How To Know If Your Over Exercising
Is working out too much hampering your results?
Did you know that working out too much or too intensely can actually do more harm than good? When we exercise, we are putting our body through stress. This stress in good amounts
is so GOOD for our bodies. It allows us to grow strong not only physically but mentally. We learn to become more stress resilient, meaning we learn how to handle stress better. The
problem is when you are over-exercising. Too much of anything isn’t good for you. When we over exercise and push our bodies to far we are actually raising our stress levels to a point
that we are not able to regulate. When cortisol are chronically high our bodies can become inflamed, hold on to things, cause anxiety, wreck our gut, and prohibit progress in the gym.
Cortisol is a catabolic hormone, which will break down muscle tissue which is against everything we are trying to do in the gym. More is not always better.
How do you know if your over exercising?
Well every person’s body is different. What might be too much for me might not be for
you. Everything in the health world is HIGHLY individualized. That is why you cannot
compare yourself to anyone. Moreover, there are some common symptoms/signs that
your over exercising:
Persistent feeling of being tired, even when resting
Inability to recover from workouts
Increased thirst and urination
Muscle weakness
Joint pain
Anxiety
Loss of enjoyment in exercise
Decreased performance
Muscle pain
Hormonal imbalances (mainly for women)
Poor sleep
Decreased immunity
My story of over exercising
My junior year of high school, I was definitely over doing it. I was playing 2 sports (volleyball and soccer), weightlifting, riding horses, and training for a half marathon with my dad. At the
time I didn’t know that I was using fitness to escape. I thought that the more I did the better my life would be. However it didn’t take long for me to not only lose weight but lose my
period and experience a lot of these symptoms listed. I was exhausted, extremely anxious (I had already struggled with anxiety, it just made it 10x worse) decreased performance, shin
splint, and joint pain. Unfortunately looking back now I know that I was overexercising and doing more harm to my body then good, but at the time I did not know. I was trying to find a
outlet and some way to control a portion of my life, while everything else was out of control. I now know that I was so mistaken. Fast forward to now, I don’t work out nearly as much as I
did then even with fitness being my job. I’m learning to work with my body and not against it and have seen more progress with this approach. I hope this helps you understand a little
more about why we need to make sure we aren’t pushing ourselves to far. Respect the body you have! Leave me a comment if you enjoyed this post or dm me over on Instagram. I can’t
wait to hear from you
xoxo,
Jenna
