Avoidance coping, also known as 'avoidance behaviors' or 'escape coping', is a maladaptive (unhealthy form) of coping, where a person changes their behavior to avoid thinking about, feeling, or doing difficult things.

Avoiding stress might seem like a great way to reduce stress, but this isn't true. Often, it only exacerbates the stress and creates an even bigger problem. Confronting a problem or dealing with a stressor is likely the only way to effectively reduce the stress it causes.

I'm sure you are all familiar with the term "What you resist, persists,"? Well stress management is the healthier approach to managing that stress, rather than "stress avoidance", because we can't always avoid stress, but we can manage it with effective coping techniques.

Who is more susceptible to stress avoidance?🤔🤷🏼‍♀️
Interestingly, anxious people are more susceptible to stress avoidance because initially, this behavior is a way to avoid anxiety-provoking thoughts & situations. Procrastination is a common behavior during times of stress. However thankfully, you can b
change!

Here is an example of avoidant coping
• avoiding a co-worker you need to have a difficult conversation with and refusing to schedule time to talk because it causes you anxiety.
• Saying "No" to a friends invitation even though you would like to go to support them because you feel anxious about being judged by stranger at the event.

Instead of avoiding, try “active coping”
• Make a plan to talk with your co-worker while acknowledging that you feel anxious. To help you get through, you could enlist the help of your boss or another colleague to mediate, if necessary.
• Letting your friend know that you want to support them but you are nervous to attend the event where you don't know the other guests. Ask if they can help you feel more comfortable by making some introductions or giving you a specific helpful task to help you feel more at ease.

If you find yourself using avoidance coping, look for opportunities to replace these behaviors with active coping strategies. It can certainly be hard to stop, but here are some tips to keep in mind as you work on shedding the habit.
SWIPE ACROSS 👉🏽 ...

Repost from @outworknutritionofficial - Ok folks, now that you’ve read this, who here needs a restock on protein 🙋🏼‍♀️ Check out all of our products by visiting outworknutrition.com website.

Nearly everyone has heard a statement about high protein diets that goes something like this: ⠀
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“High protein is great for building muscle, but it's bad for your health & messes up your kidneys! If you care about your health, you shouldn’t eat high protein!" ⠀
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With so much apparent controversy around protein, it’s no wonder people are skeptical when high protein diets are recommended. ⠀
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Todays post we review some science that may help put you at ease. ⠀
In a crossover design trial, participants consumed their “normal” (2.6g/kg/day) protein intake for 8 weeks & a “high” (3.3g/kg/day) protein intake for 8 weeks, for a total treatment period of 16 weeks. Notice, the normal protein intake was still pretty high compared to what the average American consumes. ⠀
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Compared to baseline and to the “normal” intake, “high” protein had absolutely no adverse effects on blood lipids (total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, and triglycerides). Not only were there no differences, but all the values also fell in the healthy range.

The people in this study resistance trained & were relatively healthy, so this finding makes sense. High lipids associated with high protein consumers on a population level is likely due to the high amounts of saturated fats & inactivity amongst these people, NOT PROTEIN. ⠀
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Further, the investigators looked at biomarkers of kidney function, which include glomerular filtration rate (an estimate of how much blood is filtered by the glomeruli in the kidneys) as well as creatinine, albumin, & blood urea nitrogen levels. These are all well-established markers of kidney function. ⠀
Again, the values for kidney biomarkers were within normal ranges & were no different between “high” protein and “normal” protein intakes. This is consistent with other studies that show similar findings! ⠀
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If you’re interested in building muscle, consume adequate protein to support muscle growth without worry that protein will damage your kidneys or negatively impact blood lipids.
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The goal of a muscle building phase is obviously to put on as much muscle as possible while at the same time minimizing the amount of fat we put on. Of course, this is going to be influenced by your genetics to a great extent, however, there are some potential strategies we can use to mitigate fat gain 🤗.

The main strategy is to gain mass at a very slow rate, ~0.2% BW gain per week. However, there are also macronutrient manipulating strategies as well.

One of the ways we might be able to do this is by preferentially increasing our carbohydrate intake, relative to dietary fats as the percentage of remaining calories after our protein targets are calculated.

I will preface this by saying that this is based on mechanistic data, and the physiological differences in terms of bodyfat gain are probably small. Nonetheless, as a competitive athlete, we want any small advantage we can get 🥰.

The reason you may want to prioritize increasing carbs when entering a muscle building phase is due to the way carbs are metabolized. Typically, excess carbohydrates are metabolized via de-novo lipogenesis, AKA converted to fat.
However, several mechanistic studies indicate that only a small percentage of the carbs we eat actually end up as fat.

It’s much more likely that we use the carbs for energy production and dietary fat is spared and stored in adipose tissue. Therefore, increasing carbohydrate content may be a useful strategy to decrease bodyfat gain during a building phase due to the inefficiency of this mechanism.

Other potential contributing mechanisms may be increases in satiety due to the effects of carbohydrates on leptin, and possibly due to increases in fiber intake which are most often found in carbohydrate rich foods.

The last potential mechanism is through increased energy expenditure due to improved training performance associated with increased carbohydrate consumption.

I will say, at the end of the day this is just a useful dietary strategy. However, personal dietary preferences and total energy intake are still the most important factors.

👇🏽Comment below, do you prefer eating higher carbohydrates, or fats?I ...