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Statement & Question. Need Help.
Since January my body temp has been steadily rising. I’ve been eating for heat. I’ve only gained about 12lbs so far and a few inches. In the last two weeks I was hitting high 97’s and even as high as 98.3! I started doing 1/2 hr exercises (weights and cardio) about 5 days a week starting in Feb.Since I have been feeling more energized and much stronger, this past Friday 2/28 and Sat 3/1, I did an 1hr workout each day. It felt so go and for once I wasn’t fatigued after. I was the normal tired from working out, but not exhausted. But since then my temperatures plummeted way down into the 96s and I don’t have much of an appetite. I am tired of eating so on Sunday and today, I have just been eating only if I’m hungry.
Meanwhile my extremities (feet, hands, and nose) have been warm even with the body temp drop to 96. I have also been sleeping much better- extra heavy sleep in fact.
Does anyone have any ideas if the 1hr long exercises could have taken my body into stress mode and caused my temperatures to drop? Or maybe something else happened?
I don’t know, GisChanging. I had thought someone else would have jumped in by now. My guess is you overdid the exercise. It’s good that you are staying warm & sleeping better. Even if you feel energized try to go slower with the exercise & see how your temps are.
Im in month 7 of etf. My avg temp is 98.6 with occasional 99.0s in the morn. From my experience you can easily tank the temp with the amount of exercise you’re doing. I do 3 workous a week. Each workout is 4 compound exercises, only 1 set each, stopping sets just before failure. If i do any more than that my temp drops. However this is about twice as much as I could tolerate 3 months ago so its getting better. I find my instincts are total crap for training volume. What feels just right can actually be way too much. The cool part is Im gaining far more muscle than my old overtraining days. Try to start off really minimally and slowly add volume. It also helps to take a deloading week as much as every month so the fatigue doesnt accumulate.
What’s deloading? Do you mean no exercise? Calamari, I wish my temps were as high as yours. I’m trying to get back to a regular exercise routine, but since my temps are still a bit low maybe I’m sabotaging myself. Trying not to overdo it and reading what David says about exercise, but I know everybody is different.
Linda, there’s lots of different approaches to deloading but basically it’s to back off on the volume and intensity of exercise for a short period every now and again. It can last from 5 days to 3 weeks. Some people take a week and cut their lifting poundages and sets in half. Others like myself just take the week off from the gym and the only activity is walking and stretching/foam rolling. I never experience any loss in strength and often come back stronger with fuller muscles due something called the overcompensation effect. How often you deload depends on how hard you’ve been working out and age. During the deload week, my temps and sleep improve. It’s kind of like hitting a reset button to make sure you’re not chronically overtraining.
My temps to begin with were only in the 96’s. I didn’t exercise the first month at all. Then when I did start I found I could only do 1 set of 1 exercise per day without going backwards! I think it’s just good to concentrate on making progress slowly but surely by adding a rep at a time, or a small plate to the bar.
What are your temps now and what were they when you started?
Thank you so much Calamari and Linda for the responses. Calamari, I will take the recommendation to slow down again on the exercise and let my body temperature recover.
Since Sat, Mar1st, I continued exercising each day, but reduced the time back to 1/2 hr, but my metabolism has remained consistent in the 96s from Sunday up until today. Even though I am feeling better physically and even though prior to Sat, my temps were holding in the high 97s and hitting up to 98.3, my body just doesn’t seem ready for so much exercise. I’m going rest the remainder of this week and see if my temps rise. After that, I can try 3 days a week, 1/2 hr per session and just try different workout regiments until I find the right balance. My mind said Yes! Yes! Yes! and my body is telling me something else. Oh well. I’m just glad I’m learning to pay attention to more then one signal.
Thanks so much for the insight!
Calamari, when I first started doing the EFH my temp was 96.7. I didn’t do any exercise except short walks. I got my temps up to 97.7 after 2 months. It has been a year & it hasn’t changed. I have more energy than I did so I figured it was time to get back to some exercise besides walking. My temps don’t want to go any higher.
Have either of you made an appt to speak to Matt? He really helped me fine tune my metabolic work in ways that I would not have guessed from the books, since the books can’t anticipate every individuals quirks.
Linda, Matt wrote that weight training can actually help with raising metabolism by increasing mitochondria. As long as you don’t overdo it, maybe that will raise it. Personally, soreness lowers my temps so I stick to heavier weights, lower reps and longer rest periods. The light weight, short rest stuff leaves me really sore.
