95- Am I Actually Tired… or Just Avoiding My Workout?

In this episode, Kat breaks down one of the most important skills for busy women over 35: knowing the difference between real fatigue that needs rest and mental resistance that just needs momentum. This is not about pushing through at all costs — it’s about building a filter that helps you show up for yourself more consistently and intelligently.

Who This Episode Is For

Women 35+ who are raising kids, running businesses, managing households, and trying to maintain their health — basically, anyone doing it all and wondering why they’re exhausted.

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Transcript

0:00

before we get into this, I wanna say something clearly. This episode is not about pushing through at all costs. It is not about ignoring your body, and it is definitely not about discrediting your fatigue. If you are someone who is 35 years and older doing all the things, you are probably tired. You are raising kids, working, managing home, thinking about aging parents, juggling schedules in somewhere in there trying to take care of your own health life. Right now demands energy. This conversation is about building a skill, a filter, a way to tell the difference between real fatigue that needs recovery and resistance. That just needs momentum because those are not the same thing, and knowing the difference changes everything.

Kat: 0:55

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.

1:44

Welcome back to MilesFromHerView. I'm Kat, your host, and today we are talking about fatigue and resistance. The resistance can resemble something like fake fatigue where you find yourself wanting to do a workout, but also at the same point, potentially talking yourself out of it in feeling the sense of fatigue and the potential. Excuses that come along with it, where you inevitably talk yourself out of the workout and then after that, guilt or shame tends to follow and it may look like something like this, you. Get home from a long day or your alarm clock goes off in the morning and all of a sudden you feel an instant fatigue or that resistance of like you want to go but you don't at the same time. And in this scenario, you skip the workout. And it kind of resides on your mind, like, oh, I probably should have, I guess working out isn't for me. I knew this would happen if I tried committing. Those type of thoughts. Fill your head and I wanna give you a glimpse into my own training, not because I am. Perfect. But it is because I am human, my life is full. I am over 35. I am in my early forties. And though my life may have some similar attributes as your life, we are in different boats with quote unquote different storms being fault or felt, if you're a long time listener to this podcast, I have said several times that the fact is that there are 24 hours in a day and nobody has the same 24 hours. For those who are new to the show, I am someone who trains for ultra marathon races. That is race distances over 26.2 miles. So currently I am training for a hundred mile race and my first 200 mile race. I am a business owner. I am a mom of two kids in the thick of life and I hold multiple roles within my business as well as engaging in other roles. I train clients all day, and my kids are involved in sports and music. My partner, he also has a demanding career that requires travel. He also trains, so that is just a bit of a glimpse into my everyday life. Very, very broad view. It's full. There are some mornings where I am up, I am up before 5:00 AM to train, not because that has some brevity of. I can, wear a badge of honor on my chest that I am up before 5:00 AM and it's not that my workouts before, 6:00 AM hold any. Strong value to those who may be working out at 6:00 PM because it doesn't. There are times where I do work out at 6:00 PM There are times where my workouts are at 3:00 PM I'm not married to one time, but there are times where that alarm clock goes off at 4 45 or four 30, I don't always feel like getting outta bed. It's, that's the time that fits. Some mornings I do feel really good and I'm ready to go. And then there are some mornings, the first thought is absolutely not. This is not happening. And over the years I have learned that not all tired feels the same. There is a bone deep like fatigue that tells me to adjust where there might be other signs like my resting heart rate is elevated. My sleep has been off for a few nights. My legs feel just so flat before I even start, and my workouts feel harder. Than they should, just across the board. Even those easy ones where I know it's supposed to be easy pace and it just feels so hard. That is real fatigue. And when that shows up, I need to adjust things. I shorten the session, I lower the intensity, or I swap out the workout completely to mobility. Or if it is a hard. Workout that day. I switch to an easier workout and sometimes I need to take a full day of rest. This is absolutely not quitting. This is intelligent training. This is knowing that you need to listen to your body in order to continue showing up. It's playing the long game, not the short game, but then there is another kind