Flying Is Stressful
By: Michael Beiter
The first commercial air flight was on New Year's Day, 1914.
One hundred and eight years later, we can fly anywhere in the world, across time zones, quickly, cheaply, and more safely than trains or automobiles.
There have already been commercial space flights. So yea, things are progressing nicely.
At one point, flight was thought to be an ability reserved only for the divine. Now, machines allow us to fly anything we want.
Since I was born in 1989, I haven't known a world that air travel wasn't a part of. I flew a handful of times before I turned twenty. I'm considered elite in the span of human history for this fact. Most people who have ever lived never flew. As time goes on, that will fade, and we will see more of what we are now: flying as an expectation, not a luxury.
Regardless of how much we need to fly or how badly we want to, the time we've been capable of air travel is minuscule in the grand arch of time.
As animals capable of manipulating their environment to allow such things as flight, we need time to adapt to our changing surroundings.
We haven't had that much time to get used to ascending to 30,000 feet quickly, traveling at over 500 mph, and being dropped into a different time zone, environment, and biome. To your body, all of these things are a huge shock, and it responds accordingly by secreting adrenaline and cortisol.
Sleep and time are the preferred methods to fight the hazards of air travel. Sleep is when our best recovery abilities take rise. We need time to adapt to the germs, bacteria, and temperature around us.
Unfortunately, only some people who fly get enough time in the new place for their systems to adapt to their new surroundings. The precious sleep we need is harder to get because when switching time zones, we are essentially asking our body to do months' worth of adjusting overnight and morph our circadian clock that is married to our local day/night cycle.
What's more? Planes and airports aren't the most sanitary places, and the stress that accommodates demanding timelines, schedule shifts, and delays only adds to the mix.
So I've always cautioned my clients to take extra time when they air travel. If they can, I ask them to control their eating and exercise to take a bit of their home habit so their body isn't entirely shocked.
It's tough, though. Many of my regular travelers are sick, underslept, miss their families and friends, and can't lose weight. I point to our maladapted bodies to handle such demanding travel, but it doesn't diminish the fact that some people enjoy or have to fly.
When you fly, aim to control as much of your food and exercise as possible. Reduce air travel when trying to recompose your body. If you must travel, temper your expectations around fat loss or muscle gain and consider adopting a maintenance mindset.
Right now, I have a client who travels extensively around the region for work. She gains weight whenever she has to fly, or at least can't lose any. Whenever she gets to stay home, her body weight drops like a rock, she doesn't get sick, and she looks and feels much better!
Flying is stressful; it presents myriad challenges that make self-care difficult. From a species perspective, it's still too new for us to be adapted and well-suited for it. That will take thousands of more years of human beings coexisting with flight before we develop adaptations. In the meantime, give yourself extra attention when flying, especially when working on body composition goals.
One of my clients met to discuss her November with me. She traveled three times in a month, and we went over how she manages travel and the accompanying stress.
‘‘I work out where I can, usually at an Orange Theory or hotel. If that is not possible, I hike. This month I made sure to be prepared with protein shakes everywhere we went. Beyond that, food was easy, and I stayed on my macros.” She said.
As we talked, the snow fell slowly and beautifully.
