Boredom, illness, injuries or stubborn scale can drive you out of the gym to your couch and Netflix. Even the most dedicated workout enthusiasts take some time off and it’s completely fine, required even. Taking a break from working out to give your muscles the time to heal and recover is a necessity. But a break of one or two days that turn to two weeks or more can cause some serious effects on your physical fitness. Right here we will show you what happens to your body when you quit working out for more than one week.
Your Metabolism Starts To Deteriorate
Stopping your workout routine for more than one week will slow down your metabolism. When you stop being active, you lose your fat-burning abilities, and your body will start storing fats. Consuming food without burning it with exercise will lead to more body fat and an increased body mass index (BMI).
The Effect On Your Body
- Pausing your workouts will send your body to a condition of detraining. Detraining weirdly affects the fitter athletes faster than the people who just walk twenty minutes per day; however, detraining doesn’t affect athletes as hard, it takes longer to decline back to your previous self. There are a few significant effects to expect on your body when you stop hitting the gym, a few of them are:
- After you were going on a solid two-hour workout routine easily, you start gasping for air after only climbing up a few stairs. This is completely normal as your cardio condition decreases. The reason behind that is when you stop doing cardio, your heart stops pumping blood like it’s used to. After that, the oxygen levels in your body will drop.
- Switching from a fit person to a sedentary lifestyle will drive to losing your muscle tone you worked so hard for. While muscles don’t turn to fats unlike common beliefs, they shrink, allowing your body to store more fat. Your appearance will change and you will feel flabbier.
- Exercising helps fighting many diseases, lower blood pressure, and decrease your blood sugar levels. So it’s rational that sedentary life will drive your blood pressure and blood sugar levels to skyrocket compared to their old form. Exercising for just thirty minutes daily will decrease the risk of many heart diseases and serious issues with your overall health. Total shape will give you some hacks and tips to fight detraining, reach the high jump, and much more information and guides to a healthier fitter body.
Exercising is known to have good effects on your mental health and brain as it fights dementia. Muscle tone loss is expected, what you didn’t know that quitting your working out routine affects your brain as well. Changes in your appearance might affect your self-esteem; however, inactivity can make your mental health suffer due to the lack of dopamine and serotonin you used to trigger by working out. You might notice some changes in your sleeping pattern, inability to concentrate, and mood swings.