Obsessed With Exercise AGAIN? Red Flags To Look Out For – Balanced Vibes Ep 39

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Obsessed With Exercise AGAIN? Red Flags To Look Out For

Here's a scenario…

You recovered from overtraining and metabolic damage, rested more, ate better… You got back to exercise, but then… It happened AGAIN! You overtrained yourself again… and are feeling like crap again.

The same scenario. Over and over…

Getting back to training can be a slippery slope so if you're not careful, you may find yourself burnt out again.

Today I want to bring you five red flags to look out for. If you notice yourself doing any of these behaviors, take action sooner than later. Remember than taking a week off and letting your body to recover is better than continuing to stress it out with more exercise, because that will cause you to take much more time off eventually.

You can learn about all that in my Burnout Recovery Spectrum video course.

Taking Responsibility For Our Overtraining

Most of my posts are inspired by readers/followers comments, and today's is no different. Here's the comment that inspired this post:
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“It was actually good for me that current virus closed the gyms because after a period of finally having a healthy relationship with exercise and healing my metabolism, I had started to overtrain again. When the gym closed, I had no other choice than rest.”⁣
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It worked out for her in this situation, but the truth is that we don’t have to wait for someone else close the gym so we can’t go there…

We can and should make our health decisions for ourselves.

Here are five red flags to look out for to avoid overtraining and burning out again, and I'm sharing 5 more on todays podcast and video!⁣

Red Flags That Tell You: You Are Pushing Yourself Too Hard

🚩 You start choosing your workouts based on how many calories they burn again

If you want to avoid overtraining, don't decide what to do for today's workout based on how many calories it's burning. Calorie burning is a really poor indicator of how good the workout was. And if you choose your workouts just based on that, you likely end up doing lots of cardio and intense classes which we know aren't the most hormone friendly workouts if you're prone to burning out⁣.
Instead, have most of your workouts be strength based, and always listen to your body.
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🚩 You significantly decrease your food on days you don’t work out⁣

This as well can lead to overtraining again.

Sure, your appetite might be bit lower on non-workout days, but you should't intentionally cut your calories very low and starve yourself on days when you weren't physically as active. Dropping the calories below BMR is quite common, but really, really bad idea. We have to realize that we burn calories also when we don't work out. Working out actually doesn't burn that many calories when we're looking at our daily expenditure.
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🚩 You won't allow yourself to modify your exercises or cut the workout shorter if you feel like your energy is low

You still have the “go hard or go home” mindset⁣. This has to go because otherwise it's almost impossible to avoid overtraining again.

You must be able to modify or make your workout shorter if it doesn't feel right. If you planned to do 6 exercises and 4 rounds of each, maybe you do 3 exercises, or 2 rounds, or a combination of these two. Or maybe you pack your bag and go home and rest, get some good sleep, and try again tomorrow.
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🚩2x/day workouts make their comeback⁣

Why are you working out so much? Unless you're an elite level athlete, there's really no reason to work out that much. Some people even do two really hard workouts, like crossfit or other intense workouts, a day. This is completely unnecessary and can seriously damage our adrenal and thyroid health, causing our metabolism to down regulate, and throw off our hormones.

Remember, you're likely not an elite athlete. Training multiple times a day is their job; they usually don't have a full time job and kids on top of that. This is literally what they do, and even they don't work out multiple times a day every day.
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🚩 Your hunger and cravings are though the roof and you have to control yourself really hard to avoid eating ⁣the entire kitchen

Are you wondering why you're so hungry all of a sudden again? That's probably because you do too much exercise, probably also too much cardio, and your energy balance is completely off again. You might be burning much more than taking in.

You might be able to restrict your eating for a period of time, but sooner or later your hunger will catch up with you and you will feel like you want to eat everything you have and even go and get more (this really reminds me of my old binge eating days… which I would NEVER want back!)

Conclusion

These are the first 5 signs that tell you that you might be overtraining again and burning yourself out again. There are 5 more in today's video and podcast, so please check them out as well. ⁣
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If you find yourself doing these behaviors, it's simply time to take responsibility and pull back. We are responsible for our own actions and our health, no one else…⁣ I don't know about you but I hope the gyms won't be closed forever; instead, I hope that they open soon so that we can go in and work out if we want to, but that we also have the self awareness to say: I'm okay today, rest is better for me!
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I hope you find a great way to move yourself today, get really honest with yourself when figuring out what it is today that makes you feel your best. Some days your energy is amazing, so go ahead and train hard (if you’re healthy), other days resting is much better choice.

If you liked today's episode on how to avoid overtraining again, please give it a thumbs up on YouTube. If you listen on the podcast, I would really love a 5-star rating and a review. That helps more people to find the podcast as well.

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