How To Make Progress When You’re Sick

You’ve just begun a new fitness routine/diet a few weeks ago and have been making great progress… then you get sick. You don’t have the same energy levels and it suddenly gets harder to work out, harder to eat well and harder to focus on the end goal.

Stopping working out = stop making progress?

Most fitness enthusiasts will know that an extended gap from exercise and working out can take you back down to where you started. If you get sick and are no longer able to work out you will quickly begin to lose all the progress you’ve made so far.

This will inevitably lead to frustration which makes the whole ordeal that much worse. Not only do you slow up (or even go back) on your progress, but you can also get depressed about this which will make it that much harder to get back into the swing of things.

Solution to getting sick: Sleep!

Getting sick doesn’t have to be the end of the world as far as your fitness or bodybuilding goals are concerned. Instead of lamenting over your bad luck in getting a cold, why not take productive and beneficial steps in getting better so that you’re stronger and healthier when you get back to 100%?

Crank up on the Vitamin C (take a lot more than you usually consume), eat garlic, grapefruit and whatever other natural health products that work for you, but most importantly sleep! Don’t make the mistake of trying to get through a workout when you’re sick and run down. Your body is telling you it needs rest and recovery time, not more physical strain and stress.

Sleep aids in your workout progress, not just in getting well again

More and more studies[1] are conclusively telling us that in order to successfully lose weight (or make progress in gaining muscle if that is your goal) we need to sleep more than we do.

When we sleep our bodies are most effective at repairing and renewing. Consequently, the most effective way for you to combat a sickness is to sleep more. Not only will this help us to get back to full strength more quickly but it will also give your body time to regrow damaged muscle tissue and ligaments so that when you get back into full swing you’ll be rejuvenated - you might even find you’ll be making better progress than you were before!

So next time you catch a cold, or some other sickness, make sure you follow some simple rules;

1. Don’t work out

2. Eat better

3. Sleep more!

Easy enough?

[1] http://www.kansas.com/188/story/141661.html

Tagged as: , encouragement, health, progress