The Unexpected
By Sarah Coney
In 2018 I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder called Graves Disease. Simply put, Graves is when you have an overactive Thyroid gland which causes your metabolism to speed up. I was always hungry, a sweaty and moody mess, unable to sleep, unable to workout, and couldn’t finish a bike race. Not to mention I worked next to Whole Foods and my grocery bill went through the roof!
The doctor told me some stressful event would have triggered this autoimmune response and suggested I cool it on “high intensity” cycling and opt for longer slower rides to stay active. I knew there was no way I was going to stop racing (The Crit Life is the Life for me!), and I was determined to find a way to manage this new life companion and keep training for the next year. So I did a lot of research and the theme of everything I found was finding ways to reduce stress on your system to allow it to heal (please note I am not a health care professional and this is very opinion based – so please don’t go WebMD diagnosing/treating yourself with this!).
The cool thing about stress is that it can be found in different areas of our lives. If some stress is inevitable (like living through a pandemic), there are many other ways you can show a little more love to your body. Part of my lifestyle change to support my immune system meant a total overhaul of every area of my life that collected stress. I looked at everything from my eating habits, to my training, and even my support network.
I hope that a few of my lessons learned in reducing stress in my life, you can try to feel a little bit calmer during this very stressful time.
Good Fuel:
One of the main concepts around tackling autoimmune diseases through diet is to reduce inflammation in the body. In a way, inflammation is your body’s response to stress. Less inflammation means your body has more capacity to make you feel good (and ride faster!). For example, something like a pack of Swedish Berries causes a lot of inflammation due to its high-refined sugar content, whereas a cup of real berries actually supports your immune system with vitamins and minerals. Depending on the person, other things like processed foods, dairy, gluten, lentils, and even some vegetables can cause excessive inflammation.
The best thing I did about my diet was to educate myself. I leafed through autoimmune cookbooks, checked out nutrition blogs, and even got an allergy test done. The more I understood about food and how it affects my body, the easier it was for me to make better choices for myself. It was also fun to learn how to cook new foods.
This is one of my favorite cookbooks with some great soup recipes that I make all the time: https://www.amazon.com/Autoimmune-Paleo-Cookbook-Action-Plan-ebook/dp/B00S75IT8A
Great Sleep:
I’m sure I’m not the only one whose nightly routine goes a little like this: Watch TV, Stay up 30 mins past the time I had planned to get to sleep, lay in bed scrolling on my phone, pass out, wake up feeling meh. I have an app on my phone that monitors my sleep patterns, and how much deep sleep vs. light sleep I am getting. When I was sick, I was getting about 10 minutes of deep sleep a night so I made a goal to lengthen my time in the ‘deep sleep’ zone to an hour. To help me get there, I started turning off bright lights in the bedroom about 15 minutes before I planned to sleep. I put my phone on the nightstand on the other side of the bed so I couldn’t reach it as easily. I fixed up the bedroom with a relaxing playlist, scented candles, earplugs and blackout blinds. Sort of making the bedroom an area set up for the best sleep – no phone scrolling allowed! And guess what – it worked! It didn’t happen over-night (haha – see what I did there), but I eventually started waking up feeling like I had actually slept.
Working Out – the right amount:
Have you ever checked out your Training Stress Score? It can tell you a lot about how your rides will make you feel, and give you some cool data to predict when you will be tired.
When I decided to lower my stress from training, I removed many of my longer rides (these really wore me out) and added in shorter + intense workouts. I went from riding 6 days a week to 4-5 days a week, and if I felt tired…I took another day off! This was hard for me to wrap my head around, but it reduced my stress immensely. I stopped getting home at 10 PM every night trying to squeeze in a big junk mile group ride and dreading the workout planned for the next day. I made sure my training sessions were quality>quantity, and if I wasn’t going to get a quality workout in, then I would put my feet up and chill out.
It took a lot of convincing at times, but when I stuck with it I saw a lot of positive results not only on race day but in my overall happiness as well. This is way easier said than done, so I was thankful to have my boyfriend re-iterate these sentiments when I was having a panic attack from missing a day’s training ;) And of course, this won’t work with everyone’s riding goals – just food for thought!
Supportive Friends:
Reducing stress sometimes means saying ‘No’ to things you would normally say ‘Yes’ to. Like when you made plans after work, but you woke up at 5 am to get your workout in and now you are super tired but also don’t want to bail (this may also be due to poor planning ;)). Or when your friends are doing an epic ride on the weekend but you had a really tough week and need a ‘me’ day to recoup.
It’s times like these when I would (try and) take a step back and think: If I do this will it set me up for the next day? If the answer is no, then it probably means I should stay home and not look at Instagram for the next 24hrs to reduce FOMO. It is important to make sure the people in your life have your back when you are down, and celebrate your successes when you are on top. In turn, this taught me it is even more important to do the same for your teammates and friends. Thanks, LA Sweat for being so supportive and eating Gluten-Free Pizza with me!!
Be kind to yourself (and others):
The best piece of advice I received when I was trying to sort out my life (in particular I was upset that I was now gaining weight due to some new medication I was on) was from a Sports Med Doctor who specializes in female endurance athletes hormones. What she told me was nothing groundbreaking or some new scientific discovery. She said: Be kind to yourself. She told me to cut myself some slack, take each day in stride, and stop stressing over things that will eventually fall into place. So I did (I mean..a Doctor said it so it must be true!). I gained some weight, I ate some bad foods, I had some late nights, and I had some bad training rides. However, I kept with it. And turns out 2019 was one of my best years on the bike. I was happier, faster, and not a total stress case. So I think one of the best and simplest things we can do when we are going through a change or a rough year (hello 2020!) is to show a little more compassion and love towards ourselves. Don’t forget to throw a little to your support crew as well ;)