You Should Know
Beyond that… If you are prone to baldness, then taking testosterone will increase that tendency. If that’s a problem for you, then it’s something to know about. There are other things you can take/use for that in turn, so maybe we’ll do a feature on those one of these days!
For now, take care!
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What are heart rate zones, and how can you incorporate them into your exercise routine?
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If you spend a lot of time exploring fitness content online, you might have come across the concept of heart rate zones. Heart rate zone training has become more popular in recent years partly because of the boom in wearable technology which, among other functions, allows people to easily track their heart rates.
Heart rate zones reflect different levels of intensity during aerobic exercise. They’re most often based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate, which is the highest number of beats your heart can achieve per minute.
But what are the different heart rate zones, and how can you use these zones to optimise your workout?
The three-zone model
While there are several models used to describe heart rate zones, the most common model in the scientific literature is the three-zone model, where the zones may be categorised as follows:
- zone 1: 55%–82% of maximum heart rate
- zone 2: 82%–87% of maximum heart rate
- zone 3: 87%–97% of maximum heart rate.
If you’re not sure what your maximum heart rate is, it can be calculated using this equation: 208 – (0.7 × age in years). For example, I’m 32 years old. 208 – (0.7 x 32) = 185.6, so my predicted maximum heart rate is around 186 beats per minute.
There are also other models used to describe heart rate zones, such as the five-zone model (as its name implies, this one has five distinct zones). These models largely describe the same thing and can mostly be used interchangeably.
What do the different zones involve?
The three zones are based around a person’s lactate threshold, which describes the point at which exercise intensity moves from being predominantly aerobic, to predominantly anaerobic.
Aerobic exercise uses oxygen to help our muscles keep going, ensuring we can continue for a long time without fatiguing. Anaerobic exercise, however, uses stored energy to fuel exercise. Anaerobic exercise also accrues metabolic byproducts (such as lactate) that increase fatigue, meaning we can only produce energy anaerobically for a short time.
On average your lactate threshold tends to sit around 85% of your maximum heart rate, although this varies from person to person, and can be higher in athletes.
Wearable technology has taken off in recent years. Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels In the three-zone model, each zone loosely describes one of three types of training.
Zone 1 represents high-volume, low-intensity exercise, usually performed for long periods and at an easy pace, well below lactate threshold. Examples include jogging or cycling at a gentle pace.
Zone 2 is threshold training, also known as tempo training, a moderate intensity training method performed for moderate durations, at (or around) lactate threshold. This could be running, rowing or cycling at a speed where it’s difficult to speak full sentences.
Zone 3 mostly describes methods of high-intensity interval training, which are performed for shorter durations and at intensities above lactate threshold. For example, any circuit style workout that has you exercising hard for 30 seconds then resting for 30 seconds would be zone 3.
Striking a balance
To maximise endurance performance, you need to strike a balance between doing enough training to elicit positive changes, while avoiding over-training, injury and burnout.
While zone 3 is thought to produce the largest improvements in maximal oxygen uptake – one of the best predictors of endurance performance and overall health – it’s also the most tiring. This means you can only perform so much of it before it becomes too much.
Training in different heart rate zones improves slightly different physiological qualities, and so by spending time in each zone, you ensure a variety of benefits for performance and health.
So how much time should you spend in each zone?
Most elite endurance athletes, including runners, rowers, and even cross-country skiers, tend to spend most of their training (around 80%) in zone 1, with the rest split between zones 2 and 3.
Because elite endurance athletes train a lot, most of it needs to be in zone 1, otherwise they risk injury and burnout. For example, some runners accumulate more than 250 kilometres per week, which would be impossible to recover from if it was all performed in zone 2 or 3.
Of course, most people are not professional athletes. The World Health Organization recommends adults aim for 150–300 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week, or 75–150 minutes of vigorous exercise per week.
If you look at this in the context of heart rate zones, you could consider zone 1 training as moderate intensity, and zones 2 and 3 as vigorous. Then, you can use heart rate zones to make sure you’re exercising to meet these guidelines.
What if I don’t have a heart rate monitor?
If you don’t have access to a heart rate tracker, that doesn’t mean you can’t use heart rate zones to guide your training.
