Laura Schoenfeld: All right, this is another one that I see a lot in my particular niche for my nutrition practice. So I work with a lot of mostly women, but people in general, who have gotten to that overtraining, undereating, overly stressed lifestyle, and maybe it was working for them for a while, but now they’re starting to get the symptoms of HPA axis dysfunction. Or possibly they are not able to exercise anymore because they’ve gotten such bad adrenal dysfunction that they just can’t function anymore. It doesn’t sound like this person’s at that point yet, but it certainly sounds like they’re on the road to that. I would say you know exercise addiction, the question there is, what problem are they trying to solve by exercising?
So is it that they’re addicted to exercise because they have a certain body composition goal in mind or a certain appearance goal that they’re trying to accomplish and they feel that exercising more is going to help with that? Or is it that they exercise for stress relief? Which in that case they feel like if they don’t have the exercise they’re going to be stressed out all the time. Exercise definitely gives positive endorphins and different neurochemicals that make people feel good in the short term. But if it’s something that is too much all the time, it can definitely backfire and then cause mood disruption and a reduction in those positive neurotransmitters. So you have to figure out why the person is “addicted to exercise” because usually there’s something that they’re trying to accomplish by exercising as frequently as they are, and if you can figure that out, you can figure out ways to either counsel them out of the overtraining situation or replace the overtraining with something that will be just as effective.
So let’s say it’s the stress relief that they get from exercising. So you can tell them okay, well you have to stop exercising, but maybe instead of doing intense weight training six days a week, let’s cut that down to four days a week and then two other days you either take a walk outside or you go do yoga or something that’s lower intensity. That may not be enough to get them out of HPA-D, but it could at least help prevent them from getting worse. If it’s a body composition issue, like if the person has body dysmorphia and is afraid that if they stop training that they’re going to gain weight, I actually find that for a lot of my clients that overtraining actually worsens their body composition. So if you can give them some evidence that they would get better results if they trained less, that might help them make a different decision as far as their training regimen is concerned.
Basically, if they’re working out every day very intensely with HPA-D, there’s no way they’re gonna get over the HPA-D without cutting back on that training. And it may be that they don’t end up cutting back on it until they literally can’t do it anymore. I’ve had clients get to that point before, where they just couldn’t actually exercise. Which nobody wants their clients to get to that point, but if somebody is really stubborn, it might be that kind of a crash that has to happen before they’ll actually reevaluate their practices. But if you’re trying to avoid that crash, like I said, if you have some conversation about why the person wants to be training this much, it could be that, say, they’re a CrossFitter. I’ve had clients where I found that they’re, the reason that they were going to training every day was because it was actually a way for them to socialize. So it wasn’t that they necessarily had to exercise everyday. They just liked having that community to go to.
So maybe looking for ways that they could still go to the gym but instead of doing the workout, like if they are doing CrossFit, instead of doing the WOD, maybe they could just use some mobility and foam rolling and stretching and stuff while the other people are there. And they can talk and hang out and have that socialization. So again, trying to find out what the reason is for exercising as much as they are is going to be helpful. Definitely make sure they’re eating enough, so if they’re training every day, they need to be eating like an athlete, essentially, and that’s a big issue I see for a lot of my clients that end up in HPA-D because of overtraining. It’s because they’re not eating enough to support that training. So make sure that they’re getting enough calories, that they’re getting a decent amount of carbs. If it’s high-intensity training, they probably need a higher carb intake, so 30 to 50 percent of their calories from carbohydrate. Try to make sure that they’re sleeping enough to recover. So really focusing on all the areas of recovery. Diet is a part of recovery, both total calories and macronutrients, as well as micronutrients. So make sure that this person’s got a nutrient-dense diet, sleeping at least eight hours a night. With that much training, they may need closer to nine or more, depending on how much they’re training. Stress management in general.
If they have a stressful job or stressful family situation, looking for ways to reduce stress or incorporating stress management practices like meditation, deep breathing, yoga, that kind of stuff. I mean, honestly, like I said, I think the most important thing is to figure out how to cut back on the training or take a break from it for a period of time. There are some fitness professionals that recommend something called a deload. So you might want to look into that, where they actually every eight to 12 weeks will take a week off of intense training to help their body recover. If the person still wants to work out every day, then maybe they’ll consider taking a deload week where they don’t do any training for a week.
Again, if they feel like they’re addicted to exercise, that might be hard to convince them to do, but it is an actual strategy for athletic and strength performance, that kind of thing. So it’s not just like taking a break and losing all your fitness. It’s actually supposed to help with fitness progression. Yeah, I mean, this is another situation like the guy before, where you really have to do some motivational interviewing to figure out why the person feels the exercise is important. If they’re coming to you because they had HPA-D, then obviously there are some symptoms that they’re dealing with that they want to improve from. So trying to make sure they’re focusing on healing from HPA-D as being the priority right now and realizing that the training schedule is going to affect how fast they can heal, or if they heal at all, and really just making sure they understand the consequences of a training schedule like that, especially one that doesn’t attend to recovery as well as it should. So that would be what I would do.
So first try to get them to actually reduce the training intensity or frequency if you can convince them that there’s a better way to train that doesn’t require six, seven days a week. Replacing that with low-intensity exercise or socializing or maybe something that’s not activity related but is still stress relieving. Just looking for what could help them reduce that exercise without having this gap in their schedule where they have nothing else to do. And then, like I said, focusing on the recovery piece. So making sure the person’s eating enough, sleeping enough, getting enough carbs and calories when it comes eating enough, doing stress management practices and considering a deload week if the person doesn’t want to change their training schedule. So that’s where I would start. I’m sure there’s a lot of different things you could do here, but kind of the basics are going to be reducing training and increasing recovery time, however that looks in that person’s lifestyle.