Signs that you are working out too much

Exercise and nutrition are foundational to good health, but extreme behaviors can indicate unhealthy behaviors. Examples of this include: excessive exercise, weight obsessions, anorexia, or binge eating disorders. These negative health effects when exercise or nutrition are taken to extremes.

“IF EXERCISE WAS A PILL, IT WOULD BE THE BEST SELLING PILL OF ALL TIME”

Many people exercise daily on a regular basis, whether on a sports team, at gym, or with solo activities like running, swimming, or biking. Exercise has tremendous benefits like controlling weight, increasing endurance, strengthening muscles and bones, improving mood, and reducing the risk of illnesses too. But the problem is, some take it to the extreme with compulsive exercise.

You might say that compulsive exercise is too much of a good thing. Those who compulsively exercise are at risk for developing eating disorders, and are more likely to be unhappy.

Symptoms of exercising too much includes

Here are few ways your body will let you know if you are headed for a exercise burnout…

Decreased performance

A drop in your workout performance is one of the earliest signs of decreasing body’s immune system. When you work out hard on a routine, you sometimes feel tired and be ill often. This tends to decrease your other activities of your daily routine.

Disinterest in exercise

A significant decrease in motivation or enjoyment of the activity can be a major sign of disinterest in your exercises. This more often occurs in weight lifters, sprinters, or players who are driven by speed and power.

Mood changes

Depression, anger, confusion, anxiety, and irritability are common when your body is overstressed physically. The same stress hormones release when you are emotionally stressed are also released when you are physically overloaded.

Delayed recovery time

When you do heavy workouts on a daily basis, muscle gets sore. Persistent muscle soreness that lasts for hours or days after your workout is a sure sign that you need more rest. 

Elevated resting heart rate

When you put more stress on your heart, it has to work a lot harder. An increase in your normal resting heart rate, say, from 50 to 65 beats per minute could indicate that you are placing excessive stress on your body.

Fatigue

Mental or physical grogginess is a sign of overtraining. Heavy, tired, and overly fatigued legs can be caused by muscles that just had enough time to fully recharge and repair. When you over-exercise you break your body and immune system down, so you are more susceptible to getting sick, or it takes you longer to recover.

Diminished appetite

A decrease in appetite can occur in the middle to later stages of overtraining, and goes hand in hand with feelings of fatigue or lack of motivation. By slowing down body processes like metabolism, the body attempts to force a reduction in its workload.

Weakened immune system.

Do not try to push through that exercise funk or you will keep sliding down to a weekend immune system. Prolonged overtraining can take weeks, even months, to recover from and can put your health at risk. 

What would happen if you exercise too much

Excessive exercise which is known as over-training, negatively affects your physical and emotional well-being. Over training can signal the body to start burning muscle for fuel and store more fat, resulting in some weight gain. Hard training programs can increase your risk of body injury during exercise and suppress your immune system. Your fitness level dictates how much exercise is too much. The following are the changes that might occur when you exercise too much.

HORMONAL CHANGES

Over training influences hormonal secretion. Athletes who often perform hours of cardio workouts each day, can experience increased secretion of cortisol (a hormone associated with stress and weight gain). Additionally, over training can suppress your appetite by increasing the secretion of two hormones such as epinephrine and nor-epinephrine. Inadequate caloric intake during difficult training programs can reduce your recovery rate and intensify over-training symptoms. Moth men and women can cause hormonal changes. Delaying of periods in women can cause when there is over-stressing of workout. In most cases, moderate amounts of exercise will produce positive effects on hormones, while excessive amounts of exercise can actually harm the body by throwing of normal hormonal patterns.

IMMUNE SYSTEM CHANGES

Too much of exercise can suppress your immune system. As your body struggles with fatigue and inadequate muscle recovery, energy reserved for proper immune system function redirects to repair the overworked muscles and bones. When you find yourself ill during a workout program, it indicates lack of rest in your body. Additionally, training while sick can lengthen the recovery time and make it difficult for you to train to a greater extent than taking a few days off from exercise.

HEART RATE CHANGES

An elevated resting heart rate indicates over-training. For example, sustaining a resting heart rate of 80 bpm when your usual resting heart rate equals 65 bpm represents an elevated resting heart rate. In addition, exercising to much can increase the time that it takes for your heart rate to return to a resting rate after a heavy workout. Therefore, you should record your resting heart rate throughout your workout program and take notice if your resting heart rate increases over time.

MUSCULOSKELETAL CHANGES

Your musculoskeletal system comprises of muscles and bones. These experience microscopic damage during exercise and require couple of days rest between workouts for adequate recovery. Attempting your regular exercise in a weakened state can lead to sprains or muscle tears.

Ways to avoid over exercising

There are several ways you can approach,

• Try using a high-low intensity, breaking your days into high-intensity to low-intensity days can help prevent over exercising by giving your systems more time to recuperate.

• Try to switch the mode of exercise. It is so common that you need to switch your exercise routine every so often in order to continue to see progress. This prevents the body from adapting to the stresses and exercise and stalling your progress from lack of new stimuli.

• Over exercising is a real issue that can result in serious health and performance issues. Keeping a close eye on the signs that you may be over exercising is a key. Even more important above to decrease the chances of over exercising.

“Nurture your body and give it a much-deserved break when it needs to rest after that tough workout”.