The three heart rate zones discussed in this article can also be prescribed based on feel using a simple 10-point scale, where 0 indicates no effort, and 10 indicates the maximum amount of effort you can produce.
With this system, zone 1 aligns with a 4 or less out of 10, zone 2 with 4.5 to 6.5 out of 10, and zone 3 as a 7 or higher out of 10.
Heart rate zones are not a perfect measure of exercise intensity, but can be a useful tool. And if you don’t want to worry about heart rate zones at all, that’s also fine. The most important thing is to simply get moving.
Hunter Bennett, Lecturer in Exercise Science, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Why You Can’t Deep Squat (And the Benefits You’re Missing)
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Matt Hsu fought his own battle with chronic pain from the age of 16 in his feet, knees, hips, back, shoulders, elbows, forearms, wrists, hands, and head. Seeking answers, he’s spent a career in corrective exercise, posture alignment, structural integration, orthopedic exercise, sports medicine, and has more certifications than we care to list. In short, he knows his stuff.
Yes you can (with some work)
The deep squat, also called Asian squat, Slav squat, sitting squat, resting squat, primal squat, and various other names, is an important way of sitting that has implications for a lot of aspects of health.
Why it’s so important: it preserves the mobility of our hips, ankles, and everything in between, and maintaining especially the hip mobility makes a big difference not only to general health, but also to reducing the risk of injury. It also maintains lower body strength, making falls in older age less likely in the first place, and if falls do happen, makes injury less likely, and if injury does happen, makes the injury likely less severe.
An important misconception: there is a popular, but unfounded, belief that the ability or inability to do this is decided by genes—or if not outright decided, that at the very least Asians and Slavs have a genetic advantage. However, this is simply not true. Westerners and others can learn to do it just fine, and on the flipside, Asians and Slavs who grew up in the West may often struggle with it. The truth is, the deciding factor is lifestyle: if your culture involves sitting this way more often, you’ll be able to do it more comfortably and easily than if you’re just now trying it for the first time.
Factors that you can control: you can’t change where you grew up, but you can change how you sit down now. Achieving the squat requires repeated position practice, and the more frequently you do so (even if you just start with a few seconds and work your way up to longer periods), the better you’ll get at it. And, on the contrary, sitting in chairs weakens and shortens the muscles involved, so any time you spend sitting in chairs is working against you. There are many reasons it’s advisable to avoid sitting in chairs more than necessary, and this is one of them.
10almonds tip: a limiting factor for many people initially is ankle flexibility, which may result in one’s center of gravity being a bit far back, leading to a tendency to have to change something to avoid toppling over backwards. Rather than holding onto something immobile (e.g. furniture) in front of where you are sitting, consider simply holding an object in front of you in your hands. A book is a fine example; holding that in front of you (feel free to read the book) will shift your center of gravity forwards a bit, and will thus allow you to sit there a little longer, thus improving your strength and flexibility while you do, until you can do it without holding something in front of you. If you try with a book and you’re still prone to toppling backwards, try with something heavier, but do use the minimum weight necessary, because ultimately the counterbalance is just a crutch to get you to where you need to be.
For more visual advice on how to do it, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
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Can We Do Fat Redistribution?
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The famous answer: no
The truthful answer: yes, and we are doing it all the time whether we want to or not, so we might as well know what things affect our fat distribution in various body parts.
There’s a kernel of truth in the “no”, though, and where that comes from is that we cannot exclusively put fat on in a certain area only, and nor can we do “spot reduction”, i.e., intentionally lose fat from only one place.
How, then, do we do fat redistribution?
Your body is a living organism, not a statue
It’s easy to think “I’ve been carrying this fat in this place for 20 years”, but during that time the fat has been replaced several times and moved often; in fact, the cells containing the fat have even been replaced. Because: fat can seem like a substance that’s alien to your body because it doesn’t respond like muscles, isn’t controllable like muscles, doesn’t have the same sensibility as muscles, etc. But, every bit of fat stored in your body is stored inside a fat cell; it’s not one big unit of fat; it’s lots of tiny ones.
In reality, any given bit of fat on your body has probably been there for 18–24 months at most:
Fat turnover in obese slower than average
…and there are assorted factors that can modify the rate at which our body deals with fat storage:
Human white adipose tissue: A highly dynamic metabolic organ
So, how do I get rid of this tummy?
