Do you have to take a rest day?

ErinMichelle31

Hello all! I feel like this is the million dollar question. I have been on this journey for about five weeks, and using MFP for about a month. I went from being completely sedentary to feeling like a gym addict! I started off just doing some light cardio for long periods of time, but as i get more and more into it, I've been adding a lot of HIIT and weight training where I can. Plus on a lot of days, I will take my dog on a very long walk (an hour or more) in addition to the gym. I have an old shoulder injury which I have to be aware of, and very flat feet which sometimes cause my knee to pop. But I try to be aware of these things. I've lost 18lbs in five weeks, and I feel like that is really fast, though I have a lot of weight to lose. My husband has been really urging me to take more rest days. My question is just, if you feel the desire to workout everyday, is that too much? Is it necessary to take a rest day even if you don't feel like you need it? Or is it ok to workout everyday, and only take a rest day if you feel an injury coming on or your muscles are just way to sore? I wonder about eating back my calories too, but I know that is a longer and separate discussion. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

NorthCascades

The purpose of a rest day is to have rest, letting your body recover and your training load come back down to a manageable level. If you don't need that, then don't.

nutmegoreo

Going from sedentary to quite active in five weeks, not taking rest days, and undereating (which is why you are losing so fast, unless most of that was in the first week) is a recipe for burnout and injury.

ErinMichelle31

nutmegoreo wrote: »

Going from sedentary to quite active in five weeks, not taking rest days, and undereating (which is why you are losing so fast, unless most of that was in the first week) is a recipe for burnout and injury.

That is of course what I'm afraid of. And I do wonder about the under-eating. I read that when you have as much weight as I have to lose (over 80lbs), it is ok to lose up to 5 lbs a week at first, though eventually it has to slow down. I'm losing at a rate of about 3-4 lbs a week. I try to eat back my calories. My base is 1400 a day, but a lot of days, my fitness tracker (with a chest heart rate monitor) says I have burned well over 1,000 calories in one day. And frankly, it's just hard to eat that back. I also count any and all alcohol calories when I do drink, but I've heard some people say that alcohol calories are burned differently, so maybe I don't eat enough when I drink (not that it's that often, but we were at a party on Saturday night so I was thinking about this). How do you know if you are eating too little? I feel fine and my energy is great!

cwolfman13

The purpose of a rest day is for recovery...once you "feel and injury coming on" it's too late. The purpose of rest is recovery and injury prevention. Recovery is also important to fitness gains.

IMO, you're doing quite a bit for just coming off the couch...in many cases, this can lead to injury and in most cases it also leads to burnout. Your fitness regimen should be something you can pretty well maintain into perpetuity...exercise doesn't stop once you've lost the weight...it's as important in maintenance.

I look at my fitness from an overall health and well-being standpoint. Not exercising is not good for my overall well being...doing too much isn't good for my overall well-being either...not to mention, balancing fitness with other obligations and life in general. I love fitness, but there is more to life than working out.

I do something most days, but not every day is a serious training bout. During the work week I'm somewhat limited on time...basically I make sure I get out for a 30-45 minute ride Monday - Thurs...one of those is usually an interval session which can be quite taxing...but the other 3 rides are generally fairly mellow and are as much about just going out for a nice ride to enjoy myself as anything else. I do a longer ride most Saturdays. Sundays are a "free day"...so maybe a recreational ride with the family or a couple hours at the rock climbing gym or an hour at the trampoline park with the kids...or we might just go to the park and throw the football around. I lift on Wednesday and Friday evenings. I should also mention that I'm pretty fit as I've been doing this for about 4.5 years, so I'm not coming off the couch either.

My exercise load at the moment isn't at a level for which I would require me to really take a true rest day...but I do take them when I bump up my training volume to train for actual events. I do 2 or 3 annually and train specifically for those...it's usually a relatively short duration like 6-8 weeks or something...but the volume does go up and I ride harder, etc so I do take rest days when my load requires it.

ErinMichelle31

cwolfman13 wrote: »

The purpose of a rest day is for recovery...once you "feel and injury coming on" it's too late. The purpose of rest is recovery and injury prevention. Recovery is also important to fitness gains.

IMO, you're doing quite a bit for just coming off the couch...in many cases, this can lead to injury and in most cases it also leads to burnout. Your fitness regimen should be something you can pretty well maintain into perpetuity...exercise doesn't stop once you've lost the weight...it's as important in maintenance.

I look at my fitness from an overall health and well-being standpoint. Not exercising is not good for my overall well being...doing too much isn't good for my overall well-being either...not to mention, balancing fitness with other obligations and life in general. I love fitness, but there is more to life than working out.

