The Real Reason You're Too Tired To Workout And How To Fix It

After having my first daughter, I never really got back into a exercise routine. I had tried some workout videos a few times. I remember doing a three month trial of Beachbody workout videos, and I just was not able to stick with it.

After my second daughter was born, I joined a fitness challenge group and. It was in that group and working with my coach that I learned about The Miracle Morning, a book by Hal Elrod. While that is a really great book that I highly recommend reading, what I learned from that book and from watching the other moms in the group was that really the only way for us to be able to work out as busy moms was to get up very early in the morning and to do it then.

And while I'm very grateful for that experience and the practice that I had during that time of making exercise a priority every single day. That practice of making the time right away in the morning, and getting up and getting it done, it did do a lot for me in terms of turning exercise into a habit.

The advice giving to working moms is to sacrifice the luxury of sleep in order to get fit.

But at the same time, I look back on that time and realize how willing I was to sacrifice sleep and how that was really the message that I got from my mentors in that challenge group, and probably was the advice that I was giving others as well.

Since then, I have learned that sleep is SO important. I've realized that we were looking at sleep as a luxury. I thought that we had the choice between sleep and working out, and if we wanted to lose weight, wanted to be fit and in good shape, we had to make that sacrifice of sleep in order to make time to work out.

And with that thought process, I found myself going through periods of time where I was just too tired and I wasn't making it happen.

The strategy that I found to push through or to make that work for myself was I just kept getting up earlier and earlier so that I had time to kind of get myself awake for the day, which usually consisted of consuming a lot of caffeine. I would give myself time to have coffee and pre-workout and just do all these other things so that by the time I felt awake and ready to work out, I still had time to do that.

So sleep just kind of became this luxury that I was sacrificing in order to make time for everything else, and especially in order to make time to work out, because I thought that was what I needed to do. That was the trade off that I needed to make in order to get the results that I wanted.

And what I've learned since then is that sleep is not a luxury.

Sleep is not something that is getting in the way of our health and our fitness goals.

I thought that what I needed in order to be healthier and more fit was to get less sleep.

It's just kind of crazy, to look back and think on that now.

Sleep is absolutely necessary, not only for us to function throughout the day and show up in all of the other areas of our lives, the way that we want to show up with the energy and the patience and the enthusiasm that we want. But it is also required for our bodies to run efficiently and for our bodies to be willing to release fat.

I didn't know that with the less sleep that you're getting, the more your body is going to send signals to you that you need more food for energy. It's especially difficult to make healthy food decisions throughout the day. If you think of any food decision that would require you to eat a little bit more strategically with foods that are supportive of your health and fitness goals, it is harder to make those decisions when you're on less sleep.

In sleep deprivation, your body is begging for energy. It's especially begging for quick, high fat, high sugar, quick sources of energy. It's also going to be harder for your body to adapt to anything that you're challenging it to adapt to in your workouts.

By sacrificing sleep in order to work out to lose weight and have the body that I wanted, I was actually making it that much harder for myself.

And I was making my workouts less effective at the same time, because I wasn't giving my body that opportunity to rest. I was looking at sleep as something that is getting in the way of everything that I want to get done rather than it being part of the process.

Sleep is a very, very important and required part of the process.

I have found it very helpful to transition my thoughts on sleep, from thinking of sleep as a luxury, something optional and extra, to thinking of sleep as part of my strategy because I know that my body needs sleep in order to build muscle and burn fat.

Sleep is required in order for me to look, feel, and age the way that I want to.

So let's talk about what to do instead of sacrificing sleep in order to work out. Because really the reason that you are too tired to work out is probably because you're not getting enough sleep

In order to get our workouts done we sacrifice sleep and then we find we're too tired to work out and so we don't work out.

No sleep makes it hard to work out. No sleep also makes us feel like we don't have any energy. And then if we don't feel like we have enough energy to work out, then we don't work out and we spend most of our awake time sitting at a desk or sitting doing something else and not getting that activity, making us feel even more tired, even less energized for a workout, and it cycles from there.

So the first change that I made in order to get more sleep and have more energy for my workouts was to change the time that I was working out.

I am lucky enough to work from home so my lunch break is pretty flexible. I can pretty much take it any time during my workday, and I don't really have to worry about what I look like or anything when I come back to work. It was very possible for me to just switch my workout time from right away in the morning to the middle of the day.

And that change really allowed me to see how much differently I can work out, how differently I show up when I've had plenty of time to wake up i've had time to warm up for the day a little bit,

By changing my workout time to noon instead of 6:00 AM I can sleep in, and then I have my morning routine, which includes a walk outside. With that, I'm getting morning sunlight exposure, further helping with my circadian rhythm, helping me get better sleep, and I'm getting some light movement in first thing in the day with just that like walk outside.

Those two things are helping me feel more energized for my day, helping me sleep better, which then makes me feel even more energized the next day.

And those things kind of build on each other. I have this energy supportive morning routine, and then my midday workout, which I am then able to show up so much more intensely for. I now have the energy to really push myself from a strength and endurance perspective, which makes my workouts so much more more effective.

And so it's not only the benefit of the extra sleep, but I'm actually getting more out of my workout time as well because my workouts are that much more effective. I'm really getting a lot more out of that same amount of time that I put into the gym.

So with that, I want to challenge you to take a look at your day and consider if there is a better way to arrange your day and your workout schedule.

If you're struggling to find a time other than early in the morning to workout, maybe you can consider a different workout schedule. Instead of the 30-60 minute workout videos or cardio workouts every morning, maybe you would be better off with a shorter workout that is more challenging in less time.

