Too Much Exercise

My whole adult life when I get into my exercise spurts, it's always been excessive.  If we're told to do X amount, I like to do sometimes 2X or X+.  I know when I went to aggressive and hard, my heart did not like that and I have the tests to prove it.  My heart actually enlarged and didn't function as well.  However, when I worked out in an optimal zone taking my AT (anaerobic threshold) into account, and gradually built up to higher AT's, my heart liked this.

In Mark Sisson's book The Primal Blueprint 21 Day Total Body Transformation he has this pyramid that looks like a food pyramid for exercise. 

The Bottom Tier:  Move Frequently at a Slow Pace - Walking, hiking, cycling, easy cardio @ 55-75% max heartrate for 2-5 hrs/wk

The Middle Tier:  Lift Heavy Things - Brief, intense sessions of full body functional movements for 1-3x/wk for 7-60 min.

The Top Tier:  Sprint - "All Out" efforts once every 7-10 days for <10 min. total duration

Seriously, Mark Sisson at 58 yrs old is REALLY good looking physically.  He has muscles, but doesn't look like a bulky meathead, nor does he look unhealthy skinny.  He's well proportioned.  He shows some pictures of when he was younger and running marathons, doing ironman triathlons and frankly, he looks WAY better now than he did then.  He looked to gaunt & thin then, no real muscles.

This book seems to have a sensible approach that isn't overbearing, at least not for where my kids and I are in life.  We already love single ingredient whole foods and we exercise.  So, for me, it's to work on the bottom tier of doing more walking in between my HIIT strength workouts that are on M/W/F.  So, my goal now is to add 2-3 days of just walking and during one of those sessions, throw in some sprints or jump roping. 

I need to give back the book I borrowed today, but will borrow it from the library or something.  I've done the route of tons of exercise and though I put on muscle, it just made me a great sugar burner instead of a fat burner.  I was basically a fat fit person who put in a lot of effort that has been potentially harmful, I'm learning that less is sometimes more.

If you're exercising a lot and really intensely and not seeing much results, maybe you're doing too much.