58- Rest Isn’t Lazy: Why Sleep and Recovery Make You Stronger

Ever feel like you're doing everything right—getting enough sleep, eating well, training smart—but you're still drained? 

In this episode of Miles From Her View, Kat explains why sleep alone isn’t enough and what proper rest looks like for busy, high-achieving women. She shares simple ways to build real rest into your life (without guilt) and explains how it impacts your performance, hormones, and mental clarity. Kat also weaves in client stories and her life to show how powerful intentional rest can be.

Podcast Referenced: 57-Restful Resilience: Achieve More with Quality Sleep, an Interview with Keri

If this resonates and you’re ready to take a more sustainable approach to your fitness, hop on a free consultation call with me. We’ll talk about where you’re at, where you want to go, and how we can create a plan that fits your life. Let's Chat!

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Transcript

Kat: 0:01

If you caught last week's episode with the sleep expert, Keri Cooper, you might be thinking, I'm doing everything right, so why am I still waking up tired? But here's the truth, you can still sleep and not feel rested. What your body needs right now is more than hours in bed. Today we're going deeper into the kind of rest that most women don't even realize they're missing, especially in June when school's out routines are gone and everything feels full throttle. Welcome to MilesFromHerView, the podcast powered by KatFit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner, and an ultra marathon runner and a strength trainer in her forties with nearly two decades of experience. I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood. All while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in. Welcome back to MilesFromHerView. I am Kat, your host, and I'm excited to have you here for this episode. It is something that I have struggled with and since incorporating it into my life, it has provided me with renewed energy and we're in this weird in between. Season school is out, routines are shifting, and your kids, I don't know if they're like mine, they're bouncing off the walls or they're already saying they're bored. When you've already listed, I don't know, a plethora of activities for them to do, but for you, you're still trying to squeeze in workouts, show up to work, feed everyone, and maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe just grab a moment to yourself yet, even if you're getting decent sleep. You're still feeling foggy, like your body is just stuck in go mode 24 7. Like you just never feel like you're off. Like you can never fully unplug. If that sounds like you, I want you to know this is not failure on your part. Your body is telling you something really important. You need to rest that Sleep alone just can't give. I know. I know your leg. I'm trying to, I'm trying to, but as I already mentioned, there are a million things to do, but if you caught last week's episode with Keri Cooper, you might be thinking this, you know, I'm doing all the right things, so why do I still wake up tired? As if stated, you can sleep and still not feel rested. That's because there's a difference between sleep and rest. Sleep is always gonna be the body's most powerful recovery tool, but rest is something else. It's the thing you do in between all the go, go, go, go. Sleep is biological. It happens when you're unconscious. Your body repairs itself, your brain shuts down, and it's a non-negotiable. Rest, on the other hand, is how you recharge while you're awake. It's the act of stepping out of that go mode so that you're able to turn off those mental tabs running in the background. So. I don't know if you're like me with your computer. When you're at work, you have all these tabs open. I am a chronic open tabber, and your brain acts like that too. And think about all the things you're managing throughout the day. We wanna be able to. Turn off those mental tabs. So think of it this way, you can sleep seven to eight hours, but still feel drained if your days are just jam packed. Like no real breaks, no space to breathe. It's like plugging your phone into a charger that doesn't really work properly. We have this one little side story here. We have this one charger, and it's for the school's laptop. The tablet for the kids. It just doesn't always charge. But it would always be frustrating. They plug it in, they need their, their, their tablet to be charged for the next day of school. They would come downstairs to where all the smart devices are housed for charging overnight and. It'd be inevitable. One of my kids would get the charging cord that would not charge their tablet, and they would be so frustrated, like, I plugged this in before, 7:00 PM and it's not charged. That's because, you may be connected going back to sleep, you may be falling asleep, but you're really not getting the full rest or the full recharge that you need. And I know you know this, like as moms, we crash into bed, we're exhausted, and sometimes you just wake up feeling just as tired and it's not always sleep. That is the problem. Sleep is definitely. Vital. I will not argue that. And go back and listen to the episode with Keri Cooper. I'll post it in the show notes, but when rest is in a deficit, your sleep is also going to feel off. So what does rest look like? Let's bring this into some ways that we can really understand this, and incorporate this into our week without feeling like it's one more to do. These are things that I have