It's possible that you would be better off with something like a 10 minute pushup challenge, just for the sake of an example. That is something that you might not even need to change clothes for and you could really do anywhere, and it might be more effective than what you're doing now, because it pushes your muscle to the limit, rather than doing a 30 minute video or 30 minute stretch on an elliptical machine. It is possible that a different type of workout, even if it doesn't look as official, it might be more impactful for your muscles and for your body.

So I just want to challenge you to really think about that and to ask, "Is there a better way to arrange my day?”

It might not be perfect. I love the idea of working out in the morning and then showering and actually ready for the day - getting dressed, blowdrying my hair, putting on makeup. I would love to structure my day that way, but based on what I know I want for my health and what this season of my life is right now, that is not the best routine for me.

When I give myself time to sleep and walk outside and drink water instead of forcing my sleep-deprived self through a workout and spending a bunch of time showering, blow drying my hair, putting on makeup, I feel like I'm benefiting myself more with this routine then I would with the other.

And so I just want to challenge you to look at that. Is it possible that there is another way to arrange your day in a way that benefits you more, helps you work towards your goals more than what you're doing right now, even if it means that you choose to sacrifice something else?

I think prioritizing sleep and prioritizing a truly challenging workout is going to get us a lot further in our health and our fitness goals, and in our confidence and in the way that we feel versus a traditional morning workout shower, get ready for the day type of routine.

Another option that we have for choosing to restructure our schedules is to look at our week as a whole.

In the same way that you don't have to choose a 30-minute workout in the morning, you also don't have to workout every day of the week. You might find that what works better for you in terms of making sure that you can get enough sleep as well as meeting all the other demands of your day and getting a really good workout in might be to have two really great workouts on the weekend. It seems that we typically want our workout plans to give us the weekend off, but there's nothing saying that that's like the best way to do it or something that we have to do. When we're looking at exercise and training as something that we want to do and we do for ourselves, for our bodies to give us and our families the life that we want, it doesn't necessarily make sense to take the weekend off.

There's nothing that says you have to not work out on the weekend in order to enjoy your weekend. And I would actually say the exact opposite. I love my weekends more if I make the time to get some sort of exercise in on those days.

You might find that it works for you to have something like two 90 minute workout Saturday and Sunday. That's a total of 180 minutes for the week, which is the same as 30 minutes, six days a week, which I think a lot of us think of as an acceptable normal weekly workout schedule.

There's no rule that says you have to spread that out at 30 minutes a day for six days over the week. We maybe want to be a little bit more strategic with how you structure your workouts so that you can sustain a 90 minute workout and so that you're not over training a specific muscle or something like that.

I can help you if you have any questions on that, let me know and we can talk about how you would structure that workout in order for it to do what you need to do in 90 minutes versus 30 minutes a day spread across the week.

So that's one way to look at restructuring your week to give yourself more time for sleep and for more effective workouts.

In that example of getting two really long workouts just on the weekends, you could then just have some like light movement throughout the week. So like I said, I like to do like 10 minute sunrise walks because I think there's a lot of health benefit to those that have nothing to do with calories or weight loss directly, but just health and energy in general.

The other thing to consider would be that you could have these like two bulky workouts during the weekend. Maybe you have time in your weekly schedule that you could add, like one longer workout, like one evening after work, like say Wednesdays at five, I go to the gym for an hour and I get a great workout in, and then I have rest days Thursday, Friday, and then I get two big workouts in over the weekend. Then that's three days a week to workout. Perfectly acceptable, totally effective. It doesn't include how do I build in a 30, 45, 60 minute workout every single day, like during my regular work week is the point that I wanna make here.

Like you don't have to fit it in to your. Daily routine in that way of you don't have to fit a full workout into your daily routine. You can do some bigger chunkier workouts and then just some light, you know, a 10 minute walk in the morning. Or you could use short workouts to fill in whatever gaps that you feel like you can't really do.

Like I mentioned, it might take a little bit more strategy to design those weekend workouts to be something that you can make it all the way through and not overtrain a specific muscle.

You might also feel like you can't get enough volume for a hypertrophy goal without spreading your workouts more evenly throughout the week. Maybe in addition to the two or three longer workouts, you can do something like a 15 minute workout that targets a specific muscle group. For example, if you want to grow your glutes (booty) and you feel like a weekend workout structure is not enough time for that, maybe you could add one or two, 15-minute, purely glute focused workouts throughout the week to increase the volume of work that you're getting in for your glutes.

Maybe you can sneak these short workouts into your morning routine (without sacrificing sleep!) or your lunch break or right after work, so you can support a specific muscle building goal, without having a 30 to 60 minute workout need to fit into your regular morning routine, your regular daily workday routine.

Training is not just about putting in the time.

The main point here is that training is not just about putting in the time, it's challenging your body to do something new and then giving it the proper recovery to be able to adapt to that challenge.

That is where sleep becomes part of your training strategy. In order to lose weight, get stronger, get more physically fit, have more endurance, all of those health and fitness goals that you have, sleep is a part of that. You need to give your body the time to recover so that you can adapt to whatever you're challenging yourself to do in your training, and actually get stronger and more fit and achieve all of your goals.

I want to know your thoughts on this. Is the idea of being too tired to work out something that has been getting in your way? Are you trying to squeeze your workouts into a regular morning routine? I want to know what kind of challenges you're facing when it comes to designing your days, being able to fit workouts in and feeling like you have the energy to do them.

Leave a comment, shoot me a DM, let me know what you think and what challenges you've been running into.

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Inside the program, you'll have step-by-step guidance of making plans and actually following through with them to reach all of your goals, and you'll have the added support of working with me as your coach and accomplishing your goals alongside other busy moms who are facing the same challenges that you are. You can join us in the For More Of What Matters group coaching program on Patreon, or follow me on Instagram @andrea.wieneke to learn more.