Exercising is both great for your body and overall well being. While getting into a fitness regime is a huge accomplishment, issues like injuries and lack of motivation can come into your fitness routine and can make you stop exercising. Lack of exercise can make you start to experience some changes in your body due to lack of movements. Understanding some of the changes you might experience after quitting exercise is crucial. In this article, Grand Fitness Mondial club outlines several changes that might occur in your body and mind.
Loss of Flexibility
Regular exercising keeps the body and muscles flexible and always prepared for hitting everyday’s life. However, within just a week of lacking to exercise, many people lose a lot of mobility and flexibility. Consequently, this makes many people lack the motivation of getting back to their regular exercise routines because their bodies start becoming stiff. This can also make your muscles to lose their fat-burning potential hence accumulation of fat in the body.
Reduced Body Metabolic Rate
Regular exercise increases the rate of blood flow in the body, which in turn increases the body’s rate of metabolism. However, within a week after you stop your regular fitness routine; there is reduced blood flow in the body. As a result, muscles lose their fat-burning potential, and the body metabolism rate slows down due to inactivity. If you do not get back to your workout routines, there is a likelihood that most of the food you take is not burned up. Instead, the body stores it as fats.
Less Endurance
Aerobic exercise is essential as it keeps the heart and lungs active and functioning correctly. Within two weeks of missing your training, your maximal oxygen uptake is the first to be affected. Your Maximal oxygen uptake or V02 Max can decline by up to 20% within a few weeks of missing the gym. Consequently, your heart’s ability to pump blood efficiently throughout the body declines, and your lungs capacity to hold air for your body use decreases. This makes you start gasping for air when you walk a small distance and can lead to a decline in the muscle structures, stamina, strength, power and coordination. The reason behind this is the loss of mitochondria responsible for converting oxygen into energy for your body use.
Reduced Muscular Strength
Regular exercise gradually increases your muscles and muscle strength as the body converts most of the fats into muscles. When you stop exercising for too long, you start losing your muscles and strength. The fats that the body had converted into muscles start becoming soft and squishy due to lack of regular work out. While the muscles might remain unchanged after a month of inactivity, you may notice a loss in sport-specific power, and you are likely to feel weaker. This is a clear indication that your muscles are losing strength.
Plumping and Weight Gain
Once you are used to regular exercise and you suddenly stop, you are likely to experience an increase in body fats and increase in weight especially if you do not change the diet you used while on exercise. Due to lack of demand for power and strength, the muscles gradually start becoming smaller and the fat cells start growing more prominent. Additionally, the fats, which the body was converting into muscles during exercise starts becoming soft and squishy. This causes a change in someone’s appearance and you become plump.
Increased Risk of Diseases
Whereas it is essential to take some time off training to avoid overtraining syndrome, too much time off the workout can increase the risk of medical complications. Lack of exercise can jeopardize your long-term health fitness and cause heart diseases, diabetes, and high blood pressure. This is due to stiffening of veins and arteries and accumulation of fats around the heart, thus hindering its functionality. As a result, the blood pressure goes up, and the heart starts developing complications due to overworking. In addition to these diseases, lack of exercise is also likely to affect the functionality of your brain. Activity triggers Most of the brain neurotransmitters that play a significant role in mood control. When you do not work out, then you are likely to experience mood swings.
Time off training is vital for recovery. However, once you start noting some of these signs after you quit work out, it is time to go back. Too much time away from the gym can make you lack motivation for going back, therefore, don’t allow it.