my clients do throughout their day because they are going nonstop from the time that alarm goes off and their feet hit the floor to the time their head hits the pillow and the light is shut off. Rest. In terms of just every day is looking like taking a walk instead of lifting weights, breathing deeply between meetings, saying no to the extra things so you can go to bed earlier. Now, these are just snapshots and we're gonna dive into them a little bit more, but the important thing that I wanna for you to take away here is in our hustle culture, in our culture of we have to fill every waking moment is rest is not weakness. It is a smart strategy. When we skip rest, we're basically asking our bodies to get stronger, leaner, and faster without giving them what they need to build and recover. If we're not giving our body enough rest. It's like trying to build a house with just no materials. We have the concept there. We wanna do all these things, but the materials are not there to actually have it be integrated you definitely do not have to earn your rest. Rest is a thing that makes the work work. Let's talk about how this actually plays out when you're training. So we're gonna dive into the training part, and then I'm gonna bring it back around to everyday life here. So if you're lifting weights two to three times a week, that is amazing. But remember, strength gains are not happening while you're lifting. They happen. After the workout, while you sleep and when you're sleeping, your body releases the growth hormone that helps repair and build muscle. It also resets your nervous system and it helps sharpen your mental focus for that next workout. So if you're skimping on that sleep, expect to recover slower and there's going to be lingering soreness and you might just feel off when you're lifting. So. I'm gonna share a little story here. So, one of the things when I was, it was probably about a few years ago, I was training for an ultra marathon. And it wasn't my first one. I've been training for endurance races for 10 years now, and every run at every lift just felt monotonous. I felt exhausted, but not in a way like I was, I thought my sleep was going well. I thought like. You know, I was getting as much as I could get as to what I thought I could, and I just felt sore. I felt I couldn't make any progress. In the ultra world and training for endurance races, there's a lot of, it is getting used to fatigue. So I was like, well, this is just what it is. This is the fatigue. I have to work out tired, I have to run tired. This is just what the training is, but. What I didn't realize is I really wasn't sleeping well. My sleep was a poor quality. During the day, I was going, going, going, going, and then expecting my body just to shut down and get deep. Great quality sleep, do all the things that needed, but it wasn't. So I had to take a cold, hard look on how I was recovering. I had to look at where am I resting. During the go, go, go part of the day to then what was my sleep looking like? It didn't take long for me to feel that that change. It took probably about, I. Um, I don't know. It was a few years ago, so I'm trying to think back here. It took about a couple weeks until I started noticing a difference, until I started putting the emphasis on rest during the day. I'm not talking napping again. Rest is ways we take pockets of time in our day to unplug and then. Starting to be intentional about my sleep, going to bed at the same time having a bedtime routine, waking up at the same time, looking at my workouts to make sure that I'm tuning into my body. Those individuals who are runners and in endurance athletes, I'm gonna decode it a little bit more, when you're running on that little bit of sleep and your body is just feeling very overwhelmed, your perceived effort goes way up. That was a huge indicator. My mile times were on par with what I normally run, but oh my goodness. It felt like a struggle just to, to get those miles splits. I was feeling super burnout. You're gonna be burned out mentally and the training, you're just gonna be slogging away at it. And you're also more prone to injury because your coordination is gonna suffer during that time. So if you, if your easy runs are starting to feel tough, you have to ask yourself, is it my training plan or is it my sleep plan? Here's the thing that we, we don't always talk about. So mobility is talked about like go get mobility. It eases the stiffness in the joints. It helps with soreness. Yes, it all does those things, but tight, stiff muscles aren't always because of hard workouts sometimes the way your body is saying, I am tired and sleep deep rest activate your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest mode, it helps those muscles relax and recover. So when you're in that constant go mode, even your mobility work feels less effective. Like you just cannot get loose, you cannot decrease. The muscle soreness, you just feel constantly tight and sore. You get that on the foam roller, the. Stick the massage balls, the massage guns, and it kind of gives a quick hit relief, but then you're sore again. It's just this perpetual sore and stiffness. Now, nutrition also has an effect, so rest impacts what you eat. If you're not sleeping, your hunger hormone goes up. That is gonna tell you you're hungrier more, then the hormone that tells you you're full goes down. So that kind of works against each other. So your body's not getting the hunger cue signs that you need to stop eating, and you feel constantly hungry. Your cravings for sugar