I feel like every day the past 3 months I've written something about being exhausted. I am awaiting my results from the various tests I underwent (including saliva and sleep), and am anxious to see what my functional medicine doctor has to say about my hormone levels and how to try to get them under control.
With this stress and exhaustion, my training has changed. I was a 5 day a week-er, no excuses. I stopped seeing weight changes in April. Ever since then, I've been beating my head against the wall, which hasn't helped my stress any.
At the end of August, I started training with Jim Laird and Molly Galbraith of J&M Strength and Conditioning. Here's a video from my first workout there.
Jim and Molly have encouraged me to NOT workout if I'm tired or stressed (which feel like all the time lately). They don't question if I miss a session or two, or two weeks worth. Instead of stressing my body with heavy training when I'm tired, they've encouraged me to just go for a walk. So, walking it's been. The problem is that this approach is so counterintuitive from what I'm used to.
After my workout Saturday (thus my haggard appearance), I sat down with Jim to discuss this. We cover:
- Why is rest so important?
- How do you know if you're really tired or if you're just being a slacker?
- But people like The Biggest Losers work out 8 hours a day and lose weight – why can cutting back actually help me?
The video is 12 minutes long, but it's all great stuff. Jim's got a podcast on BlogTalk Radio which is full of great information as well. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