of tired. The tire that shows up when it's cold. It has been so gold in the northeast recently. The fatigue that shows up when my schedule feels just absolutely packed when I am going, going all day, and there is no white space for me to take a moment to breathe. And then when the workout looks really uncomfortable,'cause I'm gonna be honest, there are some workouts that I see and it feels so uncomfortable that I don't wanna do it. However, that tiredness. In those situations disappears typically by five minutes into a workout, 10 minutes into the workout. Now, for women over the age of 35, we need to talk about that perimenopause flex because it is really important. I do not want to discredit it. I also, as I said. Earlier in this episode this is not an episode about invalidating your fatigue and showing up at all costs. That is not how I train clients. That is not how I train myself. That is not in my business model, my mission, my core values at all for women perimenopause. Typically begins at the late thirties to mid forties, and this is where estrogen, progesterone do not decline in a smooth line. They fluctuate sometimes wildly. Those fluctuations affect sleep quality, body temperature, regulation, mood, insulin sensitivity, and muscle recovery. So estrogen plays the role in muscle repair, energy and energy metabolism, and when it swings, recovery can feel different. Sleep disturbances become more common and poor sleep alone increases perceived fatigue and lowers exercise tolerance. So if you're thinking, why does this feel harder than it used to? You're not imagining it, your physiology is shifting, but here is the key takeaway. Hormonal change does not mean you are fragile. It means you need better calibration. When I use the word calibration there, I was trying to figure out the best word to kind of describe. It does not mean you are a robot or a machine. You are a real human being. Movement is not the enemy, it is part of the solution and the skill is learning how to modulate, how to be adaptable and how to be flexible. So that's where kind of that calibration word when I was putting together my thoughts for this podcast. It just made sense to me where we have to look at that day, where we're at and adjust. We need to calibrate ourselves in that moment. Again, you are a unique, beautiful human. You are not a robot. You are not a machine. And when I'm in these moments where I need to calibrate myself what I do, instead of overthinking, I start five minutes, she's on warm up light spin, light jog, body weight movements. Then I reassess in this five minutes, which is. Hard to do. I'm pushing away those thoughts that flow into my head oh, you're so tired, or, oh, there's laundry sitting on the couch. You need to fold. Oh, there's dishes in the sink. Well, I really should be doing that work project, even though you spent eight plus hours focusing on work. Oh, I really need to, I shut out all those murmurings in my brain and I'm just listening to what my body is telling me. That is. Simple but hard to implement. It has taken me months, years to be able to be like, in these next five minutes, we're tuning into what am I really feeling? And most of the time, during that five minutes, I feel better. However, if after five to 10 minutes I feel worse, I'm more depleted, my body feels heavier. In so many ways, a weight that I typically lift that doesn't feel heavy, feels like it is, I don't know, hundreds of pounds heavier. I adjust, I scale down, or I stop I, and by doing that. It tells me if it was resistance to just getting started, knowing that life is really full and there's always gonna be the next email to answer. There's always gonna be a load of laundry to fold. There's always gonna be a dish to cleanup. There's always going to be something else that is demanding my attention, or if it was actual depletion where I needed to tune in because my body required more sleep or rest, or a lower intensity workout. And research consistently shows us that low to moderate intensity movement often reduces perceived fatigue, especially when fatigue is related to stress or poor sleep. So sometimes the fastest way to feel less tired is to begin. Let's make this a little bit more real and more tangible here. A couple weeks ago, I had a tempo run planned. Two nights of broken sleep, my resting heart rate was up. I felt wired and tired at the same time. That's not the day to force intensity. What I did was I swapped it for an easy aerobic work day and mobility, shorter session, lower load, and walked away feeling better, not wrecked. Two days later, I had a lift planned. I was not sore. I had slept fine. Nothing physiologically is off. I just did not feel like it. I just literally, I was like, I don't wanna do this lift. Like I know I should, but I don't wanna do it. And I sat on my couch scrolling on my phone, just being like, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna do this. That's resistance. What I did to overcome it, I just put down my phone and I started anyway. How I started I walked in the gym, started some foam rolling, starting some mobility exercises to warm up, and I finished a lift and I