Overreached or overtrained
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Thanks all. Yes, I have been down this road before or I never got off the road meaning I didn’t come back all the way and here I am again. I am going to request a lab panel and clean up my workouts to that which gives me a return. I got on the bike today (30 min beginner ride) after a week off and I am not there yet, more rest, more hikes and more food. I also lifted weights, lower weight than my norm. That felt pretty good.0
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sijomial is correct here. Exercise is good stress, but if you are constantly stressing the body, then your cortisol levels won't ever lower.
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Thanks all. Yes, I have been down this road before or I never got off the road meaning I didn’t come back all the way and here I am again. I am going to request a lab panel and clean up my workouts to that which gives me a return. I got on the bike today (30 min beginner ride) after a week off and I am not there yet, more rest, more hikes and more food. I also lifted weights, lower weight than my norm. That felt pretty good.
I was in a bad spot in my trip down this road. But my timeline was marathon in early February. I continued through my situation because I knew this was my end date (and I had gotten to a point prior to my real troubles that we could do some adapted training and still make this work).
Despite an extended and extremely conservative taper, I woke up on race day feeling like I had run 20 miles the day before (which was about the norm at that point-which felt “fine”). I finished the race-about 45 minutes slower than expected.
I did nothing for a month except light walking and yoga. Ate at or above maintenance. Quite a bit of full resting, napping and not much else. Almost no change in any of my markers.
It was May before I was able to consistently workout and know that I would actually finish whatever workout was planned. These weren’t significant workouts and I didn’t always want to (I don’t mean the normal “I’m just not feeling it today but I know it’ll be fine when I get going” - I mean active resentment to training kind of don’t want to). All numbers were still off the mark (RHR was still around 70 vs mid 50’s normal).
By June I was actually doing training again. I could do some lifting (and have it be productive). I was able to run and not have it always be a slog. RHR was in the upper 60’s.
By July, I was back in full swing and training well and with enthusiasm. By the end of July, my fasting blood glucose was finally back to normal, RHR was just about to the 50’s, and my HRV was in the upper 40’s.
So still not quite back to “normal” but close. After 6 months. And from my research; I’m not at the extreme end.
Then I decided to train for an ultra (under special circumstances for this year only) so my recovery has flatlined. It’s almost October and I’m still “recovering”.
I know my situation is mine and yours is yours, but you may want to really consider that a week or two may be a little less than you need to really get your stress hormones and things back to what is normal. A week or two is probably fine if you catch it early. If you’re at the point you’re at, I’m not sure you’re at “early”.
And mine was brought on by temporary training load. Yours seems permanent. Really heed @sijomial advice and consider your training load and your goals. No one can do it all forever without a break. Even elite’s have an off season.0 -
Under nutrition. IF your BMR is 1500 (and that’s another discussion), your NEAT is even higher, so you need to eat 1000-1500 above that (based on your exercise burn) just to keep even with your body’s energy needs, so 2500-3000 daily. I suggest you do that for 3 months and manage your exercise as others have mentioned, before spending time & $ on lab work and doctor visits.0
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I know it probably sounds ignorant but I certainly do t want to gain weight and despite my efforts it is happening.Cortisol will do that (water weight). It's one of the very well known signs of over-training. If your weight goes up out of line with your calories again it's a sign you should take heed of.
I know I can provoke exactly that stress response with about 5 or 6 weeks hard training together with a calorie deficit in the lead up to an event - but that's peaking for an event and not my normal routine.
If your normal routine is doing that your training load is too much for you.
You have to find a better balance and to do that you have to align your training priorities with your goals and priorities. Which means dropping things that don't give you a decent return on investment. "Work different muscles than cycling" isn't really a fitness goal. To achieve what? (More fatigue by the sound of it!)
Another vote for the scale increase being due to retaining water from increased cortisol.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dietary-restraint-and-cortisol-levels-research-review.html/
...a group of women who scored higher on dietary restraint scores showed elevated baseline cortisol levels. By itself this might not be problematic, but as often as not, these types of dieters are drawn to extreme approaches to dieting.
They throw in a lot of intense exercise, try to cut calories very hard (and this often backfires if disinhibition is high; when these folks break they break) and cortisol levels go through the roof. That often causes cortisol mediated water retention (there are other mechanisms for this, mind you, leptin actually inhibits cortisol release and as it drops on a diet, cortisol levels go up further). Weight and fat loss appear to have stopped or at least slowed significantly. This is compounded even further in female dieters due to the vagaries of their menstrual cycle where water balance is changing enormously week to week anyhow.
And invariably, this type of psychology responds to the stall by going even harder. They attempt to cut calories harder, they start doing more activity. The cycle continues and gets worse. Harder dieting means more cortisol means more water retention means more dieting. Which backfires (other problems come in the long-term with this approach but you’ll have to wait for the book to read about that).
