Have you hit the wall not once but a few times?
Hitting the wall – overtraining … hello Adrenal Fatigue.
It is very common for people to end up in an overtrained state. It’s the one thing after another that soon adds up and bang you’ve hit a wall.
Some people see it only as the last part of the puzzle, they don’t see what has been the lead up, this then makes the repeat of yet another burnout later on.
When weight gain is happening, even though you support a clean diet, can result to low cortisol (burnout/adrenal exhaustion).
My burnout
This happened to me a few years ago. A few though it was because of my body figure competition I competed at the time, and yes maybe that’s true – however there is so much background to this which completes the story….
Thirteen years ago I was in business with a friend, we had all intentions that I would just do the behind the scenes stuff while still running my PT business and raising my two beautiful baby boys, along with maintaining a household while my partner worked shift work.
But after having this business for three years, working long hours within the both businesses, having my second child and up through the night breastfeeding – this wasn’t going to be the original plan.
The business ended and in a very stressful way, I was hitting rock bottom and had to hold myself up for my two boys.
Two years after this business break up, in September my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – when I googled this the first thing that popped up was ‘5 months to live’ – talk about falling back into a distressed state.
Wayne went through the surgery and every step of his cancer fight was with minimal chance of survival, and this went on for 3 years.
Throughout that 3 years so much stress, grief and trauma was fighting within my body.
Not to mention still trying to process the least amount of stress.
While this was going on I was powerlifting training with a friend under a very good coach, plus also wanted to complete a marathon because the distance represented Wayne’s age 42!. (Now realising I was jeopardizing both training sessions one building muscle, the other sabotaging my muscle).
When I was powerlifting one day I felt my back twinge, I had twisted my ribs in my back, yes very painful, and this was my body saying enough is enough – but oh no – I got treatment from my osteopath and continued my marathon training on a stepper because the impact didn’t hurt my ribs – I wasn’t about to back down, and I didn’t take this as a warning from my body.
I completed the marathon in 3.50hrs and was wrapped, and now looking for the next challenge, (never stopping to celebrate the wins!)
As I was walking, or should I say shuffling back to the car, I got a call from my brother’s partner to say Wayne had fallen quite ill again!
We went through the next few months with lots of hardship and emotional times.
It was the last month of Wayne’s fight when they said ‘no more chemo’, that I ran and ran everyday – a form of stress relief I thought, and just some space from others.
One day when I was running I could feel a pain in my foot, but again I ignored it, I just iced it after each run and tried to ‘Dr Google’ it to find out what was wrong. I didn’t have time to worry about this as my brother didn’t have long to live. I would take an ice pack to his house and sit with him whilst I iced my foot.
I was now at a limping stage, when I went and got an MRI – to find that I had a stress fracture in my foot.
A couple of weeks later Wayne passed away and I remember buying a pair of low heel boots, for the funeral, and my foot ached – but I just had to shut that pain out, the heartbreak was even more painful, I was totally broken.
I stood up in front of hundreds of people to read out my eulogy for Wayne, all whilst my foot throbbed, it was something again that needed to be ignored.
A few weeks after this the torture went on – I needed to take my mind away, I needed space again, so once my foot healed, I went to a coach to start the body composition training – I was going to lean down to a stage weight to challenge myself and look good! I was aiming for a figure competition that required lots of weight training accompanied by a strict diet.
Yes I did get down to a 53kg stage weight and I was proud of my efforts on stage. I made sure after following a strict diet, that I refed correctly to not gain a ridiculous amount of weight and blow out like I had seen others do, I was going to be in control!!!
BANG!!! That didn’t happen, well the control of food was great and the training, but the hormones went ballistic, my body was angry and pissed off that I didn’t listen to it before, the only way I would listen to it now was with the weight gain – as my body knew I hated weight gain!!
Yes I finally payed attention, I finally SLOWED down, and even though I was working with a naturopath along with my coach for the competition, my naturopath and I worked hard on finding out what was wrong after 6 months of gaining weight yet on a strict diet (strict as nutrient dense strict, not calorie strict).
My diet contained every good source of nutrients and supplements you could have, but my body would not process anything, because it could not recognise anything when your adrenals are fried, burnt out, broken.
Note: so many stressful and traumatic situations lead to my health condition. Not just one situation – it has been over 10 years of it.
Overtraining
Overtraining is a huge concern at the moment, and people need to fully understand that LESS IS MORE, this fad of training 5-6 times a week at high intensity levels is insane! Yes initially weight loss will occur, but it will not sustain!. The only thing that will sustain is the dysfunctional hormones.
When your body has a lack of nutrients – mine was lacking before I started the body comp work, due to the trauma and grief of losing my brother, my exhaustion overrode the nutrients coming into the body.
Grief
- So many people don’t eat at this time in their life so nutrition is depleted.
- Your stress response and fight and flight kicks in.
- Your adrenals churn out hormones like cortisol (high cortisol), and there is no time for the rest and digest, so therefore if any nutrition is coming in is being stored.
The story
- stress one : nutrition depleted
- stress two: increased amounts of training
- stress three: lack of sleep
no wonder adrenal fatigue is the outcome.
In my case adrenal exhaustion has been diagnosed due to low cortisol, can’t spit out anything, totally fried, whereas adrenal fatigue is common when your cortisol levels are too high.
Stop and think next time you get a stress fracture, you may just put it down to the excess running, jumping or training at the time, but I say to you to look further and think about all the other added stressors that come into play with this.
- It could be a trauma from years ago that your body has not dealt with.
- It could be the stress of family life, work and the food you eat putting stress on your body, causing inflammation, causing stress.
- It could be one of many things, so for you to recover properly, you need to do a full self evaluation and start being kind to yourself so that you don’t fully burnout, not just once but twice or three times.
Try getting into float tanks, infrared saunas, walk in nature, sleep, rest, play with your kids – be active, don’t be stupid.
If you need help please reach out and contact me I have many programs to help with hormones and individual programs to help you improve your health and wellbeing.
2021 The Year of Wellness
