Why Do I Lose Fitness So Easily?
It’s happened to everyone:
You workout and eat well for a period of time and make some SERIOUS health and fitness improvements. Then something comes up…
You get really busy at work.
You strain a muscle.
You plateau and then stop training all together.
Or, good ol’ peer pressure convinces you you’ve made progress so you can slow down a bit.
This begs the question…
Why Do I Lose Fitness So Easily?
Our bodies are survival engines: they only want to use whatever energy they have to do to get the job done; they don’t want to put on any muscle they don’t absolutely need; they want to hang onto fat because there are a lot of calories in fat; and they will adapt to whatever we do it.
When you were training hard and eating well you were providing an optimal environment for your body to drop body fat and to gain muscle. You were making your body adapt to a new way of life [which just happened to be a much healthier way of life].
But…
All that extra muscle and loss of fat was a by-product of that [good] stress and when the [good] stress is gone, your body decided, “I really don’t need all this extra muscle. I get more energy from fat stores than muscle, anyway!”
So Why Does My Fitness Disappear So Fast?
Mainly because you are not continuing to properly stress your body to change or to maintain previous change.
Skeletal muscles can begin to atrophy in as little as 72 hours.
Does this mean exercising on vacation? For me it does!
You have to make the call for yourself!
