{"id":68,"date":"2008-09-02T22:31:02","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T22:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/?p=68"},"modified":"2015-06-26T14:24:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T14:24:56","slug":"taking-a-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/02\/taking-a-break\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking a Break…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Last week, my workouts started to really suck, and I knew it was time to take a break. The last time I felt like this – I bruised my heel and injured my ankle. The time before, I got a really bad cold (I even stayed home from work, which is completely NOT normal for me). It was coming up on 4 months since I took a significant break from working out (more than 2 days in a row off, or less than 5 days in a week) so I declared this holiday weekend a mini-vacation for my muscles. I spent the long Labor Day weekend resting my poor tired stumps of legs, and beyond some swimming and shopping, my butt stayed firmly planted in a comfy seat.\u00a0 Like the bad olive, I gave myself permission to “do what I want”!!<\/p>\n

\"\"Additionally, I gave myself permission to eat what I wanted and not count calories. I ate french fries two days in a row, and red<\/a> meat<\/a> more often than normal. Thankfully I did not decide to have french fry salad as pictured over there, which looks disgusting!\u00a0 There was whiskey, rum, wine, champagne, and beer. However, yesterday, even though I was still in “eat whatever I want” mode, I sought out the salad bar<\/a> and for dinner we had some homemade shrimp stir fry instead of fatty, greasy food. I estimate that I had around my maintenance calories each day, maybe a little bit more. Yesterday morning, I felt really awful and sluggish, but after a day of veggies, veggies, and more veggies, I’m feeling great.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mentally, I needed a break from worrying about everything as well. For the most part, I stayed away from just surfing the web, which just eats hours of my day if I let it. I lost myself in a game<\/a> for hours to the point where it screwed up my sleep schedule. That being said, I slept in until after 11 am one day, and made it until about 10 am two others. I spent two afternoons at the pool and replenished my stores of vitamin D and now have some color instead of my pasty office tan (see, look, a little color in the cheeks there). We had a nice, small BBQ gathering. We went shopping and picked up some shoes<\/a> (because I sooo needed some shoes, let me tell ya, heh) and other assorted things. It felt like a super long, eventful, but also relaxing weekend. Perfection.<\/p>\n

I can tell it did me good, because I intentionally chose healthy food yesterday and today, and I woke up yesterday feeling like it was time for a workout. My calves and hamstrings are still a little tight (so obviously I needed the time off), but my neck is the most tense area right now, which is a sign that I’ve been doing more sitting than I should, and it’s time to move. Tomorrow, it’s right back into the swing of things, and for the first time in a while, I’m more than ready for it. I’m not dreading work like I have been since we started working overtime on and off, I’m not dreading my workouts like I have been the last few weeks, and I’m not resenting going back to my calorie counting tomorrow, I actually welcome it. I also took a break from even stepping on the scale, but today I’m weighing in at 171, which is not bad.<\/p>\n

How do you know you might be overtraining<\/a>?<\/p>\n