Are You Exercising Too Often?

Whether you're working out just because you love to or because you're trying to slim down for the summer, you need to know the signs that you may be working out too much and overdoing it. Your body needs time to take a break and recover in between workouts. If you are exercising too often, you can hurt your body and even reverse the good that workouts were doing. Some signs that you are exercising too much and/or too hard:

1. You can't sleep

2. Constant aches and pains in your muscles and/or joints

3. Lack of energy

4. Headaches

5. Loss of desire for food

6. Lack of ability to finish your exercises

7. Short tempered

8. Making exercise the main concern in your life

9. Feel guilty when you don't exercise

Some problems with your body if you exercise too much:

1. Minor injuries transform to major injuries because there is not a sufficient amount of time to bounce back from the minor injury

2. Arthritis

3. Osteoporosis

4. Lack of fluids

5. Loss of menstrual cycle in women

6. Immune dysfunction

7. Muscle fibers break down

8. May lead to high blood pressure and into heart failure

9. Can lead to bulimia in young women who are working out too much

10. Waking up in the morning with a high pulse rate

When you are exercising, make sure you are doing a different group of muscles each day if you are weight training. If you are just doing a cardio workout, mix it up a little with how you get your cardio in by running one day and maybe going for a swim the next. The key to not overtraining is to change your routine day by day to ensure your body gets the time to heal that it needs and you are not working out the same way day after day.

In order to make sure you are not doing too much and overtraining yourself is by keeping track of your workouts by writing them down on a calendar or on a planner. Make it like a scheduled time for whatever you feel comfortable with, but not over a 60 minute timeline and don't go over that appointed time. The amount of time you should be exercising varies from person to person, but there are clear warning signs that you could be working out too much. Doing your workouts in moderation is the key to a happy and healthy body and lifestyle. Make sure you talk to your doctor about any questions or concerns you may have and what you can do to help yourself and to find out what the right amount of exercise would be for you.

Sources:

http://www.mamashealth.com/exercise/toomuch.asp

http://www.steadyhealth.com/articles/How_much_exercise_is_too_much__a498_f52.html