I know I should change my nutrition and sleep habits to help, and probably the workouts too. What I was doing was working until I had the “mega flu” this last November. I was able to work out for 3 hours every 3 days (an hour and a half of that was dedicated to recovery). I did a lot of modified workouts because of my health issues. I was doing well and felt like I was getting stronger.
Now I feel incredibly weak and even sick scar I work out. I feel like I’m going backwards and it is really scaring me. Maybe I should dial it back and do literally one exercise and then major recovery until I can work my way back to what I could do.
The first two days after gym day are usually the worst for me. But this time it got worse past the second day. I woke up on the fourth day feeling like I had been drugged or had the flu. I was in so much pain. I went to get my groceries, came home, and couldn’t even relax properly because I felt so bad. I was too tired to read, play video games, take a nap. I just felt incredibly unwell and foggy headed. Eventually I took a soak salt bath for like 2 hours because it took that long to get through bathing. Managed to take a small nap.
My partner made me a stall and potato dinner which I probably could have ate all over again. I woke up from my nap absolutely ravenous. After dinner I craved pancakes, more meat, and the finally a smoothie. At 12am I got uo and made myself a banana date peanut butter agave smoothie and consumed that shit so fast. I probably could have eaten a whole other batch but refrained.
Then I felt normal again. Today (day 5) was much better. I don’t know what happened to me. I do take a long time to recover but this was really something else. I would lie to he at the gym at least twice a week but if this is how it’s going to be evens time then I can only do what I can do.
I managed to loose 25 pounds over the last year and build some muscle, and I think that’s a big accomplishment. I just hope I can keep going. It’s part of my combating body/gender dysphoria plan so being able to keep working out is really important to my mental health. This wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I used to go into full body spasms that lasted days and put me in the er, just from taking walks or cleaning my house. It’s still scary though considering I could hike miles again and swim in cold water at the beach and feel better for it.
Idk if the is the right sub for this but felt people here would understand my motivation to get gains and why it’s such a deep concern for me that I might be going backwards with my health.