Exercise is a vital part of your day, for so many reasons! It activates your metabolism, encourages fat burning, uses up excess stored calories, gives you energy, builds muscle, and so much more. Without exercise, there’s no diet in the world that can lead to effective, long-term, and healthy weight loss.
But should you exercise every day of the week? Most government and organization guidelines encourage 3-5 days of exercise a week, but why not all 7?
The truth is that working out 7 days a week is not good for your health. There are a number of cons to workout out every single day.
No Rest for Your Muscles
When you push your muscles to their limits, you cause microscopic damage (tears) in the muscle fibers. Don’t worry, this is a good thing, and it’s a necessary part of growing stronger. But, if you push your muscles every day, you never give them time to rest — and rest is critical for muscle repair. The harder you push your body, the more time it needs to rest. You should be giving your muscles no less than 48 hours to recover between intense workouts. If you’re training 7 days a week, it’s almost impossible to give your muscles the break they need.
Higher Risk of Injuries
Every time you train hard, there is a risk of injury. That risk increases when you train hard and your muscles haven’t recovered from the previous workout session. There’s always a chance that pushing your body day after day will cause the microscopic muscle fiber tears to grow until you’ve got serious muscle damage. You may also wear through the cartilage of your joints, leading to problems like osteoarthritis. If you want to avoid injuries, it’s important to take at least one day off per week.
Higher Stress Levels
Exercise causes your brain to release adrenaline and dopamine, but it also triggers cortisol production. Cortisol is the stress hormone, your “fight or flight” response, and it’s activated by heavy weights or intense exercise. Normally, your cortisol production will decrease after you finish working out and your body has time to repair itself. But if you never give your body time to make repairs, the production of cortisol will remain higher than normal, leading to higher-than-normal stress levels.
Risk of Burnout
Burnout is a term that describes a combination of physical and mental exhaustion. On the physical side, your body is simply too drained of energy to lift heavy. Your body hasn’t had a chance to replenish the energy you burned during your workout, so your muscles have only a fraction of the energy required to lift those weights. On the mental side, you’re dealing with the higher stress levels caused by consistently high cortisol production, and you’re starting to feel mental fatigue. This combination makes it very difficult to work out safely and effectively, leading to burnout.
More Chance of Boredom
If you do the same thing every day, you run the risk of getting bored. Once you stop enjoying your exercise, it becomes a chore to do it. Boredom can be the worst enemy of fitness, so it’s worth taking a break so you don’t get bored of your workouts.
Yes, it’s definitely not in your best interest to exercise every single day. Take a day or two off each week, then push hard the other 5-6 days. The results will speak for themselves!
[Image via Shutterstock]