When what they should do is take a day or two off (even one day off from training, at least in men, lets cortisol drop significantly). Raise calories, especially from carbohydrates. This helps cortisol to drop. More than that they need to find a way to freaking chill out. Meditation, yoga, get a massage... Get in the bath, candles, a little Enya, a glass of wine, have some you-time but please just chill.
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Duck_Puddle wrote: »Thanks all. Yes, I have been down this road before or I never got off the road meaning I didn’t come back all the way and here I am again. I am going to request a lab panel and clean up my workouts to that which gives me a return. I got on the bike today (30 min beginner ride) after a week off and I am not there yet, more rest, more hikes and more food. I also lifted weights, lower weight than my norm. That felt pretty good.
I was in a bad spot in my trip down this road. But my timeline was marathon in early February. I continued through my situation because I knew this was my end date (and I had gotten to a point prior to my real troubles that we could do some adapted training and still make this work).
Despite an extended and extremely conservative taper, I woke up on race day feeling like I had run 20 miles the day before (which was about the norm at that point-which felt “fine”). I finished the race-about 45 minutes slower than expected.
I did nothing for a month except light walking and yoga. Ate at or above maintenance. Quite a bit of full resting, napping and not much else. Almost no change in any of my markers.
It was May before I was able to consistently workout and know that I would actually finish whatever workout was planned. These weren’t significant workouts and I didn’t always want to (I don’t mean the normal “I’m just not feeling it today but I know it’ll be fine when I get going” - I mean active resentment to training kind of don’t want to). All numbers were still off the mark (RHR was still around 70 vs mid 50’s normal).
By June I was actually doing training again. I could do some lifting (and have it be productive). I was able to run and not have it always be a slog. RHR was in the upper 60’s.
By July, I was back in full swing and training well and with enthusiasm. By the end of July, my fasting blood glucose was finally back to normal, RHR was just about to the 50’s, and my HRV was in the upper 40’s.
So still not quite back to “normal” but close. After 6 months. And from my research; I’m not at the extreme end.
Then I decided to train for an ultra (under special circumstances for this year only) so my recovery has flatlined. It’s almost October and I’m still “recovering”.
I know my situation is mine and yours is yours, but you may want to really consider that a week or two may be a little less than you need to really get your stress hormones and things back to what is normal. A week or two is probably fine if you catch it early. If you’re at the point you’re at, I’m not sure you’re at “early”.
And mine was brought on by temporary training load. Yours seems permanent. Really heed @sijomial advice and consider your training load and your goals. No one can do it all forever without a break. Even elite’s have an off season.
Duck_Puddle, I really appreciate you taking the time to tell me your story. You sound exactly how I feel. I don’t want to work out and I KNOW I really need more time off. I want to be honest with myself and really take the time I need no matter the duration. I am prepared to lose some muscle and maybe gain some weight too. I really don’t want to but my health is more important than vanity.0 -
Under nutrition. IF your BMR is 1500 (and that’s another discussion), your NEAT is even higher, so you need to eat 1000-1500 above that (based on your exercise burn) just to keep even with your body’s energy needs, so 2500-3000 daily. I suggest you do that for 3 months and manage your exercise as others have mentioned, before spending time & $ on lab work and doctor visits.
Lorrpb thank you. What do you mean that BMR is another discussion?0 -
Duck_Puddle wrote: »Thanks all. Yes, I have been down this road before or I never got off the road meaning I didn’t come back all the way and here I am again. I am going to request a lab panel and clean up my workouts to that which gives me a return. I got on the bike today (30 min beginner ride) after a week off and I am not there yet, more rest, more hikes and more food. I also lifted weights, lower weight than my norm. That felt pretty good.
I was in a bad spot in my trip down this road. But my timeline was marathon in early February. I continued through my situation because I knew this was my end date (and I had gotten to a point prior to my real troubles that we could do some adapted training and still make this work).
Despite an extended and extremely conservative taper, I woke up on race day feeling like I had run 20 miles the day before (which was about the norm at that point-which felt “fine”). I finished the race-about 45 minutes slower than expected.
I did nothing for a month except light walking and yoga. Ate at or above maintenance. Quite a bit of full resting, napping and not much else. Almost no change in any of my markers.
It was May before I was able to consistently workout and know that I would actually finish whatever workout was planned. These weren’t significant workouts and I didn’t always want to (I don’t mean the normal “I’m just not feeling it today but I know it’ll be fine when I get going” - I mean active resentment to training kind of don’t want to). All numbers were still off the mark (RHR was still around 70 vs mid 50’s normal).
By June I was actually doing training again. I could do some lifting (and have it be productive). I was able to run and not have it always be a slog. RHR was in the upper 60’s.