felt strong. Same person, same week, just two different decisions. And that's discernment. So to bring this home for you, there are essentially three checks you wanna do. And I understand life is full. So when I go over these, i'm not sitting here and being like step one, step two, step three. But it is a way to separate real fatigue through resistance that shows up. In a way of fake fatigue. So I start with body check. Have I slept poorly for several nights? What does my resting heart rate look like feeling? Am I unusually sore or feeling lots of aches and pains in my soft tissue, or am I getting sick more often? Am I battling a cold symptoms that are just not going away? I evaluate that I do a total check in my body because if our body is showing signs of these different things, not getting enough sleep, our heart rate is up and elevated, you're having a lot of soft tissue pain, joint issues, aside from a diagnosis, if there are things out of the ordinary that are just cropping up because our body is showing us that, hey, we're really run down, we need to tune into that. That's where you have to evaluate and see if rest needs to occur. Step two is the hormone check. Obviously, I'm not saying go, know exactly what your numbers are, because we're, we're not gonna know that we don't have a lab. Again, you are part of being a unique human being, and some of this may not feel tangible, but however, there are ways that we can draw from it. It's physiological responses. It is mental responses. So tuning into the body versus what is our brain telling us, again, is your sleep disrupted? Am I overheated? Am I, is my body temperature really high? Or maybe I'm really, really cold? Am I feeling. Anxious. Am I feeling wired like I just can't rest? Is my body feeling buzzy? Is it feeling numb? If those things are occurring, that is saying that our nervous system is a little disrupted here. We might need to lower the intensity, keep a gentle movement. So where we switch from that sympathetic to that parasympathetic, so we get that rest and reset versus that fight or flight that we're constantly in because our cortisol levels are high because we're just constantly reving and we can't switch off to that. Parasympathetic. Another thing that goes into it, a little bit of a body check, just a little backtrack in that hormonal check. Is, how is our breathing? Are we shallow breathing? Are we holding tension in our, our throat, neck and shoulders? Are we rapidly breathing, not just like hyperventilating, but are, is our breath shallow or can we breathe into our diaphragm and feel that relaxation or that rib expansion? The shoulders relaxed. The neck relaxed. The face relaxed. So those are also signs of. Are we holding tension and we can we get into more of a rest reset phase and then the resistance check, set a timer five to eight minutes and to start, is it really the brain just telling us, because life is so full, we have so many things stacked up against us that we can't do this. So let action inform the decision with that resistance check. Sometimes you are not tired, you are overstimulated. Mental load can feel like physical depletion between emails, noise, kids talking, notifications, constant decision making. Your nervous system is lit up, so low intensity movement can regulate that system. Whether it be getting outside for a walk, light strength work, or even taking 10 minutes can shift you from frazzled to being functional. Do not confuse overwhelm within incapacity because they are different and we have been taught, it's either push through everything or honor your feelings and skip it, and that is not how it works. Long term discipline says start. Self-compassion says, adjust when needed, especially when we are navigating seasons of our life as prenatal, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause, and beyond. That combination of. Discipline and self-compassion is powerful. You cannot grind through fluctuating hormones and high stress, and you also cannot abandon yourself every time. It feels inconvenient. The women who stay strong long-term are steady, not extreme, so they turn inward, they understand what's going on in their body. They may not know their hormone levels or all the data points that a external device gives, but they are tuned in to what their body is telling them. Then from there, adjust and. Show up. They show up more often than they quit. I've said it many times before. You do not need more motivation. You do not need all the magic potions that social media tries to sell you. You need a filter this week before you skip. Use the five minute rule at least once. Turn inward. Listen to your body. If this episode hit for you, screenshot it. Share your biggest takeaway. Tag me in your story or your post. Tell me which kind of fatigue you are working through this week, because this is the work. Not extremes, not guilt, not all or nothing. Start more often than you quit. Adjust more often than you grind. That is how you stay strong in a full life.

Kat: 18:40

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 or share this episode. Road 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.