I do something most days, but not every day is a serious training bout. During the work week I'm somewhat limited on time...basically I make sure I get out for a 30-45 minute ride Monday - Thurs...one of those is usually an interval session which can be quite taxing...but the other 3 rides are generally fairly mellow and are as much about just going out for a nice ride to enjoy myself as anything else. I do a longer ride most Saturdays. Sundays are a "free day"...so maybe a recreational ride with the family or a couple hours at the rock climbing gym or an hour at the trampoline park with the kids...or we might just go to the park and throw the football around. I lift on Wednesday and Friday evenings. I should also mention that I'm pretty fit as I've been doing this for about 4.5 years, so I'm not coming off the couch either.

My exercise load at the moment isn't at a level for which I would require me to really take a true rest day...but I do take them when I bump up my training volume to train for actual events. I do 2 or 3 annually and train specifically for those...it's usually a relatively short duration like 6-8 weeks or something...but the volume does go up and I ride harder, etc so I do take rest days when my load requires it.

Thank you for that incredibly thoughtful reply. I will absolutely take this advice to heart. Perhaps the goal shouldn't be to decide whether or not to take a rest day, but to generally add some moderation to my routine. Not every trip to the gym needs to be an hour and a half long ,and maybe some days just taking my dog for a long walk is enough. Thank you again!

Chieflrg

Programs be it running, lifting etc...will have a rest day built into them.

Rest day(s) is really subjective to the individual and their goals with their experience level.

A novice will recover much quicker than a advanced person just because they are doing less. So their program is less complicated for recovery.

The problem lies when a novice tries doing a much more advanced program.

Try searching out programs that fit your schedule and run/gain experience on how a recovery day works for you and your goals.

getupforchange

Maybe throw in one rest day next week just to see how you feel?

sijomial

Do I have to take a rest day?
No not really as I'm accustomed to a heavy exercise routine which has varying intensity and recovery periods.

Do you have to take rest days?
Yes I think it would be sensible to take a more measured approach and build up progressively rather than go from zero to hero and risk either burn-out or injury.

Remember to try and enjoy it, if it becomes a chore you are far more likely to stop.

nutmegoreo

ErinMichelle31 wrote: »

nutmegoreo wrote: »

Going from sedentary to quite active in five weeks, not taking rest days, and undereating (which is why you are losing so fast, unless most of that was in the first week) is a recipe for burnout and injury.

That is of course what I'm afraid of. And I do wonder about the under-eating. I read that when you have as much weight as I have to lose (over 80lbs), it is ok to lose up to 5 lbs a week at first, though eventually it has to slow down. I'm losing at a rate of about 3-4 lbs a week. I try to eat back my calories. My base is 1400 a day, but a lot of days, my fitness tracker (with a chest heart rate monitor) says I have burned well over 1,000 calories in one day. And frankly, it's just hard to eat that back. I also count any and all alcohol calories when I do drink, but I've heard some people say that alcohol calories are burned differently, so maybe I don't eat enough when I drink (not that it's that often, but we were at a party on Saturday night so I was thinking about this). How do you know if you are eating too little? I feel fine and my energy is great!

I don't know where you heard 5lb/week, but that isn't the generally accepted consensus. About 1% of your body weight per week, so if you are at 190lb, then 1.9lb/week, note that as you lose weight, your weight loss will slow. Your body will only burn so much of that from your fat stores, the rest comes from muscle. I saw your next post about moving toward moderation. That's a great goal. You want to be able to do this well beyond the weight loss stage, so think about how this current regime is going to work for you long term. You may feel fine until one day you don't, by that point, it can take a long time to recover. Treat your body better, and it will respond. All the best!

Djproulx

ErinMichelle31 wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

The purpose of a rest day is for recovery...once you "feel and injury coming on" it's too late. The purpose of rest is recovery and injury prevention. Recovery is also important to fitness gains.

IMO, you're doing quite a bit for just coming off the couch...in many cases, this can lead to injury and in most cases it also leads to burnout. Your fitness regimen should be something you can pretty well maintain into perpetuity...exercise doesn't stop once you've lost the weight...it's as important in maintenance.

I look at my fitness from an overall health and well-being standpoint. Not exercising is not good for my overall well being...doing too much isn't good for my overall well-being either...not to mention, balancing fitness with other obligations and life in general. I love fitness, but there is more to life than working out.

I do something most days, but not every day is a serious training bout. During the work week I'm somewhat limited on time...basically I make sure I get out for a 30-45 minute ride Monday - Thurs...one of those is usually an interval session which can be quite taxing...but the other 3 rides are generally fairly mellow and are as much about just going out for a nice ride to enjoy myself as anything else. I do a longer ride most Saturdays. Sundays are a "free day"...so maybe a recreational ride with the family or a couple hours at the rock climbing gym or an hour at the trampoline park with the kids...or we might just go to the park and throw the football around. I lift on Wednesday and Friday evenings. I should also mention that I'm pretty fit as I've been doing this for about 4.5 years, so I'm not coming off the couch either.

