Being Sick and Working Out

Hey y’all it’s been a while but hopefully you’re of the deductive reasoning level that the title of this post makes obvious the reason why. Anyway, let’s get down to the real stuff.

Being sick is the worst for many reasons. Things hurt, it’s hard to sleep but also it’s hard to be awake, showering is a HUGE DEAL, TV is somehow more boring all of a sudden, food doesn’t taste good because it hurts to swallow and breathe, and you don’t feel like cooking so you live off of soup and sorbet. On top of this, days go by that you can’t work out. Can you? Because maybe, like a light workout, will make you feel better? Or at least not as guilty for eating cartons of sorbet?

So realquick here the answer is no. I’ve read some articles (not really, just message boards) that dictate that as long as symptoms are from the neck up (as in head / nose / throat / most of the things that feel sick when you are sick), you are okay to work out. From personal experience, I will say that this is just very wrong. Each and every time I work out when I’m sick (even after it’s been a few days and I’m “not at 100% but almost, so time to get back to it”) I end up feeling worse, being sick longer, and not really working out anyway.

Here are the reasons in list form why you should not go to the gym when you’re sick:

1. First of all, rude. Those nice people at the gym aren’t trying to get a virus, so don’t spread it all over them.
2. Let’s face it, it’s barely a workout anyway. You decide to “take it easy” on the elliptical and are out of breath after coasting for 20 minutes. Or worse, you try and kick your own ass into getting better by going to a boot camp class and Cannot Even Handle It Right Now after about a minute and a half.
3. Because you forced your body to spend its precious energy almost-working-out, it spent less energy on recovery, and now you will be sick for longer, and in many cases, get worse again before you get better.
4. All those endorphins you get from working out? You don’t really feel that because your body thinks you’re killing it.
5. Now that your body needs more time to recover from your idiot attempt at working out, there will be even more days that you miss out on doing Real People Workouts.

When you feel yourself starting to get better, wait until you actually wake up with the same amount of energy as Normal Self You, and feel as ready as any other day to kick some major ass at the gym. It’s well worth it to take the extra day or two off to make sure you’re back to your bad ass self and do a workout that is really freaking hard. After a week of being back at it, you’ll undo any changes you think happened to your body while you were sick. Some people even LOSE weight when they’re sick because not working out means you aren’t as hungry, but I am not one of those people, of course. Still, after about a week of fitnessing again, it’s like it never happened.

So GET SOME REST Y’ALL. And then get back at it.