Exercising is a vital component of a healthy lifestyle and for an effective weight loss program, but as is the case with everything else in life, there is such thing as too much of something good.
While many of us struggle to be able to keep up with a regular exercise program, as it can seem much easier to flop down on the couch at night than to try to hit the gym after a long day at work – or before it, for that matter.
But as we know that if we want to lose weight and keep it off, exercise is required, it can actually be easy to overdo it in our zeal to get going in the right direction and keep it that way. The idea that many of us have in our heads is that to get the best possible results, we need to do the highest possible intensity that we can for as long as possible. However, even if the duration, intensity, and frequency of your workouts has been increased gradually, it is still possible to encounter problems if you are exercising too much.
How do you know if you are over-training and exercising too much? There are actually a number of signs.
To start, ask yourself if you have started to notice that your workouts are feeling more difficult than they were before, even if you haven’t increased the difficulty level in any way. Have you been working hard and yet you feel as though you are actually losing ground instead of gaining? These could be signs that you are over exercising.
It is actually very easy to train too much. It could simply be a matter of exercising too many times per week. Your body requires time to recover, particularly if you’re doing the same types of exercises that use the same groups of muscles.
The following are more signs of exercising too much that you should watch for:
• Filing drained or low in energy
• Feeling overall muscle soreness or aches
• Decreasing overall performance
• Feeling as though you can’t complete a workout you used to be able to finish
• Insomnia
• Headaches
• Drooping motivation.
If you find that you have been overtraining, it isn’t difficult to get yourself going on the right path. Prioritize rest, at first, and then get back into the swing of things in a way that incorporates rest and that uses different muscles on different days. Give yourself a day off, entirely, every week, for mental and physical relaxation.