My exercise load at the moment isn't at a level for which I would require me to really take a true rest day...but I do take them when I bump up my training volume to train for actual events. I do 2 or 3 annually and train specifically for those...it's usually a relatively short duration like 6-8 weeks or something...but the volume does go up and I ride harder, etc so I do take rest days when my load requires it.

Thank you for that incredibly thoughtful reply. I will absolutely take this advice to heart. Perhaps the goal shouldn't be to decide whether or not to take a rest day, but to generally add some moderation to my routine. Not every trip to the gym needs to be an hour and a half long ,and maybe some days just taking my dog for a long walk is enough. Thank you again!

OP, some great comments and suggestions offered by @cwolfman13 above. As another long time exercise junkie, I also starting worrying about injury and burnout as I read your post. I think your reply is right on target. The idea of balance and moderation in training will help you figure out when to rest.

With that in mind, maybe a description of my current training plan might give you some additional ideas. I work with a coach year round, so that means regular swim/bike/run workouts, plus some strength work. Since there are multiple sports to work on, we typically do 8-11 workouts per week. There are no regularly scheduled rest days in my calendar. The way we can do this while keeping injury chances low is to do many of the workouts at a relatively short duration or low intensity, saving ourselves for only a few "quality sessions" that are much longer or more intense. Since our weekend workouts tend to be long, my "rest" or "super easy" day typically occurs on a Monday. That usually means I'll just do an easy spin on my bike trainer to release the tension and fatigue that has built up in my legs from the long run and bike sessions done over the weekend. And, if I need to skip a day entirely, I do that too. As an aging athlete (I'm 59) injury prevention is THE most important factor in improving my fitness and having success on race days.

Congratulations on your initial success. I think your decision to tweak your goal to focus on moderation will help keep the workouts fun and serve you well in the long term. Good luck.

tri_bob

One thing to consider about rest days is that this is when the improvements in fitness occur. During periods of work, you stress your muscular and cardiovascular systems. The periods of rest are when they rebuild. The day or two after a hard workout, the discomfort you feel is muscles repairing themselves, and overcompensating slightly. Gradually, you build muscle. Adequate sleep is essential, and so is at least the occasional rest day.

Keep in mind, particularly as you transition from a sedentary lifestyle to a more active one, that you have a lot more to lose from an injury (fitness, momentum, etc.) than from taking a day off to recover.

$.02 from the cheap seats.

estherdragonbat

I do some exercise every day, but the amount and intensity vary. Basically, if I do nothing else, I'm committed to get in 60 minutes of walking at a leisurely pace every day. And as long as I'm going somewhere, it counts. 15 minute round-trip to the supermarket? Logged. 20 minutes to the bank? Logged.

But that's my minimum.

I've worked my way up to 55 minutes on a fitness glider and I'm on that 5 days a week. (If I do that, I'm not necessarily going to get my 60 minutes of walking in. If I get more than 2 hours of walking in, I probably won't use the glider that day.)

I'm doing some strength training every other day, roughly 20 minutes. And about 16-20 minutes of warmup and cooldown stretches. So far, while I'm breathing hard and sweating after the glider, I don't ache the next day. And giving my muscles every other day off (mostly. The glider works the major muscle groups, but it's not the best option for strength training) is working for me. While I may be tired and enjoy relaxing in a bath after a workout, I feel fine in the morning. (I was actually wondering whether I was doing enough work with fitness tubes to get any results... until I tested out a 10-lb dumbbell in a fitness store and realized that I'd done about 25 bicep curls without pausing. That's... not something I could do a year ago.)

IMO? Do something active every day, but not the same thing. If you want to strength train every day, alternate between upper and lower body (I've been told that you can do core every day). Don't push yourself to the same extent every day. I love the glider, but it's nice to have a couple of days a week where I just get outside and take a pleasant stroll around the neighborhood. Or neighborhoods, depending on how much ground I cover in 1-2 hours. And if you overdo and you're aching... rest up!

ErinMichelle31

Thanks for all of these thoughtful comments. This is such a wonderful community and resource! This is the first time I've regularly engaged in an online forum and it has been an incredibly positive experience.

Sp1tfire

Rest days help to keep the momentum going for the long term and prevent burnout. So mentally, I'd suggest taking 1 or 2 a week. If you take an 'active' rest day for one of those that might be the best idea. Walk your dog, do some errands, but avoid the gym. Then hopefully you'll be itchin' and ready to go the next day! It works for me. If I took 2 days or even a week off I cannot wait to get back. Good luck! Rooting for you!