Overexercising?

[Daves_Not_Here]

From time to time, I read posts by people who are struggling to lose weight in spite of spending 1 to 2 rigorous hours in the gym every day.  Beyond being generally active, these people are engaging in resistance and high-intensity cardio exercise, yet they can't lose weight.

Seems like this would bring on "exercise-induced-inflammation" and stress related to no recovery time.  My impression is that even world-class athletes do not work out intensely for hours every day.  Does overexercising interfere with weight loss?

[WendyB]

I really dont know how to answer this.

Some people go overboard when they start. I also think a lot of people believe in the Biggest Loser and go over board.

It comes down to balance exercising and Balance eating. Getting in touch with your body and finding what it needs. It never has been about exercise. It about what you put in your mouth

I have read many posts. I'm doing 10K a day and not losing. Who cares what did you eat? <-- That's what is important Eating. You can walk 50K a day and not be tone and fit if you dont eat properly

[Dominique]

I think few people are actually overtraining, in the sense of putting too much work relative to their recovery ability. It’s more that they are expecting too much from exercising (for weight loss) and not putting enough emphasis on their eating. So they are understandbly frustrated: all this work, and not much to show for it.

They’re overexercising in the sense they could exercise less and reach better results with weight loss, if only their diet was better planned.   

[Mukluk4]

If you are in the weight room and doing cardio, the last thing you should be looking at is a number on a scale as it's not  very reflective of the work you are putting in.  I think you are better suited in tracking (1) measurements and (2) baseline physical activity)

Once I quite focusing on the scale number (it really hasn't moved in a year or more) and focused on the pants/shirt size reduction and some key measures in baseline activity, I realized that yes I was making way more progress than I realized.

[SunsetRunner]

I posted recently about my weight loss stopping, and I do mostly weight lifting with LISS cardio. For a few months I was doping the concept2 rower as well.

I will say, I do NOT feel run down or over taxed from my 5 day a week workouts (1.5 hours). And while the scale has stopped momentarily (I say this because I bet will move again eventually), I do get a lot of non-weight loss victories. I mean, my weight has not budged for like 5 weeks, but my belt is looser, and  my clothes continue to feel *baggier*.

For me, I'm just so conditioned to rely on the scale number.

[WavyDavey]

There's no over training, only under eating. When engaged in a serious program, it's easy to under eat and flatten the metabolism in my experience.

[Ennay]

There is most definitely overtraining but weight loss/gain isn't a primary indicator.  And neither is time spent working out.  It has more to do with quality recovery and smart training.  

some symptoms can be:

increasing resting heartrate - some coaches actually monitor this and wont allow hard workouts on days with an overnight increase from baseline.

decreasing performance without injury

new insomnia without other changes in life

Overtraining is however thrown around quite often as an easy blame for a lot of other things that are more likely to be overeating or poor sleep habits etc.  It is really pretty uncommon for the average gymrat to encounter overtraining. 

[Daves_Not_Here]

@Ennay - I should make a distinction between over-training and over-exercising.  I recognize over-training as an issue for athletes that do not allow for sufficient recovery, or exercise at too high an intensity, duration or frequency so as to be counterproductive to their performance goals (and that may lead to injury).  I'm not talking about this.

By over-exercising, I'm talking about the situation where people, in an effort to lose weight and improve fitness, spend hours per day working out.  But, instead of enjoying their good health, they feel exhausted and cannot lose weight.  I continue to see posts of the form "I'm killing myself for hours everyday while starving myself, but I can't lose weight."  My question is if the intense level of exercise is actually contributing to weight gain, through mechanisms such as inflammation and increased appetite.

[Ennay]

I think it can at the extremes, but I dont think you can judge solely by time spent in the gym.  It varies so much for individuals.  And I don't think it has much to do with inflammation (over a long period of time) and more to do with overproduction of stress hormones. 

I think some people are more prone to it.

I do think the working out like a maniac and starving self can be a bad combo and make it harder to lose through whatever the mechanism is.

