Help with fitness regimen and fatigue

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, about five weeks ago I started an ‘extreme bodyshaping’ fitness program. Essentially, it’s six 45-minute workouts per week which alternate kickboxing and strength training with resistance bands. Based on their guidelines, I am on a high-protein, six-meal-a-day diet intended to boost the metabolism and help building muscle. The diet emphasizes whole grains. On top of this, I am taking creatine as a supplement as well as a multivitamin.

I’m a very overweight person, but am seeing good results. I have not lost much weight (about eight pounds) but I am seeing a lot of muscle gains as well as feeling like I can keep up better with the workouts. Further, I find the program pretty motivating and think I could stick to it for the long-term.

My problem is that I feel extremely fatigued all of the time, particularly for the last week or two. During the first week, I felt an increase in energy, but since then I feel very tired. I am sleeping more than I was, but even if I sleep for ten or eleven hours, I still feel tired all the next day. It’s become very difficult to get ordinary things like laundry, grocery shopping, and cooking done because I get home and just have no energy for anything. At my work, I have very low energy as well and very little concentration.

I don’t feel bad or anything but just very tired all of the time. The soreness level has started to improve but the fatigue just isn’t. The only thing I can think of is that I’m completely off caffeine, but I used to drink maybe one or two cans of diet soda a day, and coffee very seldomly. I can’t think that’s what’s making me a walking zombie.

Does anyone have any advice? I don’t think it’s any kind of medical issue, as I’m better on Sundays after not working out the previous day (Sundays also has no dietary restrictions; you can eat whatever you want). I’m just having trouble coping with working out so much and am wondering if people have any tips with being more alert and energetic when working out a lot. I have stuff to do and I’m tired of ‘spacing out’ half the time.

2

Listen…to…your…body.

Cut out one of those 45-minute routines. Now. It’'s too much for you.

Don’t over think this. Cut out at least one 45-min routine. If we make this more complicated, it’d be criminal.

Report back.

3

Have you been working out before you started this routine? This can be a shock to the body to go from 0-60 like this.

Your rate of weight loss is good.

Are you eating enough carbs?
You do need to refuel fully with this intense a routine.

It takes about eight weeks to adapt to a new activity.

Philstr is right, you may want to cut out one or two sessions for now and add them back as you adapt.

4

This sounds like the P90X routine, is that what you are doing?? They go out of their way to tell you that it’s only for people who are already in decent shape looking to get in maximum condition. I started it when I was only 15 pounds or so overweight and I thought it was going to kill me that 2nd week (I had not been doing any exercise at all prior). I stuck with it and it’s great (a year later now), but maybe if you are truly “very overweight” you should be cutting down the workouts initially. Also, they recommend that every fourth week is a “recovery week” where you are doing mostly lighter cardio, are you doing that?

5

The amount of meals and concentration on whole grains sounds good. Are you eating much fruit? It’s weird to say, but perhaps you’re not getting enough calories. Complex carbs and lots of fruits and veggies would be the ideal way of getting those extra calories.

I’d recommend consulting a dietician and probably cutting out one of the workouts as recommended by the others.

6

Maybe diet is the problem. We were recommended to eat roughly one serving of carbs (like a cup of brown rice is a serving) five times a day. However, they also sent a spreadsheet for selecting meal replacement bars which recommends that you eat one gram of carbs per one pound of body weight. Because my body weight is so high, I haven’t been eating that much… it felt like too much. I might need to up my carbs.

phreesh: I’m actually eating a lot less fruit right now than I was at the beginning. You might be on to something there. I’ll try to get a bit more fruit in. I’m already eating lots of veggies.

Joey Tightlips: I’m not very familiar with that routine, but basically the way this works is:

Monday - “Fitness kickboxing” (cardio, generally about half as ‘rhythmic’ where you do the moves facing a mirror and the other half as bag work)
Tuesday - Resistance training (Upper body)
Wednesday - Kickboxing again
Thursday - Resistance training (Lower body)

… and so on with a rest day each Sunday. We don’t really have a ‘recovery’ week. It’s a ten week program but I do plan to continue afterward. I will probably take a few days off though, at least from the diet.

runner pat: I’ve been working out off and on for about a year and a half. I hadn’t really been working out much since Christmastime. However, I do modify quite a bit of it - modified push ups, doing planks on my knees, some band work I do without bands because of my body weight providing enough resistance, and so on. I might try increasing the carbs a bit though, I have been pushing the protein really hard and not putting as much thought into carbs.

Philster: But I have perfect attendance! :slight_smile: Actually, the workouts themselves were awful for the first few weeks but I feel like I’m getting the hang of them. I’m not sore all the time anymore, I just feel sorta spacey and low-energy. This isn’t just after the workout, it’s a lot of the day. I really hate to break the routine of it, because I am seeing progress, and I no longer seem to be huffing and puffing five minutes into it.

Thinking back now though I seem to peak in the afternoons right before working out, which is when my meals are closest together in the day, so I might just try a few days of upping my carbs/calories a little bit and see the effect of that.

7

When I started strength training I thought I should push myself to the limit every time I did it. If I weren’t adding more weight or boosting reps almost every time, I was mad at myself. And I wondered why I was so darn TIRED all the time. I worried that if I scaled it back I would not see any of the wonderful results of the first six months.

Finally my wife talked some sense into me. I changed my routine, built in more variety and allowed myself to lay off the he-man showmanship (I wasn’t really overdoing the number of times per week), and I feel much better. And the results have been as good or better.

Fluiddruid, you absolutely must take it a lot easier on yourself. You did not become a “very overweight” person in a matter of weeks, so you should not plan on becoming anything resembling your ideal body shape in less than nine months.

Exercise, like sex, should absolutely make you feel better almost all the time – though there will be the occasional bad episode of each – and if it doesn’t, you’re doing something wrong.

Best,
JK

8

Um, go see a doctor and get a doctor recommended exercise program.

There are different goals for losing weight vs. gaining muscle. To lose weight you want to keep your heart rate within a certain range (usually something like 120 to 135 depending on age) which is *much *lower than cardio workouts which is in the 140 to 150 range. For weight loss you might want to do treadmill at 4 mph with a large amount of angle vs. lower angle and faster speed for cardio for example.

Second, IMHO, the biggest thing with exercising to get in shape is to NOT kill yourself. First, working out that way is not healthy. Second you will burn out.

Talk to a doctor and ask him/her what she recommends. Next go to a gym and get a trainer to design a workout for you. When I first started working out again I focused on dropping weight. I got passed that for the most part (too much work lately, not enough gym) and now I am on to strength training which is a totally different workout.

On a side note, carbs* are for weight gain. If you are following a regimen that suggests a lot of carbs it is most likely not designed for losing weight.

Slee

*By carbs I mean refined carbs. Carbs from whole grain is cool. Enriched pasta, bread, etc, aren’t the best. Get with a doc, ask about diet, they can help.