Give your body a break to lose weight

moylie

I also had a very similar experience. Had trained quite hard (6 days/wk either bootcamp or running) for my first Half Marathon. After the race I decided to take an entire week off, which turned into almost two weeks, since I got sick, too. Dropped nearly 5 pounds in that time, which NEVER happens for me. Now, I'm still not back to "full" workout mode, and I'm still dropping weight A LOT easier than before, and I'm even closer to my goal. I'm going to aim for 3-4 days a week of working out, and see where this takes me. I don't necessarily "enjoy" working out, so if I can do less and still lose fat but not muscle, I'm a happy camper.

FlexAppeal79

Bump....Interesting :ohwell:

violon

bump

rydn4h2o

interesting!

ItsLessOfMe

I loose weight when I lay off the exercise. But I'm just afraid I'm loosing muscle and not fat. So what good does that do me?

moylie

I loose weight when I lay off the exercise. But I'm just afraid I'm loosing muscle and not fat. So what good does that do me?

I worry about the same thing, but I look at it this way: as long as I'm still fueling my body properly, and believe that "muscle memory" is a factor, your body will remember where it was/needs to be and it won't lose all your hard work. I've been reading more about taking rest periods, and am quite happy to give that a whirl

crux

I think it's a question of the amount of time away from exercise, I never felt like I lost muscle during a weeks break, more than that then sure you can start to lose fitness gains.

RBXChas

You may be on to something. My sister and I run 6 days/week. We did C25K and were doing 30-minute runs, then on Sunday we decided to start Bridge to 10K. So Sunday and Monday we did 4, 10-minute runs with 1-minute walking breaks, then yesterday to break the monotony we did 2, 18-minute runs with a 4-minute walking break (since a 1-minute break is painfully short).

I have had zero movement on the scale in a week, which, coincidentally, is the last time we took a day off. I know my eating is spot-on, and I'm surprised to not have had at least a slight dip, not even .2 pounds or .4 pounds. I'm not discouraged, just surprised.

Today we are taking a day off because our legs are just TIRED. I am hoping tomorrow will show some progress on the scale. I will definitely report back tomorrow!

Don't get discouraged if you don't see it in 1 day off, it takes me 3-4 days off to crystallize a loss.

I said I would check back in, so here I am. My sister and I were going to take a day off yesterday but because her husband won't be able to stay home with her kids tonight, we decided to take tonight off instead and just do a "light" workout yesterday. Since we are doing Bridge to 10K, a "light" workout was a late C25K run (25 minutes). Today I was down .8 after a week of no change on the scale. Based on the scale's "settling," i.e., it looked like it wanted to show some lower numbers before settling where it did, I have a feeling that tomorrow it will be lower. However I don't think a lighter workout had anything to do with it; I think it was just time for the scale to show progress. As you said, one day isn't going to do it, especially if I still had a decent workout. Like I said, I am guessing tomorrow I will also show a loss, but today's break is just one day.

My sister put it well - and she said this like it was a bad thing (I reminded her that it was not) - that we are addicted to running. Not to say it isn't hard and that when I'm in the middle of a long run I don't want to walk or stop, but when I don't run or do something equally/more difficult, I feel lazy! I guess since we've been running now for almost three months, it's become a habit :happy: