👎 When "More" Isn't Better

And when less is more.

Community Happenings

⭐ Did you know that on the second Sunday of every month, there's free live music at Sunnyside Mall? The next one is August 9!

⭐ Saturday, July 25th, join an art show and benefit at Jenny G's Art Supply. Proceeds benefit Liliana & Ricardo, a Rogers Park mother & her teenage son who were put in ICE detention & separated for almost 3 months. All art is $15.

🎉 Happy Friday, Friends!

Do you ever feel worse after a workout? Exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed, or even numb inside? Let's talk about why this happens.

The fitness industry doesn't want you to know this, because culturally, we love the idea of pain = gain. Conversely, we hear a lot about movement being a stress reliever, but there's more to the story. The thing is...

Exercise is a stressor on your body. Always.

That's not a reason to stop moving. But it is a reason to stop treating "more" as better. Let's talk about it.

Your body does not distinguish between types of stress the way your conscious mind does.

When you're in the middle of a difficult exercise session, your nervous system is firing in ways that look, physiologically, almost exactly like the stress response you have when you doomscroll or when you get an email from your evil boss. Your body is working hard, and it registers that effort as a demand.

This isn't a bad thing. It's how we adapt to harder, quicker, or more controlled movements over time.

But here's the other side of it: your body is constantly integrating all of your stressors, not just the ones that happen during movement. The workout you did in the morning exists alongside the difficult conversation you had last night, the sleep you missed out on because you were up with anxiety, or the work deadline that's been weighing on you all week.

So imagine all those stressors in the same bucket. When it overflows, it shows up in unexpected places. Your digestion might feel less regular. Your sleep might get worse even though you're exhausted and would love an extra hour or two. Your mood might be more drastically negative. And, of course, you start to dread movement, and you might consciously or subconsciously avoid it.

And that makes sense. Because it's too much.

Think about it – you're not getting the stress relief from movement that might have been possible at a lower, more manageable level of overall stress. So why would your body want to keep adding more?

This is when it's time to listen closely to what your body is telling you. If you push through and force the movement, you're running real risks. Aside from not getting the relief, your worse recovery puts you at greater risk of injury. And you're already suffering from one of the most under-discussed fitness injuries that exists: a ruptured relationship with movement.

So the cycle continues.

➡️ You begin to associate exercise with depletion and it becomes harder to show up.
➡️ You miss out on the physical benefits of moderate exercise, like strength, mood regulation, increased energy, bone density, and better sleep.
➡️ Without those benefits, your body struggles more trying to manage other stressors.
➡️ You might push through more movement out of guilt, and the association with depletion gets solidified.

Rinse and repeat.

Let's consider that for a second. The whole point of a movement practice is that it needs to be sustainable, but through the subtle process of added stress outside the exercise, suddenly movement becomes increasingly difficult to access. The benefits fall out of reach.

How do we nip this in the bud when stress is ongoing? How do we create movement routines that serve us?

Of course, you can listen to your body and tone things down after you realize that stress is setting in... but there's another way, too.

We'll go over it in next week's newsletter. 😉

With you as the world continues to stress us out...
Dana