Pinpointing Cause of Sudden Fatigue

brdoyle8

I could use some advice on this fatigue I've been feeling all day.

Some background: I have an open diary. I started my journey about five weeks ago. The last four days I have been fairly consistent with exercise and staying well under my daily calorie goal. I've been upping my workouts over the weekend and I recently added strength training. I have lost about 18 pounds.

Today I have felt an excessive amount of fatigue. I got eight hours of sleep last night (and 9 for two nights before that). I have eaten often today, snacking on random things because I feel like I've gotten more hungry today than most days. I have tried to keep up with water intake, had about 50 ounces so far today. I have felt consistently nauseous and tired all day. I opted out of the gym today.

Could this be tied to my weight loss efforts or am I just having an off day?

bbell1985

Are you eating to support your training. Deficits catch up to you. I feel like I could keel over today as well.

mactaffy428

Agreed

ahoy_m8

18 pounds in 5 weeks sounds very aggressive to me. I too would be fatigued with a deficit so large. I don't know your stats, though. I would say 1st thing to consider is re-evaluating your calorie needs with the exercise you recently added. Good luck!

CafeRacer808

I'm with @bbell1985. My initial thought was that you're getting sick. But I just looked at your diary and not only are you not eating back any of your exercise calories, you're often well under your daily calorie goal before exercise calories are factored in. On top of that, you've increased the intensity of your workouts.

The most likely cause of your fatigue is that you're not eating enough. Our bodies need extra calories to fuel our workouts and what you're essentially doing right now is trying to drive a car that's run out of gas. At a minimum, you should be trying to eat at your daily calorie goal. Better yet, eat back a minimum of 50% of your exercise calories, if not more.

brdoyle8

Thank you for the input! I thought about the same but didn't want to be playing a mental game telling myself to eat more when it isn't necessary. Off to have a healthy snack I go!

bbell1985

I didn't look at your calories, but yeah...If you're going to exercise more, eat back more calories. That's why I just quit cardio. It ended up making me so hungry, but the calorie burn wasn't even that much. I was more hungry than an extra 100 calories or so.

DancingMoosie

Just looking at your diary, I would say your deficit may be too aggressive and your protein slightly low. Do you take a multi vitamin? Another thing I noticed is that your calories burned for walking seem very high. I'm not sure of your stats, but you may be over estimating your calories out. In that case, you may just be under the weather or not leaving enough recovery time between workouts.

ahoy_m8

DancingMoosie wrote: »

Just looking at your diary, I would say your deficit may be too aggressive and your protein slightly low. Do you take a multi vitamin? Another thing I noticed is that your calories burned for walking seem very high. I'm not sure of your stats, but you may be over estimating your calories out. In that case, you may just be under the weather or not leaving enough recovery time between workouts.

All this might be true, but if OP lost 18 pounds in 5 weeks, we know her average deficit >1500/day. That alone explains fatigue with recently added exercise.

bbell1985

Added exercise, big deficit, maybe getting your period or ovulating. It's not going to feel great.

lorrpb

A loss of 3 lb per week suggests you're not eating enough. I recommend eating up to your calorie goal, plus eating back about half your exercise calories. You need to fuel all that exercise.

DancingMoosie

ahoy_m8 wrote: »

DancingMoosie wrote: »

Just looking at your diary, I would say your deficit may be too aggressive and your protein slightly low. Do you take a multi vitamin? Another thing I noticed is that your calories burned for walking seem very high. I'm not sure of your stats, but you may be over estimating your calories out. In that case, you may just be under the weather or not leaving enough recovery time between workouts.

All this might be true, but if OP lost 18 pounds in 5 weeks, we know her average deficit >1500/day. That alone explains fatigue with recently added exercise.

Well, yeah, that's why I said "deficit may be too aggressive". I only looked back 3 days, so that's not going to tell the whole story either. She could have had an even steeper deficit over the last 4 weeks than what I saw.

brdoyle8

DancingMoosie wrote: »

Just looking at your diary, I would say your deficit may be too aggressive and your protein slightly low. Do you take a multi vitamin? Another thing I noticed is that your calories burned for walking seem very high. I'm not sure of your stats, but you may be over estimating your calories out. In that case, you may just be under the weather or not leaving enough recovery time between workouts.