Another thing that’s helped in the past month to get my temps higher than ever is the Earthing they wrote about in “Solving the Paleo Equation”. It sounds whacky, trying to harness the earths magnetic fields and all that but it works for me. I just sit ass on a concrete bench in my apartment complex with my shoes off for half an hour. Without fail I come back home higher than when I left. I’ll come home at 99.3-99.6.
Also, how much sleep do you get? I’m fortunate enough to have a home office and no need to set an alarm. On 8 hours sleep my temp won’t go higher than 98.3, but if I sleep 10-12 hours I can hit 98.6-99.0. If I wake up in the middle of the night with an adrenaline surge I have a cup on the nightstand with a tablespoon of dextrose w 1/4 tsp salt mixed in 3oz water. Puts me right back out.
I’ve also found that medium intensity exercise lowers my temp. It’s best in my experience to avoid the middle and do low intensity (walking) or high intensity, (heavy weight training or HIIT cardio).
Gischanging, I feel ya when it comes to the motivation being much higher than what the body should be doing. It’s weird, but Matt said over time you can and should raise your exercise threshold.
I’ve experimented and read a lot on this but here’s a few other tips I’ve found. Avoid full body workouts as they tax the central nervous system more. Break it up. Use lifting straps for back exercises. Again, less CNS fatigue. DO NOT go to failure. Stop with a rep or two in the tank. More short workouts are better than less long workouts.
Yep, I am consulting with Matt. I have talked with him twice. First time he suggested I up the carbs & sugar. Second time he suggested a thyoid supplement. Seems I can’t do it by food alone. I’m not on a thyroid supp right now since i don’t know what to take. I forgot to tell him I was on one last fall, recommended by my holistic dr. I couldn’t tell if it was helping. She had me on some other things as well & I don’t know if any of it helped.
As for exercise I have been wondering what the best thing would be. I don’t belong to a gym & don’t want to so it has to be something I can do at home. I have a tape called The Firm which I have done off & on for years. I have weights to go with it from 3 lbs-7 lbs. Unfortunately I never lost weight doing this tape & when I did the whole tape it wore me out. From what I’ve read on Matt’s blog it isn’t the most effective way to lose weight. I thought it was good for the weights though. Since you mentioned HIIT I looked it up. I am so out of shape I’m not sure I can do it. I would really have to find a way to motivate myself to get through it. As I mentioned on another thread on here I am having a very hard time getting into a rhythm for exercise. I also have a belly dance tape I like to do, but that probably won’t do it either.
Let’s see, what else? Oh the sleep. It is much better than it was, but still not sleeping through the night. I am taking magnesium now which is supposed to have lots of benefits, sleeping better is one of them so we’ll see. I also read that it can help raise body temp. I have read about earthing, very interesting. Last summer I went outside walked around barefoot on the grass & sat outside to read but it didn’t have any noticeable affect. There are so many things out there that help a lot of people but all the things I’ve tried don’t do anything for me. I think my best bet is eating mostly clean, satisfying food, finding the right form of exercise & possibly a supplement & trying not to stress about any of it. In my case, easier said than done, lol. Anyway Human Torch, thanks for input. And good luck Gischanging.
Sounds like you’ve got a challenging situation Linda. Best of luck with conquering it and keep us updated!
HIIT is probably something you should wait on. I can only do a few minutes of it and I’ve been working out consistently for decades.
I haven’t had a consultation with Matt yet, but I am in the process of reading the ebooks. They have been helpful.
Linda, YouTube has some GREAT workouts by Fitness Blender. Just type in Fitness Blender. There are a lot of them on youtube, they are free, there are a variety of workouts and timing (5min, 10min, 1hr, 40min, etc), and you can do them from your home.
The moderator in the workout videos also has a very calming voice so they are not mentally stressful workouts. When I started using them, I wondered why it was much easier to workout out and it dawned on me that the motivational yelling in most workout videos has been mentally taxing. I didn’t even realize it until that day and I’ve been working out for years.
If you can check them out. They may help in giving you some exercise variety as you figure out what’s best for your body.
I love fitness blender and have been doing their workouts for about half a year now! They are great and you can set yourself up with the right intensity matching your goals.
I started looking at them yesterday & tried some out to see where I’m at. When I finished I felt a little nauseous so I don’t know if I overdid it or the exercise did what it was supposed to. It would probably be good for me to do this with no expectations of losing weight. As Piranha said in another thread I may never lose the weight & need to accept myself no matter what. I’m not there yet.
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