Ask Shannon: Fitness and Nutrition Q & A at Her Active Life

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Ask Shannon: Fitness and Nutrition Q & A

Posted May 20, 2008 at 11:00 AM by Shannon Clark

Section: Her Fitness, Her Nutrition

With years of training under her belt, resident fitness and nutrition expert Shannon Clark is ready to help you on your way to a healthy, informed lifestyle. Got a question? her your inquiries, and be sure to check back every week for the latest Q&A.

Q: I’m on a diet right now and things are going well – I’m losing weight at a rate that I’m happy with, but I’m finding I’m always tired. Even though I’m getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night, I’m still really struggling to stay awake. Could there be something that’s causing this? What could I do to prevent feeling so tired all the time? I don’t know if this is normal and part of the dieting process or if there’s something wrong.

A: Great question. The important thing here is to distinguish between fatigue and extreme tiredness. Some fatigue—say by the end of the day you’re definitely ready for bed and feeling that you want to sleep more— is normal on a hypocalorie diet.

Fatigue though that makes you not want to get out of bed in the morning or that prevents you from being able to carry out your everyday tasks is not normal and needs to be looked at more seriously.

When this does occur, it definitely needs to be addressed.

The thing I’d recommend having a close look at is your workout program itself. Are you getting enough total rest during the week? Did you reduce the volume of your workouts after going on the diet? If not, this is the first place to start.

Many dieters make the mistake of trying to perform the exact same workouts they did when they weren’t on the diet. This causes issues because since you are not feeding your body as much, you don’t have nearly the same amount of calories to dedicate towards recovery, and hence, your body cannot keep up.

Some dieters will even take this one step further and add more exercise to their schedule, since exercise is a calori-burning activity. While this may be okay if you are consuming enough calories, it’s not if you aren’t. A good guideline is anything less than eleven calories per pound of body weight and you should be cutting back on exercise volume.

Keep in mind too that it takes a lot of exercise to ‘burn’ off the calories you eat, so trying to do the opposite (workout so you can eat a lot more) is usually not the best plan. You’d have to really be working out a lot to make up for a small amount of additional food. The only place where this may be permissible is with those individuals who have a very slow metabolism and shouldn’t bring their calories any lower because it will cause them to sacrifice on getting enough nutrition.

When working towards reducing the volume, pay more attention to total sets and exercises performed, rather than weight lifted.

So, for example, if you are normally doing 4 sets of squats performing 8 reps per set and lifting 80 pounds, rather than keeping it at 4 sets and 8 reps but dropping the weight down to 70 pounds, reduce your total set number down to 3, but keep the rep and weight the same.

Doing it this way will do a much better job of maintaining your fitness level, while keeping total volume at an amount the body can handle.

When dieting, the best approach is usually a full body workout performed three days a week, with about 3-4 core lifts (bench press, squat, deadlift, shoulder press, row), along with two accessory exercises (bicep curls, tricep exercises, lateral raises, abs, etc). All exercises should ideally be done for 2-3 sets with 5-8 reps per set.

So, I’d highly suggest having a look at your current weight lifting routine and make sure you are not attempting to do too much.