Listening to my body

What a fitness app has taught me about myself.

About a month or so ago I signed up for Whoop (this post isn’t sponsored or affiliated with Whoop in any way). It’s a fitness app and wearable that tracks all sorts of biometric data and is designed to help you improve your health and fitness and generally just be the best version of you. My motivation to invest in this app was ultimately to hold myself accountable, but not in the way you might think.

I am the worst for pushing myself. For being my harshest and most troublesome critic. I keep soldiering on regardless of how I’m feeling and it’s a bad habit I’ve tried and failed countless times to crack. “Be kind to yourself” everyone says and I believe I am. By moving my body and keeping myself fit and healthy, I am being kind to myself. But at the same time, I am also often doing too much. Pushing myself to the point of injury and fatigue, and then I get stuck in that frustrating cycle of doing too much that I end up broken, and then by being broken I can’t do anything at all. That cycle is endless for me.

So, I’ve entrusted my health and fitness to an app. It’s honestly about as extreme as it sounds. This thing stays on my wrist 24/7, and it’s designed to do so. It measures my sleep, heart rate, heart rate variation and all manner of other metrics to work out how well recovered I am, and how much strain my body can handle throughout the day. It also looks at my stress levels, and how that changes based on what I’m doing.

For the most part, since Tom has been back, my sleep has been at 100%, and hasn’t really dropped much below 90%. Success! I am well within my usual ranges for all sleep stages, and seem to be getting enough that the app is placated, (with the exception of last night when we got into bed well after midnight following a night of spectacular barn dancing.. but that’s a story for another time.)

My recovery, however, has been all over the shop, and it’s interesting to look at this data every day and see how much it changes. Last weekend I was really struggling mentally. My mood was on the floor and I just had no motivation to do anything other than laze around reading my book and having a living room picnic whilst watching the Formula 1. Over that weekend, the app said I’d had great sleep, and I was at peak recovery. My body was capable of handling some serious strain and I could push myself. My brain said otherwise and I spent most of the time on the sofa feeling sorry for myself.

By Monday, things had changed quite significantly, I’d still had relatively ok sleep, despite the thunderstorm and strobe lightning we were treated to overnight, and spending most of the time worrying obsessively about my poor pony (who really didn’t care) getting soaked and feeling miserable as she was left out to weather the storm with her field-mates. My stress levels were unsurprisingly high during that night, and when I checked my app the following morning to plan what I was going to do, I was surprised to see the lowest recovery score I’ve ever had. I was very in the red and the app was strongly advising that I rest up and take it easy. But I felt pretty good and capable of handling just a small… intense 40 minute cardio workout with weights.

I had to stop and give myself a stern talking to. What’s the point in looking at this thing every day if you’re not actually going to listen to what your body is telling you with the data it’s throwing out. And so I took the day off, and the day after that, and the day after that until my recovery was back in the green.

I have also learned how much I have been putting my poor body through, and honestly, I’m not surprised that it has broken down as often as it has. I would think absolutely nothing of doing a vigorous workout over lunch, and then going to ride Skye after work. It turns out that more often that not, doing both of those things in one day usually means I have overreached and that I will need to think about doing more restful activities if I want to continue to feel my best. I tend to to both of those things together, at least four times a week.

After yesterday’s antics, my strain for the day topped out at 19.5, and the message from the app couldn’t be more stark.

All out exertion. Strain between 18 and 21 represents near maximal cardiovascular load. Dedicate additional time to rest and recovery.

And today’s gentle amble round the village on horseback has already put me at my optimal strain for the day. Yes, I could push myself to keep improving my fitness, and there is still scope for that. But I will most certainly be paying for it later.

I have learned that really I have no clue what this constant pushing and striving to be better is doing to my body. Of course, I am getting fitter and healthier through exercise and that can only be a good thing. But I’m also starting to learn when enough is enough. When too much of the good stuff starts to have a negative impact, when to push and when to rest. I’m learning through habit tracking, which behaviours are having a positive impact, and which behaviours are negatively impacting my recovery and ability to handle stress and strain.

Ultimately, I should be able to listen to my body without some fancy app telling me what to do, but clearly I have been completely ignoring its cries for rest so far. Maybe this will take me further from being in my body and learning to tune in organically, or maybe it will set me up with some guardrails and guidelines to follow so that I can learn to listen better. All I know is that right now I’m enjoying the experiment and I finally have a way for my body to communicate with me in a way that I understand, and can’t ignore.

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Currently

Reading

Nothing at the moment, which is remarkable considering we have multiple bookcases full of books. Please send me your recommendations and favourites from your TBR lists!

Watching

Finally catching up on Lost in Space. I had a big cry at the end (and pretty much all the way through if I’m being honest) of the last episode. I am always so broken by just how cruel humans can be.

Listening to

I found a ‘I Miss Y2K Pop” playlist on Apple Music and I have been thoroughly enjoying my audible stroll through my early teenage years.

Loving

Almond croissants. Autumnal walks. Having another week off. The nights drawing in. Sunning myself in the conservatory. Saying yes to more things.