You start your morning enthusiastically and with determination to exercise your body. You eat healthy almost all day and plan your schedule in a way to give enough time to your fitness regime. You kick start your workout with some great cardio, maybe on the treadmill, bicycle, swimming or any other form of exercise and then suddenly in just a few minutes you start feeling fatigued and that 30 minutes look way longer than you thought and every step feels like a mile and your body feels heavy. You want to stop right away or stretch for few more minutes and eventually get derailed from your workout regime.
This is a common occurrence and happens to me as well. It is not an issue to worry but a point deserving some analysis to find a solution, so that we can commit ourselves to good workout sessions and achieve our desired fitness levels.
There may be many reasons as to – why do you feel fatigued during your workout and I am listing some of them here:
1: first and foremost if you have been exercising beyond your requirement continuously for several days without any rest. For example if you do high intensity exercises for more than 60 minutes every day without any rest in between, your body feels tired and you start to loose muscles. In order for your muscles to recover from the vigorous physical activity you should plan a workout schedule which allows you to a rest of 1-2 days during the week depending on your intensity and the hours of workouts.
2. Lack of proper and balanced nutrition. I would stress on this point quite a bit because lack of nutrition causes many deficiencies in our body which leads to fatigue. To achieve desired fitness level it’s not sufficient to only exercise but to eat healthy and balanced nutrition with the inclusion of complex carbohydrates, good fats, lean protein, and all the minerals and vitamins. Do not restrict yourself to extra low calories for weight loss but make sure to eat the required calories depending on your activity level.
3. Working on your desk in front of the computer for long hours to accomplish the expectations of your work targets. This type of stress induces fatigue and tiredness not only to the mind but also to your body as a whole. At this point you should give in to your body requirements and provide sufficient rest, for your mind and body to recover.
4. Not enough sleep. Insufficient sleep causes tiredness and fatigue to your body. It also leads to inefficiency and lack of productivity. A peaceful and undisturbed sleep of 8 hours is required to be able to hit the gym efficiently and achieve the much needed fitness levels.
5. Dehydration and weather changes cause fatigue to your body. If you are not sufficiently hydrated with water your body will fight from dehydration which results in fatigue and lack of energy. Similarly, if the climate is too hot and again if you aren’t drinking enough liquids your body will lose its efficiency to perform.
6. Hormonal changes. Most women go through monthly hormonal changes which cause internal fatigue because our body goes through some major changes to get accustomed to new internal challenges. At this time you may feel de- motivated and fatigued and not focused enough. At this time your best option would be to push yourself for only 30 minutes low intensity cardio workout which will still help your body to release endorphin and help you stay active and make your monthly hormonal changes a bit easy on your body and also make you guilt free for not exercising.
7. Keep your thyroid and anemia/hemoglobin levels in check. These medical conditions cause fatigue to your body and thereby lead to some bloating and weight gain or excessive weight loss and lack of efficiency.
There is solution to these problems. The most natural way to fight fatigue, which worked in my case to not let my body starve and provide healthy food, is to eat every 2 hours. But even before I do that the first important thing I always do is to eat a fruit or some protein accompanied with whole grain in the morning within 15 minutes of waking up. By doing this the blood sugar level comes back to normal which falls during our sleep and the body isn’t scared of going hungry all day, hence, its works efficiently in circulating the blood and oxygen throughout the body.
Sleep for 8 hours, drink 8 glasses of water, avoid over-training and give time to body muscles for recovery and visit your physician on a regular basis.
Health tip of the week
“Treat your body with love and it will give you positive results in return”.
Willow says
I actually don’t feel fatigued during a workout very often, but fatigued shortly after. I spend many hours on the computer, so that could be the culprit.
Gunjan says
Sometimes sitting in front of the screen wears you down so be careful if you are getting fatigued when you don’t want to 🙂