ideas for tackling fatigue with an increased exercise regime

clcrafter8950 wrote: »

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

Zone 2 is your friend. It can burn a surprising amount of calories, especially if you are very overweight, without introducing a lot of systemic fatigue, and with less risk of reduced NEAT that I mentioned before.

If you burned an additional X calories exercising compared to not, and your NEAT went down because you were so wiped out, that's the equivalent of burning an additional 0.5*X or 0.75*X.

Thanks very much for your advice. Is there a source to learn a little more about Zones (ie. zone 2) and NEAT? Appreciate your help and time

Retro's right, it's easy to find this stuff on a web search, if you want to wade in deeply. It's not essential to wade in deeply, though. Here's a mini-essay on the basics, including why the technical view is kinda optional:

Zones are different heart rate ranges. There are 4-zone schemes, 5-zone schemes, I think maybe even 6-zone schemes. The are even two different types of zone schemes, percent of maximum heart rate, and percent of heart rate reserve. (We don't need to get into that. I'm just mentioning it to hint that "Zone 2" sounds all cool and technical, but that it's a pretty approximate concept to just toss out as if it were some kind of absolute .)

If you don't have a sports-tested personal maximum heart rate (HRmax), the zones are based on an age formula, often 220 minus age. Since a large minority of people have a HRmax that's notably different from the age estimates, the zones are a little iffy if you don't have a sports-test HRmax estimate IMO. (Variation in HRmax is more about genetics than about fitness, BTW.)

It's OK, though. The basic important message is "do mostly low-ish intensity exercise". You can use a Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale. There are a bunch of different ones, this is just a random example, though one with better-than-average descriptions:



In that scheme, something in the "comfortable pace" zone, maybe even "light and easy", is what we'd be talking about here: It's pretty low intensity. You can continue it for a long time without accumulating much fatigue.

But zone 2 in a heart rate scheme or "comfortable pace" in RPE is not magically totally non-fatiguing, nor are higher zones or RPEs somehow magically punitively exhausting: Context, duration, frequency. current fitness level, and training effects (among other things) play into how fatiguing a thing is.

Again, the basic message is common sense: Don't get over-fatigued. When you do high-intensity work, keep it short. When you can, do long low intensity work, shooting for a pace/intensity that's not very tiring.

NEAT is non-exercise activity thermogenesis, the calories you burn doing stuff other than intentional exercise, like job, home chores, non-exercise hobbies, etc. Some of NEAT is subtle, like spontaneous movement (fidgeting is an easy to understand example of spontaneous movement, but not the only subtle movement that can be affected).

Again, common sense applies: If our intentional exercise is too fatiguing, we tend to drag through the day(s) and do less on the NEAT side of activity. Since NEAT is a bigger calorie number for most of us than intentional exercise is, we can effectively wipe out some fraction of our exercise calories by reducing our NEAT. That's a true thing, but Retro seems to worry about that quite a bit. I don't, really.

Why don't I? Because (broken record) I think common sense applies, if a person understands that it can happen and pays attention. Notice if you start feeling like some of your enjoyable non-exercise activities are feeling tedious or boring, so you want to do them less. You may be fatigued. Ditto for daily life things like cooking less elaborate meals (if you're the cook), simplifying the cleaning routine, putting off high-effort home projects. Notice if a calorie level that's been working pretty well starts resulting in slower loss. Notice if you're resting more, wanting to go to bed earlier. Notice if you feel draggy and aching much of the time. That kind of thing. You want a routine that's mostly energizing, not exhausting (other than maybe a few minutes of "whew" right after the workout).

Obviously, you have common sense: Your OP represents that you've noticed fatigue and are concerned about it. Our advice is to mostly exercise at low intensity (call it Zone 2 or whatever, doesn't matter), and pay attention to managing fatigue. There's a bunch of technical stuff that maybe matters to those of us who pursue performance in some cardiovascular-focused sport, but a person doesn't need to understand all of that to grasp the concept "don't do so much so soon that you get overtired", y'know?

Best wishes!