When it comes to exercise, more is not necessarily better.
If your metabolism is broken, the more exercise you do will actually further damage your metabolism, and the more fatigue you will feel.
You may be this person, or you may know this person:
Despite eating fewer and fewer calories and exercising like a crazy, your weight does not budge. This is because your metabolism is damaged. Always make sure you’re getting balanced exercise—equal amounts of stretching, cardio, and resistance in your week—to help rebalance your metabolism.
Many women rely almost exclusively on cardio for fat burning. This doesn’t work! You need to balance that cardio with stretching and resistance exercises.
I find that many women shy away from resistance exercise. Resistance means weight lifting of some form—actual weights (dumbbells, barbells) or body weight. Women tell me they’re afraid they will get too muscly. Ladies, it simply will not happen! You will not get overly muscly unless you solely do resistance exercise, and a lot of it!
Again, the key is balance between stretching, cardio and resistance.
Exercise should give you energy. If you feel really tired after exercising, you did too much! I’ve had some patients whose metabolism is so broken that even ten minutes of exercise gets them dog tired. It’s just too much for their metabolism to handle. I tell them to cut back to six minutes, or even four minutes. However many minutes you can tolerate and still feel good after, then stick to that level until you get stronger and can do more. Take it slow. There’s no rush.
In Functional Medicine we are better able to guide your “personal exercise prescription” once we know what your cortisol is doing—if it’s too high, too low, or on a rollercoaster.
Beautiful Benefits of Exercise
In addition to increased energy and fitness, here are six more beautiful benefits of exercise:
- boosts brain function
- prevents decline in memory
- improves nutrient-absorbing digestion
- alleviates anxiety and depression
- increases relaxation
- improves sleep
Better energy, better body, better mind. Long-term. That’s worth getting pumped about!
Could You Have a Mitochondrial Imbalance?
Now, if you’re doing all the right things but you’re still dog tired after exercising, consider you may have a mitochondrial imbalance. Mitochondrial imbalance (or dysfunctional mitochondria) is part of my Expanded Fatigue List, so if that short description fits you, keep an eye out for my upcoming article dedicated to Mitochondrial Imbalance.
Make a promise to yourself starting today:
Stop feeling lousy…rotten…awful…crummy…miserable…terrible…crappy.
Find a good Functional Medicine doctor to help you get to the root cause of your health problems.
Like I always say:
Find the cause.
Fix the cause.
Feel normal again!
