Low Energy Days

In the ideal world, we would wake up every morning ready to tackle the day. We would get out of bed feeling refreshed; make our super-woman breakfast; get the kids off to school; and then hit the gym for a hard, yet rewarding, workout that leaves us feeling accomplished and strong! Well, life has a funny way of throwing us some curve balls and its only natural to have some days when we just don't feel our best.

Today was a very low energy day for me. I'll back up by saying that last night when I finally got home, I was ready to drop! It had been a hard day; physically, emotionally and mentally. I went to bed early, but couldn't get into a good sleep pattern. I woke up several times, tossed and turned and by 5 AM, I had really only had about 3 hours of sleep. When it was time to get out of bed, I felt sluggish and "beat up".

I went through the motions of getting breakfast, packing lunches, getting kids dressed and ready to go and then loaded everyone up in the car to get where we needed to go. I was thinking about my workout, what muscles was I going to focus on today, etc. (Even on my worst mornings, I still very much look forward to my workout) I was at the gym by 7 AM and everything felt fine.

Today I worked Shoulders, Back and Calves. I realized that I wasn't really "into" my workout when I was surprised by what song I was listening to on my iPhone. I realized, "I'm not really listening to the music. Where am I?" That meant that I probably wasn't thinking about my sets, my weights, my muscles, etc. I was lost in thought somewhere else. My body was in the gym, but my mind wasn't.

I finished up my strength training and then headed downstairs to do my 30 minutes of high intensity training cardio. 15 mintues of interval training on the TM, and I was losing steam. I decided to change machines, sometimes that helps me refocus and keep up the momentum. 7 minutes of interval training on the bumble bee and I was done. I tried changing my music, watching some of the TV, but I just couldn't muster up enough to pull through. I ended up stopping just 2 minutes shy of a complete workout. Not a big deal, since I did do a 5 minute warm-up and I did have a hard workout. I was ticked-off at myself for not sticking to it for 2 more minutes, but I felt that my body was exhausted.

When I got home, I fixed my second breakfast, egg white veggie omelet, whole grain english muffin and cup of green tea. I could only eat about half of it, so I made half a whey protein shake. I'm not going to beat myself up too much about not having an awesome workout. I went, I did it, I pushed myself (even if I did fizzle out) and tomorrow is a new day.

This is the PERFECT example how stress can interfere with your sleep, exercise and diet.