There are plenty of stories of people who try to lose weight from one part of their body, and lose it from somewhere else instead. Say, a person wants to lose weight from her hips, and with careful diet and exercise, she loses weight—by dropping a couple of bra cup sizes while keeping the hips.
So, we must figure out: why is fat stored in certain places? And the main driving factors are:
- hormones
- metabolic health
- stress
Hormones affect fat distribution insofar as estrogen and progesterone will favor the hips, thighs, butt, breasts, and testosterone will favor a more central (but still subcutaneous, not visceral) distribution. Additionally, estrogen and progesterone will favor a higher body fat percentage, while testosterone will favor a lower one.
This is particularly relevant later in life, when suddenly the hormone(s) you’ve been relying on to keep your shape, are now declining, meaning your shape does too. This goes for everyone regardless of sex.
See:
- What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
- The BAT-pause! ← this is about the conversion of white adipose tissue to brown adipose tissue, and how estrogen helps this happen
- Topping Up Testosterone?
Metabolic health affects fat distribution insofar as poor metabolic health will result in more fat being stored in the viscera, rather than in the usual subcutaneous places. This is a serious health risk.
See: Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It
Stress affects fat distribution insofar as chronically elevated cortisol levels see more fat sent to the stomach, face, and neck. This fat redistribution isn’t dangerous itself, but it can be indicative of the chronic stress, which does pose more of a general threat to health.
See: Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How)
What this means in practical terms
Assuming that you would like the fat distribution that says “this is a healthy woman” or “this is a healthy man”, respectively, then you might want to:
- Check your sex hormone levels and get them adjusted if appropriate
- Improve your overall metabolic health—without necessarily trying to lose weight, just, take care of your blood sugars for example, and they will take care of you in terms of fat storage.
- Manage your stress (which includes any stress you are experiencing about your body not being how you’d like it to be).
If you are doing these things, and you don’t have any major untreated medical abnormalities that affect these things, then your fat will go to the places generally considered healthiest.
Can we speed it up?
Yes, we can! Firstly, we can speed up our overall metabolism:
Let’s Burn! Metabolic Tweaks And Hacks
Secondly, we can encourage our body to “move” fat by intentionally “yo-yoing”, something usually considered bad in dieting when people just want to lose weight and instead are going up and down, but: if you lose weight healthily, it comes off everywhere evenly, and if you gain weight healthily, it goes mostly to the places where it should be.
So, a sequence of lose-gain-lose-gain might look like “lose a bit from everywhere, put it back in the good place, lose a bit more from everywhere, put it back in the good place”, etc.
So, you might want to gently cycle these a few months apart, for example:
How To Lose Fat (Healthily!) | How To Gain Fat (Healthily!)
You can also cheat a little, if it suits your purpose! By this we mean: if you’d like a little extra where you already have a little fat, then you can put muscle on underneath it, it will pad it up, and (because of the layer of actual fat on top) nobody will know the difference unless you flex it with their hand on it.
Let’s put it this way: people doing squats for a bubble-butt aren’t doing it to put on fat; they’re putting muscle on under the fat they have.
So, check out: How To Gain Muscle (Healthily!)
And finally, for all your body-sculpting needs, we present these excellent books:
Women’s Strength Training Anatomy Workouts – by Frédéric Delavier
Strength Training Anatomy (For Men) – by Frédéric Delavier
Enjoy!
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Healthy Habits for Managing & Reversing Prediabetes – by Dr. Marie Feldman
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The book doesn’t assume prior knowledge, and does explain the science of diabetes, prediabetes, the terms and the symptoms, what’s going on inside, etc—before getting onto the main meat of the book, the tips.
The promised 100 tips are varied in their application; they range from diet and exercise, to matters of sleep, stress, and even love.
There are bonus tips too! For example, an appendix covers “tips for healthier eating out” (i.e. in restaurants etc) and a grocery list to ensure your pantry is good for defending you against prediabetes.
The writing style is very accessible pop-science; this isn’t like reading some dry academic paper—though it does cite its sources for claims, which we always love to see.
Bottom line: if you’d like to proof yourself against prediabetes, and are looking for “small things that add up” habits to get into to achieve that, this book is an excellent first choice.
Don’t Forget…
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