Hi! I do take a multivitamin, I try to keep up on protein but definitely something I need to work at. I use a Fitbit HR to measure calories lost. I'm sure that can still measure high, this is part of the reason why I tend not to eat back exercise calories.

lynn_glenmont

DancingMoosie wrote: »

ahoy_m8 wrote: »

DancingMoosie wrote: »

Just looking at your diary, I would say your deficit may be too aggressive and your protein slightly low. Do you take a multi vitamin? Another thing I noticed is that your calories burned for walking seem very high. I'm not sure of your stats, but you may be over estimating your calories out. In that case, you may just be under the weather or not leaving enough recovery time between workouts.

All this might be true, but if OP lost 18 pounds in 5 weeks, we know her average deficit >1500/day. That alone explains fatigue with recently added exercise.

Well, yeah, that's why I said "deficit may be too aggressive". I only looked back 3 days, so that's not going to tell the whole story either. She could have had an even steeper deficit over the last 4 weeks than what I saw.

18 pounds in 5 weeks is awful close to telling the whole story. You can never be sure of the accuracy of someone's food and exercise logging, but I think most people are able to track their body weight reasonably well. And if body weight tells a different story from the food diary ("I'm only eating 1100 calories a day, and I run two marathons a week, and I've gained 15 lbs in the past month"), I'm inclined to go with the body weight story.

Of course, you always run into the OP who finally on p 3 of the thread gets around to mentioning "I've been vomiting up everything I eat the last two weeks and I haven't even been able to keep water down" or "I lost my left arm in a saw mill accident last week" or "I gave birth to twins on Tuesday" or "I've been weighing myself on different scales every day."

brdoyle8

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

DancingMoosie wrote: »

ahoy_m8 wrote: »

DancingMoosie wrote: »

Just looking at your diary, I would say your deficit may be too aggressive and your protein slightly low. Do you take a multi vitamin? Another thing I noticed is that your calories burned for walking seem very high. I'm not sure of your stats, but you may be over estimating your calories out. In that case, you may just be under the weather or not leaving enough recovery time between workouts.

All this might be true, but if OP lost 18 pounds in 5 weeks, we know her average deficit >1500/day. That alone explains fatigue with recently added exercise.

Well, yeah, that's why I said "deficit may be too aggressive". I only looked back 3 days, so that's not going to tell the whole story either. She could have had an even steeper deficit over the last 4 weeks than what I saw.

18 pounds in 5 weeks is awful close to telling the whole story. You can never be sure of the accuracy of someone's food and exercise logging, but I think most people are able to track their body weight reasonably well. And if body weight tells a different story from the food diary ("I'm only eating 1100 calories a day, and I run two marathons a week, and I've gained 15 lbs in the past month"), I'm inclined to go with the body weight story.

Of course, you always run into the OP who finally on p 3 of the thread gets around to mentioning "I've been vomiting up everything I eat the last two weeks and I haven't even been able to keep water down" or "I lost my left arm in a saw mill accident last week" or "I gave birth to twins on Tuesday" or "I've been weighing myself on different scales every day."

Yeah I can't say that any of the things you listed in your second paragraph are true in my case. I've tried to be honest about everything here! I weigh myself consistently on a scale that automatically syncs with MFP and my Fitbit. I haven't been sick at all in five weeks, definitely not pregnant or a mother, I have both arms?

I have lost significantly in the last week from my records so I think I've just been too aggressive lately. That was the same time I upped my workouts.

AnnPT77

One common rule of thumb is to lose no more than about 1% of your body weight weekly (after the first week or two, which for many have wacky results).

If you have fatigue (ahem), impaired concentration, mood/irritability problems, weakness, new depression, etc., at 1% or less, slow it down even further

Stay strong & healthy while losing, OK?

brdoyle8

AnnPT77 wrote: »

One common rule of thumb is to lose no more than about 1% of your body weight weekly (after the first week or two, which for many have wacky results).

If you have fatigue (ahem), impaired concentration, mood/irritability problems, weakness, new depression, etc., at 1% or less, slow it down even further

Stay strong & healthy while losing, OK?

Will do! Still learning over here. I'll be easier and more accepting on myself going forward.

leejoyce31

bbell1985 wrote: »

Added exercise, big deficit, maybe getting your period or ovulating. It's not going to feel great.

I was thinking menses or ovulating too. I know that it causes sudden fatigue and some of her other symptoms.