By July, I was back in full swing and training well and with enthusiasm. By the end of July, my fasting blood glucose was finally back to normal, RHR was just about to the 50’s, and my HRV was in the upper 40’s.
So still not quite back to “normal” but close. After 6 months. And from my research; I’m not at the extreme end.
Then I decided to train for an ultra (under special circumstances for this year only) so my recovery has flatlined. It’s almost October and I’m still “recovering”.
I know my situation is mine and yours is yours, but you may want to really consider that a week or two may be a little less than you need to really get your stress hormones and things back to what is normal. A week or two is probably fine if you catch it early. If you’re at the point you’re at, I’m not sure you’re at “early”.
And mine was brought on by temporary training load. Yours seems permanent. Really heed @sijomial advice and consider your training load and your goals. No one can do it all forever without a break. Even elite’s have an off season.
Duck_Puddle, I really appreciate you taking the time to tell me your story. You sound exactly how I feel. I don’t want to work out and I KNOW I really need more time off. I want to be honest with myself and really take the time I need no matter the duration. I am prepared to lose some muscle and maybe gain some weight too. I really don’t want to but my health is more important than vanity.
Sadly, there’s not a lot to do other than rest and time. You have to stop the stress (working out to that degree) so your body is no longer stressed-then you have to let it all normalize again. Hormones can take time - especially if they have been wonky for a long time.
I was so absolutely spent and overwhelmingly fatigued after my race that rest was a relief. It wasn’t my first heavy training cycle nor my first marathon-I knew that fatigue but this was something different.
I gave a passing glance to worries about losing fitness and gaining weight, but once I actually started resting (for real), I felt so awful that I no longer cared and just wanted to feel mobile and productive again. I wanted to WANT to workout.
And all in, I didn’t gain, and I didn’t lose much fitness. And in all honestly, you can’t train effectively in that condition anyway-so it doesn’t really matter (like you can’t keep what you have because your body simply can’t manage it-so you’ll lose it even if you don’t rest because your body can’t keep up as it is).
And on the calories-where did all these numbers come from? I’m asking because based on what you’ve given, you should be dropping weight like a hot potato and should have been for quite some time-but it sounds like you’re maintaining (aside from this recent issue which is nearly certainly from the cortisol)? If you’re planning to rest/recover/lower the volume/intensity, you’re going to want to have a good handle on your calorie needs without 1000+ calories of exercise a day. And 1500 BMR (or something) + 1000-1500 exercise plus normal activity plus eating 2000 should be putting you in a very significant deficit. If you’re maintaining on that, then at least something in that equation is off a little - and you’ll want to get that straightened out before you drop the amount you’re burning in exercise.0 -
Duck, that is exactly what I want...to function normally and to want to not just exercise again but I want to crush my workouts like I did before instead of watching my FTP decline.
I have had approximately 4-5 In Body measurements done, that is how I arrived at my BMR, I got the 2000 calories from my BMR and eating some of my exercise calories back from the 1000-1500 exercise calories. Granted there is room for error. I have my activity level set at very active however, I am going to adjust it for this period of rest.
I am a retired Marine ( I got a TBI and was medically retired). In April, I moved to a small town to be closer to my parents. I taught spin before I moved but there aren’t decent gyms with spin rooms here so I am no longer teaching. Fitness filled my days and I dread having too much time on my hands. I am doing projects around my new house, resting and taking hikes or walking.0 -
I'll shoot fora dietry issue. Not eating enough to account for your energy expendeture. This combined with poor rest cycles.0
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I have a video appt with a nutritionist tomorrow. Hopefully we will go over my numbers and I can get a lab consult for a blood panel.0
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My thought was only that you’ve been maintaining. So you’re eating the right number of calories to maintain your weight - even though the numbers suggest that you should be dropping a pound or two a week. That’s good (that you’re maintaining).
But the various pieces of the puzzle don’t currently add up. Which isn’t so much an issue because whatever you’re doing is still leading you to eat at maintenance.
If you change the pieces of your equation (how much you’re burning, for example), then your calorie needs will also change (or you will gain/lose). So that was my only point-that somewhere; something in that equation Is off-whether it’s BMR, your calories in, your exercise calories or some combination of all or them. Again-it’s not all that important since whatever you’re doing is giving you the right number to maintain. But it might be as your activity changes.
You do not want to be at a deficit during this recovery process.
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It is weird that I am craving protein and whole grains. I am not tracking right now just eating well. I am finding that I feel nauseous so I eat something and it goes away. For the time being, I am not going to worry about things like having a banana with peanut butter if I am hungry. MFP says to maintain I need 1960 so that is what I will go with. Thanks again for all your time and info.1
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