[WavyDavey]

Sorry, my comment about over training was meant to be in jest.

It's a difficult situation to assess when people describe their workouts in subjective terms -- "working my butt off".  We really need to know objective information like weight, age, calories burned per workout, average heart rate per workout, active minutes per workout etc.

My sense is that it's easy to overestimate one's accuracy in counting calories, and equally easy to overestimate intensities of workouts. I just don't see how someone could maintain a significant caloric deficit and fail to lose (or even gain) weight, unless there's an error in the numbers somewhere?

[WendyB]

I think you will always see these types of post. Sorry but people go overboard when they begin. They dont look at the over all picture. I have a friend on fitbit that never made it to 10K. Now they are doing 40-50K a day. They have physical  limitations and they are ignoring them.  I'm scared because she might really harm herself

[Corney]

@WavyDavey  Sorry to disagree with you but there is over training.  The effects of over training affects the immune system, bringing on a cold or fever.  A person on this site posted that she knows a few ultra marathoners who seem to be always sick.  Back when I was running 7 miles everyday I was very healthy, but when I developed a cold and fever I knew it was time to rest a few days.  A person can overdo almost anything from eating, drinking fluids leaving their electrolytes out of balance, you can even breath too much pure oxygen.

[WavyDavey]

@Corney, I assume you missed the first sentence of my last post, no worries. Of course you're right about overtraining. I've experienced it, and it's quite a hole to climb out of. If only there were HRV apps back in the day...

Anything can be overdone, sure. But my gut tells me that it's easier to overestimate one's efforts than underestimate. That is, among folks trying to lose weight, I find very very few are working harder than they think.

Ultra-marathoners is a great example--athletes with extreme recovery needs due to being in such a catabolic state. But then, those folks tend not to have issue with losing weight, which I think was what @Daves_Not_Here was after in the original post.

[Baltoscott]

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@Daves_Not_Herewrote:

@Ennay - I should make a distinction between over-training and over-exercising. ...

By over-exercising, I'm talking about the situation where people, in an effort to lose weight and improve fitness, spend hours per day working out.  But, instead of enjoying their good health, they feel exhausted and cannot lose weight.  I continue to see posts of the form "I'm killing myself for hours everyday while starving myself, but I can't lose weight."  My question is if the intense level of exercise is actually contributing to weight gain, through mechanisms such as inflammation and increased appetite.

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I think the key observation is that intense exercise + ‘starving myself’ can lead to stalls.  In part I think people (and Fitbit) overestimate the calorie burn of the exercise in question,  but for those who also go really low in calorie consumption their BMR may slow down the rest of the day to compensate. They will also tend to be more tired than when they are fed and will generally move less throughout the day.  If they eat enough to support the exercise, weight loss will probably resume.  

Just read this article in the NYT about how hard it is for Olympic cross country skiers to eat enough to maintain weight with all the exercise their sport demands.  Amazing.

[Daves_Not_Here]

Thanks @Baltoscott for that crazy article -- although I will admit reading about all that food made me hungry!

[Ennay]

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@Daves_Not_Herewrote:

Thanks @Baltoscott for that crazy article -- although I will admit reading about all that food made me hungry!

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I was actually a little depressed that the poor women only get 3500.  🙂 

[Ennay]

OK here is my way too wordy take on the matter as someone who has experienced it from several sides. 

I used to be a very active person.  I was a marathon runner who lifted and yoga'd.  And this did NOT cause overtraining even though there were days I would have 4 hours of workouts at pretty high intensity.  I was working out appropriately for my goals and fitness level and had ramped up to it.  I had good recovery built in.  

Was I overexercising or overtraining?  The difference is subtle  We talk about overtraining as a peril of the endurance athlete but I think you see it as well in the unfit.  Because both are really doing more than your body can do without giving adequate recovery which causes similar side effects. But one is temporary and the other has long term consequences.  So by those terms I was not either.  My performance was continuing to improve, my sleep was good, my mood and energy was good (but not manic).  My weight did have a tendency to creep up now and then as I never focused on diet and I have always had a large appetite, but was pretty stable.  I never was a skinny marathoner.  I tended to hang out right at the upper end of "normal" BMI but with a fairly good chunk of muscle mass.

