Exercise bordering addiction

KelBlundell wrote: »

Thank you and yes I think fuelling is an issue for me.

My max HR is 181 and you shouldn't exceed 80% of that as I understand- which is 144 hence I think I'm pushing myself too hard.

I've had a few pre syncope incidents which could be inadequate fuelling or pushing HR too high.

You're seriously under-eating.

I don't see your heartrate or exercise routine to be too high or too much, but you MUST start eating. No wonder you suffer from syncope.


I think you should be eating a LOT more. How much depends on your regular routine plus exercise calories. I lost most of my weight on 1500-1600 plus exercise calories, so on most days I was eating 2000+ calories to get to 1500 net.

Eat!

sijomial wrote: »

And there's no reason (for a heart healthy person) to set an 80% limit to either a tested max HR or a guestimated one. No idea where you got that idea from. Your intensity as reflected by your HR is determined by your training goals not some random percentage.

Agreed. When I regularly participated in endurance races I would average 95% of my "estimated" max HR for a half marathon which at the time was around 1.5 hours for me. 80% would have been a put me FAR below my capability as a goal.

You're severely undereating and need to eat more! Seriously, you're damaging your body with what you're doing. Your heartrate has nothing to do with that. About 40% of all people have a maximum heartrate that deviates a lot from this terrible 220-age equation. Syncope generally has nothing to do with a high heartrate, but with undereating, exercising too much, and drinking too little. Pick yours.

The amount of exercise doesn't seem excessive to me. It isn't what I would choose, because my motivations are different. If you're not enjoying it, it's crowding out other things you want to do with your time, or anything like that, then it's too much.

As others have said, your calorie deficit is a problem.

KelBlundell wrote: »

Thank you and yes I think fuelling is an issue for me.

My max HR is 181 and you shouldn't exceed 80% of that as I understand- which is 144 hence I think I'm pushing myself too hard.

I've had a few pre syncope incidents which could be inadequate fuelling or pushing HR too high.

Talk with your doctor for authoritative guidance, but I'll add my advice to others for consideration.

Age estimated maximum heart rates are inaccurate for a large number of people. Look at an RPE (rate of perceived exertion) scale**. If your heart rate is at what ought to be a high-ish percent (like when it's 170), and your RPE is not relatively high on the RPE scale, it's very probable that you have a HRmax that is above what those estimates suggest. It's pretty common.

I would *not* recommend it to an exercise beginner, nor to someone who hasn't been cleared by their doctor for intense exercise, but going near 100% of actual (not estimated) HRmax isn't necessarily dangerous to a well-conditioned (fit) person. No one can stay there for long, though, if the high HR resulted from exercise. Body just *won't* keep going that hard, after a fairly short time.

My age estimated HRmax by 220-age is 155. When doing more intense workouts, I exceed 155bpm fairly frequently. My tested HRmax is around 181. When I was actually training (i.e., trying to improve for competitive reasons), I did some workouts that took me to 180-181. In an actual race, I wanted to be close to that by the end of the race. It was very difficult, very fatiguing, but nothing else bad happened. The 155bpm level for me, in reality, is only around 80% of heart rate reserve, 85% HRmax. NBD. If I never exceeded 144, I wouldn't make much fitness progress; it's only in the lower end of the "aerobic zone" for me. I hit or exceed 144 in multiple workouts every week.

Now, don't just willy-nilly throw caution to the winds without input from your doctor. But, as others have said, eat more. You're doing yourself and your health a disservice.

** I don't love this article in other respects, but it has an RPE scale with some physiological benchmarks beyond just "feels hard". It should be close enough to give you a reasonable idea of whether you're feeling at a high RPE, when at the number you think is 80% HR max, or at the 170 you're concerned about.

https://www.verywellfit.com/perceived-exertion-scale-1231117

I want to say about the high heart rate. This assumes you don't have an underlying condition, and it doesn't apply if you do.

Exercise is stressful. Over millions of years our blueprint has figured out how to cope with that stress because it's a sink or swim world. Don't read to much into this next part, but exercise is damaging. That's the point. 🙂

We cope with it (1) by having really good feedback mechanisms that prevent us from doing too much damage, and (2) by repairing that damage and making things better than before. It's like your body says "well, she keeps doing this to me, so I better get good at it."

Most healthy people, before their heart explodes, will get really exhausted and not be able to continue.

I'm not saying you should be reckless, not pay attention, or ignore anything you think is a problem. But it sounds like you've been working your heart and lungs, you aren't getting up off the couch for the first time trying to sprint a marathon. So you're a lot less likely to fall over clutching your chest.