and refined carbs start to spike because those hormones are out of balance. Your insulin sensitivity drops, so it's going to make, storing fat easier. But it's not your body that's broken. You're just tired. This is why sleep is so important. I'm just gonna take a pause right now. If this is hitting home and you're, you just feel like you're doing everything right, but still stuck, frustrated, and tired, this is exactly what I do with Women Inside KatFit. I built KatFit for women who wanna feel strong without adding stress. I create training plans that fit your real life, including those crazy seasons when kids are sick. Sleep is off and schedules are wild. I'm looking to take on four new clients by the end of July, so if you're thinking, yep, this is me, let's chat. You can DM me at KatFit Strength, or you can book a consultation call. No obligation in the show notes is a link, and we're gonna talk about your goals, your rest, your stress, all of it to get you feeling strong again. All right, let's get back to the episode. So if this is all sounding familiar, you wake up and you're counting down to bedtime. You finish one task and jump right into the next one without a pause. You sit down to rest, but feel wired to wired to enjoy it. You have time to rest, but your brain just won't slow down. If so, your nervous system is still running the show. Which keeps your body in this low key state of stress blocking recovery and stalling, just Strength gains, and it's just leaving you mentally and emotionally drained. And I get it. You're not scheduling spa days every week. And if you're lucky, you can pee in peace. So you're like, where do I find time to rest in this? Go, go, go. State rest isn't about escaping life. Okay? It's about creating small, meaningful pockets of pause throughout your day so it can look like this. Driving in silence after drop off. No music, no podcast, just silence. I know it can be scary, but it helps just driving silence. The brain can start to regulate. Sipping your coffee while actually sitting still. No phone. There's no phone. You're just sipping your coffee. Taking five deep breaths before you go work out or before you hop into the next meeting. Lying on the floor with your legs up on the wall for 10 minutes after dinner. None of these are blocking out hours. Finding a weekend spa getaway, they take intention, and if you do them regularly, your body starts to trust that it's safe, that it can finally exhale. And I want you to take this away today. Sleep matters, but it's not the only thing. Rest is different and most of us just aren't getting enough of it. This season with all the chaos and change is the perfect time to start practicing it because if you wait till August to rest, you're really gonna miss out on the strength and the calm and the clarity that can carry you through that summer. Feeling better. Now in my coaching, rest isn't optional. It is part of the plan. I look at the workouts and I program them so they fit your life. I'm gonna check in on your sleep I build ways for you to recover in the body and the mind because your training should reflect your whole life, not just your to-do list. If you can make one small change for this week. Try this. Pick one moment in your day where you usually power through and instead, pause, sit, breathe, be still, and let that moment be enough and just watch what happens. Not just your energy, but your mood, your focus and your patience. Rest is going to feel weird when you're used to nonstop motion. It might feel uncomfortable. It may even feel lazy. It's not, it's strategic, it's strength building. It's what lets you keep showing up without burning out. And just so you know, you do not have to earn your rest. I, I want to scream that from the mountaintops, you are allowed to rest and you need it. A few small shifts can make a huge difference. Wind down with purpose. 30 minutes of no screen, no hustle, dim lights, stretch. Breathe because you are not a machine. Build in real rest days, walk do mobility, journal, whatever helps your body reset. Watch your caffeine intake. Try no caffeine. After 2:00 PM your future self will. Thank you. Don't guilt yourself for doing less. Sometimes doing less is the most elite thing you can do, and I'm gonna leave you with this. You're not crazy, you're not lazy, you're not behind, you're just not rested, and that's something you can actually fix. So here's your permission slip. Pause, rest, reset. And if you want help building this into your training, DM me. Let's create a plan that fits your real life. Go easy on yourself this week. You deserve it. And remember, you don't need more willpower or hustle. You need restoration. Rest isn't the reward for grinding hard. It's the foundation for showing up as your strong, grounded, joyful self. So sleep, rest, let go of the guilt. Watch how your body and mind will show up differently. If this episode had landed for you, share it with a friend who needs to hear it too. And if you're curious of what training with rest in mind looks like, I'd love to have a chat. You can find me at KatFit strength on Instagram. Until next time, rest, well lift heavy. Run strong. And remember, you're not behind your rebuilding. Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromHerView, powered by KatFit Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes, and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into Next. You can connect with me on Instagram at KatFit Strength, or share this episode. With a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.