Welcome to Get Fit Guys Quick and Dirty Tips to Slim Down and Shape Up. My name is Ben Greenfield,

and I'm the Get Fit Guy. Now, if you follow my fellow Quick and Dirty Tips expert, The Money Girl,

then you're already learning about how to maximize your financial success. But have you ever thought

about how money or the lack thereof can affect your exercising diet or health goals? Well, in this

episode, you'll learn how finances affect your fitness and get five quick and dirty tips

for maximizing your financial success. Let's talk a little bit about what happens when money

is on your mind. When you're short on cash, unable to enjoy the finer things in life, or just worried

about getting by day to day, your body can respond by churning out stress hormones such as cortisol.

And even though not being able to pay your cable bill isn't necessarily a life or death

scenario, your body is hardwired to go into running from a lion survival mode when you experience such a

stress. And as a result, your blood pressure goes up, your heart rate elevates, and your blood sugar

increases. When these effects are allowed to stay in

your body on a day-to-day basis, as might happen if you're constantly worrying about money,

then they can eventually spiral into more serious issues such as blood vessel damage from

chronic high blood pressure, cardiovascular strain from a constantly elevated heart rate,

and insulin insensitivity or risk of diabetes from chronically elevated blood sugar. In addition, if your habits are leaving

you strapped for cash, it's unlikely that you'll be well equipped to pay a monthly gym membership,

build a home gym, or even change your running shoes or exercise gear as frequently

as you may need to. My episode How to Get Fit on a Budget is a great place to start reversing

the adverse effects of your financial worries, and I'll link to that in the show notes to this

episode over at getfitgai.quickanddirtytips.com, but I also wanted to turn to the experts and

find out what they had to say. So I recently asked Garrett Gunderson, who is a highly successful

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