Today I did something I rarely do…I listened to my body and took a rest day.
I woke up this morning and signed up for Saturday morning spin class for Saturday morning. My plan was to then get ready and go to the gym like I usually do. I was just not feeling it this morning, so I decided to listen to my body and rest. I fell back into bed and still had trouble waking up at 6:45am. Guess I needed it!
I am very much a creature of habit and my habits include getting up every morning at 5am and getting a workout in. I just cannot do it at the end of the day and that is my time to hang with the hubby, so I get it done in the morning and feel energized. When I don’t workout I am irritable, crabby, and an overall mess!
I always feel guilty when I take a rest day, I feel like I am somehow a slacker…which I know isn’t true. Rest days are super important, more important than we may think. When we continually push our bodies we run the risk of over training and injury. Not fun! Our muscles need time to recuperate and rebuild themselves. I like the following excerpt from wiki answers about rest days:
“Think of it this way: you do not grow muscle in the gym. What you do in the gym should stimulate muscle growth outside the gym, which means that recovery is as important as exercise.!
Exercise is like medicine: too little is not effective and too much is counter-productive. In both, it’s important to get enough without getting too much.”!
I have burned the candle at both ends in the past and ended up with mono. I was SO tired and kept running and was stumped at why I use to be able to go for an 8 miler and feel fine and now just running 1 mile was killer. Yeah, turns out I had mono and that turned into Epstein bar/chronic fatigue.!
After my bout with that I knew I had to start listening to my body more. This has been hard to do, but I am slowly starting to get smarter. Just take today…I went back to bed and skipped the gym! Happy Friday!!!
