Dear Kayla

I’ve only been doing IF for about a month or so. I’m turning 40 this year, and I have about 80 pounds to lose in all. I’m doing either a 16:8 – 18:6 depending on how the day goes and plan to work my way to OMAD. I’m having waves of energy while fasting and sometimes tend to overexert, then feel wiped out. It’s not necessarily all through exercise. I start deep cleaning, organizing, doing outside chores, etc. It’s not a gradual tiredness. It’s like I hit a wall and my body says “no more.” Do you have any tips to help me think smarter about this issue? One thought I struggle with is that I’ve been so lazy or tired, that when I do have the energy, I don’t want to waste it. However, if I keep going down this path, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have burnout.

Thanks for your time, and all you do!

Leah

Dear Leah,

Thanks for writing! Your question touches on an important skill to hone on the weight loss journey for maximum long-term success: energy management. Consistently overdoing it to the point of exhaustion is a surefire way to burnout, which generally leads to falling off plan and weight gain. Here are some tips to help you avoid that.

Tip #1: Listen to and Obey Your Body (Usually)

Obey your body when it tells you that it’s time for a break. Of course, this can be tricky, because there will be times when you’re just feeling blah, and the best thing you can do for yourself is to get up and do something. With trial and error, over time you’ll gain discernment. In the beginning, err on the side of doing something, and then see how you feel. When you are truly tired and need a rest, the lethargy will persist. When it’s a case of the blahs, your energy will increase after accomplishing something.

Tip #2: Learn to Rest (Even Nap!), Guilt-Free

Rest makes you more productive and more creative. (Google it!) But for some reason, some of us start to feel mighty guilty if we dare sit down and take a break, or heaven forbid, take a nap. The thing that helped me get over this was a story I found in Dale Carnegie’s excellent book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. It has a whole section abut the importance of preventing fatigue. Why is this important to the weight loss journey? Because fatigue leads to worry, and worry can lead to stress eating. And stress eating, we all know, leads to weight gain.

The story went like this: Frederick Taylor did experiments to help increase productivity at Bethlehem Steel Company. The men were able to move about 12.5 tons of pig iron, normally. But when Taylor forced a man to rest 34 minutes out of every hour, he quadrupled his production. It seems like a paradox, that to accomplish more, you need to rest more, but it really does work.

Tip #3: Don’t Beat Yourself Up

Chances are, you’re going to push yourself too far from time to time. And, as you mentioned in your letter, you might have the voice in your head that’s beating you up, calling you lazy. Don’t let that happen. Instead, give yourself a pep talk. Encourage yourself. Learn from pushing yourself a bit too hard.

For the record, I like pushing myself. And this means that occasionally I push myself to the point of burnout. I have found the best course of action is to be gentle with myself, learn from the experience, and back off a bit. And you know what usually happens? I get a little too slack. This is another opportunity for negative self-talk to creep in. Instead, my strategy is to give myself another pep talk, and push myself a little more. (Jordan Peterson gives a helpful talking about this process here.)

Tip #4: Experiment and Learn!

Through my own experiments, I have found I accomplish the most when I rest frequently. I especially get more creative work done when I nap after a writing session or making a video. When I try to power through and skip my breaks, I end up accomplishing less and feel worse in general.

I advise that you make an experiment of resting more. Perhaps set a rest goal of 10 minutes per hour. Force yourself to take a break, even before you feel you really need one. Note how much you get done. Compare that to when you do not rest, both in how much you get accomplished, and how you feel. Then move forward based on what you learn. Hopefully, you won’t burn out. And if you ever do, hopefully you’ll remember tip #3, and get yourself back on track.

Wishing you the best on your weight loss journey,

Kayla Cox