#79🏃🏾♂️ Exercising your muscles to ask your body what it needs when you have ADHD
How to avoid hurting yourself from over-exercising.
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I am an ADHD and product management coach helping you change one belief and take one action each week.
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Part 4 of the Self-Care series
🦋 The Takeaways
Belief: Exercise only gives me more energy.
Reality: The right amount recharges, the wrong amount hurts.
Action: Listen to your body.
⭐️ Introduction
Sleep and exercise are the cornerstones of building a self-care routine. They impact the effectiveness and likelihood of self-care and self-regulation.
In a previous post, I discussed why sleep can be a challenge when you have ADHD. Today, I'll explore my challenges with balancing the right amount of exercise—the fine line between an exercise routine helping me regulate my ADHD and making me exhausted.
💭 The Belief - I have run or else…
Part of my self-care routine is running every weekday morning. I aim to start by 6:15 am, after at least 15 minutes of procrastination. It's 30-45 minutes to myself. No music, no people. It's just me, the road, and my thoughts.
Running allows my mind to wander and process whatever anxiety and feelings I need to address. It helps me feel more connected to my body, and the endorphins boost my mood.
A good run helps me feel incredible and ready to take on the world. A bad or missing run brings anxiety that I'm going to be an emotionally dysregulated mess for the day. Without my morning high, I don't feel or perform as well as I normally would.
So, the solution is to adhere strictly to that daily routine without fail, right? If I use my OCD and ADHD to maintain a daily routine religiously, and I'll never have to deal with my ADHD symptoms? Nope.
Running still takes energy from my body, even if it boosts how I feel and function. When I run and my body signals that I need rest, my exhaustion or illness worsens.
🔍 The Reality - The or else is me hurting my body
Exercise can also be how I hurt my body the most when it's already compromised.
I've been sick more times this year than I can remember in recent history. I've had RSV, the flu, nasal infections, and MRSA, just to name a few. Throughout the weeks of being sick, I kept telling myself I needed to run.
Except for being on a two-week mandatory bed rest from surgery, I ran at least a few times while I was sick. I even ran when I had MRSA, despite having a bloody nose during the run.
I sometimes struggle to recognize when I should stop. My ADHD and OCD combine forces, and I don't know when to stop.
While running may help me better manage my ADHD, it helps when I'm rested. It hurts me further when I'm drained.
🛠️ The Action - What does my body feel?
Learning how to better listen to my body helps me maintain a healthy balance of rest and exercise.
Specifically ask yourself, "What does my body feel right now?"
What are the physical sensations I feel right now? Would a run help or hurt me? Is my body asking for rest? Or is it asking me to sprint up this hill?
Your body will often give you a clearer signal of what's happening over why. This is because even if you don't know why it's happening, you can feel where and how much of the response is occurring.
You might think, "My mind is constantly bombarding me with thoughts, and I have to spend half my willpower and medication to not listen to it and function like a typical adult. If I could turn off what it says, I wouldn't need to read this blog."
That may be true for many of you. The key difference is the language of mind versus body.
I define the mind as conscious thought: what am I thinking, feeling, and deciding to do? The body is the physical sensation and reaction to my decisions and stimuli from the world.
For example, your body will tell you if your hand is hurt from a cut before your mind will tell you what happened.
When you listen to your body first, you're better able to understand what your mind and body need and avoid exhaustion.
✨ Conclusion
My body has been telling me I've been working too much lately. I've ignored it and kept running on days I should have rested more. I disregarded these signals and have paid the price many times this year.
When I say rest, I don't mean just sleeping in instead of running. Rest is working less, delegating more, spending more time with family, and shutting off my brain. This includes any activity that doesn't strain my body or mind when it needs a break.
Next time your body tells you it might need rest; ask it what kind of rest it needs and listen to it. You might avoid your next trip to urgent care or an emotional outburst from exhaustion.
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⏭️Next Week
How to prioritize self-care in the midst of the chaos of life.