Then I was in a car accident.  I couldn't work out for quite awhile and couldn't do anything but walk and do PT for exercise for a while after that.  I gained weight rapidly as someone used to burning ~7-10K weekly in exercise calories will when that is suddenly shut off.   And in the return from that and with a goal marathon in mind, I experienced I think all of what you are talking to at different times. 

The first stage I was running through what I think @Baltoscott is referring to and what I think many of the people @Daves_Not_Here are.  I was working out at a much lower intensity than before but I ramped up too quickly to about the same volume.  Which was resulting in me spending most of my time when I wasn't working out sleepy, lethargic.  I was no longer the person who came home from a 20 miler, packed up the kids and took them for an all day outing at our hilly zoo.  So my overall burn was still very low and weight loss was not what you would expect based on the workouts and the diet.  Not so much a fault of inability to count or measure food.  But a change in the RMR for the other 23 (or in my case 21ish) hours of the day that is significant.  And this can happen at any level but really often in the unfit starting a new workout.  Even just walking a couple miles every day can be taxing if that is not what you are used to.  This is what I would call overexercising.  Ramping too fast and working out to the point that you are lethargic the rest of the day on a frequent basis.  Sometimes it requires backing off, sometimes its within what bodies can adjust to as fitness improves.  It's a fine line.

So I worked through that and slowly got my baseline fitness up but I was still 20 lbs or so above the top end of my training weight.  I was no longer overexercising, my energy was back, so I started to train hard, basing my workouts on performance feedback and how it had worked for me before.  BUT I was also counting calories and trying to lose those 20 lbs.  My times were such that the formulas for how much your weight is holding your pace down were right on where I used to be.    So i was training like before but dieting. 

And that is when I hit overtraining.  And the result of that besides just eventually not wanting to exercise anymore, was my metabolism plummeted.  My times got slower.  My sleep went to hell.  My stress hormones were so out of whack that even though I knew how to count and measure calories precisely, I was gaining weight on a diet that should have had me losing even without exercise.  That is overtraining and it can cause weight gain/ failure to lose in seeming defiance of the laws of physics.  Hormones play a significant role in metabolism.  It's why a skinny, 5'4" 135 lb man will still burn more calories than a strong 5'4" 135 woman.  I do think it can also happen in the underfit because the major driver for overtraining is stress hormones. It takes a longer time to develop but I do think the Biggest Loser type approach to weight loss is a major driver on why you see it more now in the general population and not just in athletes.   This notion that you can perpetually underfuel and force a rapid weightloss causes long term health risks and kills metabolism.

They had a study that showed that the TBL contestants even after switching to a more normal diet and exercise regime have a metabolism that is significantly lower than you would expect for their age and weight. And a lot of it is because they spent 6-12 months in stress hormone hell.

If you are still reading, take a break. You overexercised.  🙂

[Corney]

If some is good more is better, False!  Researchers have found that moderate exercise can be linked to a decreased frequency in Upper Respiratory Tract Infections(URTI).  They studied 500 adults who participated in 1-2 hours of moderate exercise daily and compared to adults that maintained an inactive life style, those that exercised showed the incidence of UTRI's decreased by 1/3.  By comparison, long hard bouts of exercise and periods of intensified training puts athletes at increased risks of cold and flu.  A study of marathoners showed a 2-6 fold increase in URTI's after a marathon.  There is a fine line that separates exercise to improve your health and fitness and training that affects the immune system, making one more susceptible illness.  First signs of over training, cold and the flu and cold sores, so be smart, don't follow the adage I once believed in, that if some is good more is better, it' not!  With age comes wisdom. 

[Kris111]

Yes it's highly possible. There is the stress hormone that gets activated known as cortisol which can drive you to overeat because it causes cravings when you arent actually hungry amd of course for all the bad things...that's a huge part of it.