Rest Days

jennyocox

Hey. I just wanted to say that I'm finding 'rest days' a little frustrating. I'm doing the Couch to 5K plan at the moment so I'm running every second day, on the other days I was 'resting'. I've started to do some strength training / yoga / pilates on these days in order to do something.
What I've found is that it's MUCH harder to stick to my calorie allowance on these days. For example, this Tuesday I ran in the morning, walked on my lunchbreak and swam in the evening with my sun. I burned a total of 1066 calories and ate 600 calories under my limit.
But on Wednesday I did 30mins yogo, burning avg 100 calories and I went 300 over my limit (all rounded figures). Today I'll be working out again and the limit won't be a problem.

Does one balance out the other, or am I going to plateau forever.......... I've been bouncing the same 2lbs up and down for 5 weeks now!

pithole

It’s definitely a pain in the butt to stick to your diet on rest days.
It was always a good indicator to me at how dedicated I am when I was still well under my caloric limit.
You’re on the right track with cross-training though.
That’s what I do.
The couch to #K plan is great & helped me run my first 10K back in April, & the rest days always put me off my game too.
I just tried to be as active as possible while “resting” and the training was still effective.

Good luck with your 5K!

byHISstrength

Maybe you don't actually need to have rest days. Just do something other than your program. I did one round of P90X which was working out an hour to an hour and half for 6 days/week. The 7th day was scheduled to be a rest day, and sometimes I still workout; I just did something else. Now I am doing Insanity, and plan to do the same thing.

jennyocox

Wow 129lb........... what an excellent example you are!!!

karenkwalker

I am doing courch to 5k also. I am in week 5 day 3. I am just walking for 60 minutes on the treadmill on the off days. My calorie intake without exercise is 1200 - so if I don't do some kind of exercise - it's pretty hard to stay at the 1200 calorie level. I am eating back most of my exercise calories and that has budged the scale some. You are doing a lot of exercise - in order to lose you will probably need to make sure you are eating enough calories. Good luck.