dubsteppeda day ago
I work physically every day in our cleaning business. My wife and I clean houses, and I clean the bathrooms in all of them, and get out at times to do some vacuuming or dusting or whatever, but most of my time is spent in the bathrooms. I've had fitness trackers in the past, and my wife gets lots of steps because she is moving from room to room while I'm typically in one room for a while, then another for a while, floating from bathroom to bathroom. So although I'm on my feet all day, my movements are a couple of steps here, a couple of steps there, and lots of bending and scrubbing.
I know that I need to get some cardio in, and I would love to do some resistance training. However, at the end of a long day or week I'm just shot. I often run myself down to the point where I get colds or whatever.
I'm naturally a low energy guy anyway. I'll work my tail off while at work but when it's done, I'm done. Depression seems to be a baseline in my family of origin and I do far more than anyone in my family that I know, but it is always a fight.
So, if a person like me is working physically and getting run down, will putting dedicated exercise on top of it give me more energy or just run me down faster?
Not at all. Moderate exercise combing resistance training and aerobics should increase your energy level. This works in two ways - physically and psychologically. Physically it ramps up your metabolism, increases testosterone levels, combats cortisols produced by stress, prevents "sugar crashes" by normalizing glucose levels and a host of other benefits. Psychologically some of the benefits among others are but not limited to:
1) Increases in norepinephrine which helps the brain cancer meat the effects of stress
2) The release of the "happy" hormones, endorphins. Endorphins or responsible for that lovely feeling of euphoria.
3) The physical changes exercise causes over time help you feel sexy and increase your self esteem.
4) Exercise boosts chemicals in the brain which support and prevent degeneration of the hippocampus, a part of the brain responsible for memory and learning.
We spent 18 months working 6-7 hours a week, 10-16 hour days at times, while paying off debt a couple of years ago. I know I can move more because I did it when I had to, but it didn't make me feel any better and ran me down further.
Although this is exercise, it is in the form of labor and not regenerative exercise which have two very different effects physiologically.
I'll be 39 in August, and I'd like to be in better shape going into 40 than I was going into 30 a decade ago, which is possible, I think. I just don't know if adding exercise to a body that already gets run down is going to help or hurt, or if there's something else I should be doing.
I guarantee you adding exercise will help as you can see from just a few benefits stated above. Also try doing exercise outside. Your work involves physical activity indoors so exercising outside may help you tremendously in a psychological sense since your brain may not necessarily associate one with the other.
The only other thing I would add is trying to eat as healthy as possible given your sometimes odd work hours. Try to prepare healthy meals for a few days at a time whenever you have the spare time so you'll find it hard to justify buying take-out whenever you don't have the time to go home or a good restaurant when you're pressed for time.
Also: take supplemental vitamin E and C to help combat those nasty stress hormones.
If you have anymore questions, please ask.
And thanks for the kind words of encouragement folks. It's one of the things I love about this forum, so many of us have and love the opportunity to help each other.