Breaking the Cycle of Fatigue and Sedentary Habits: How to Move When You’re Exhausted

By: Kelley Morgan, M.A. LPC, NCC

The Energy-Movement Paradox

It is such a cruel and honestly disrespectful scientific reality that being chronically exhausted reinforces inactivity and inactivity reinforces exhaustion. Because, for people burdened with health problems like depression, POTS, or autoimmune conditions, where does that leave us? If we are already feeling low energy, this finger trap of an emotional conundrum can make us feel even more hopeless, defeated, or searching for miracles. 

With this in mind, and before I go further, if this is speaking to you I want you to pause for a second...close your eyes, draw a breath deep into your belly and slowly release it through your mouth. Now do that again. Maybe a few more times. It is truly so hard to do what you do everyday, carrying this struggle and the grief that accompanies it. The way it may make your body feel heavy sometimes, your mind foggy, your shoulders tight. Notice the tension or the discomfort, where you feel it, and what comes up when it has your attention. When this is your daily experience, you are often just trying to survive. It's easy to forget that and hold ourselves to an unfair standard, one that clips our wings before we can even find the courage to fly. If there is anything I want you to take from this blogpost, please let it be that accepting where we are and having the most genuine compassion for ourselves that we can muster is a huge step towards recovery. Now, let's talk about the sabotage of negative self talk, strategies for reasonable goals, and ways you can engage with the goal of moving more without actually moving.

Betrayal: a story of negative self-talk

Two feelings are very common when we're having a hard time finding the energy and discipline to move: guilt and frustration. These feelings can take on the flavor of judgment and, y'all, that's a problem. Judgment is about assigning a moral value to something, one where there's a moral high ground or superiority that implies doing what you're "supposed to do" makes you a good person and not doing it makes you a bad person. Could we make the stakes any higher than going for a walk being a determinant of your moral character?! So unfair. Let's commit to breaking this cycle. A walk may be a healing and powerful way to care for your body, but it is certainly not making anyone a good or a bad person. Let's all agree to lower the stakes and reframe the goal as exactly what it is: an accessible way to nurture and care for our bodies and our minds. Using language that feels compassionate and kind, like you're speaking to a friend, will assist you in this important reframe. Shaming, damning, cruel, and condemning language has no place here. I'll be focusing quite a bit on the mental piece of this because it tends to create some of the biggest barriers while also being where we have the most control.

Dread and its bestie, anxiety, are two other emotions you may notice taking center stage when you want to be more active but feel low energy. We all know dread. The embodiment of "uuuuuuuuugh". Dread drains our energy further because it's a form of internal energetic resistance. Think about how much energy it requires to arm wrestle someone. It's exhausting. And if that were not enough of a challenge,the brain has now hopped on board with thoughts that further rationalize and reinforce the feeling of dread. "I literally can't. There's absolutely no way." or  "Today is just not a good day, I'll feel like doing it tomorrow." These thoughts, a creeping kind of anxiety, and the resistant energy of dread are pushing towards one particular destination: relief. The sweet, sweet familiar relief of buying into the fantasy that we will magically become someone tomorrow or next Monday that we are not today. Our brains and bodies are designed to seek safety first and there is nothing that we interpret as more safe than relief from anxiety. So if it helps, you can see anxiety and dread as working together to trick you into staying in the same pattern, pulling you toward the relief of delaying the labor of change. When this happens, it's an indicator that you are able to move your body but will first need to attend to the anxiety creating the barrier. I talk later in this post about nervous system supporting practices like deep breathing and guided meditation or imagery being helpful for calming an escalating nervous system. But one of the most practical tools we can use with dread and anxiety is the power of refusing to bargain. If you're walking down the street and someone tries to aggressively grab your attention, demanding you come into their store to buy something, it will take a lot more of your energy to engage with this person, politely repeating no, making up a story why you can't come in, or even eventually saying yes to avoid the confrontation. Simply saying "no thanks" without pausing to engage requires the least of you. We have the power to choose not to engage with dread and anxiety, the pairs of aggressively demanding salespeople in our mind, luring us back into old patterns. This is an internal boundary and gets easier to hold with practice. 

If you are truly too tired or not feeling well enough to move, it's so important to honor that! But so much confidence will come from seeing you can trust yourself to know the difference and then supporting yourself accordingly. 

Wrapping up this section on interference from thoughts and feelings, we can talk about one of self sabotage's greatest hits: all or nothing thinking. Also affectionately known as perfectionism. Like judgment and the dread/anxiety feedback loop, this is an inaccurate and largely unhelpful distortion of thought that activates your internal alarm system with impressive speed. Where judgment tells you your character is on the line and anxiety and dread tell you that you just absolutely cannot and it's best to start another day, all or nothing thinking tells you that there is one way and one way only to do this. And that is with the mastery of a professional. All or nothing thinking takes a page out of judgment's book to say "This is your one shot! Every bad thing you heard about yourself and have thought about yourself can be disproven with this one single action...so long as you do it perfectly...".  Cool, no pressure!! The good news is, once we become aware of the manipulation in this kind of thinking, the thinking that tells us it's only worth doing if we do it this one right way, we see that not only is all or nothing thinking discouraging us from trying, it's also making the act of taking care of ourselves practically joyless. Think of this thought pattern emerging as a red flag letting us know that we've fallen into a trap; when we actually do what we said we're gonna do, it will still be met with doubt and criticism. There's no win for us in this whe we lean on all or nothing thinking. Nip this pattern in the bud by choosing not to engage with these thoughts. Imagine them like leaves on a stream you watch float on by if you're willing to let them. Thoughts aren't always facts and goals need to be realistic to be valuable. Otherwise they are just criticism disguised as a plan for success.

Fear of Exhaustion or Feeling Worse

This section will be a short but necessary one. Pushing ourselves too hard too soon or simply exerting ourselves in a way that does more harm than good is not an uncommon experience for people trying to move more. HIIT workouts are not for everyone. And not because some people are lazy and can't handle it. Cortisol imbalances and adrenal insufficiency are real, and high intensity interval training or hard core boot camp style workouts can leave some people feeling worse than they did coming into the workout. It can also deter people from finding the courage to try again. Starting small is a great way to find your baseline of tolerance as well as giving yourself the opportunity to meet your body where it is. Think of it as the embodiment of self acceptance. Your body loves you!! It's working so hard to take care of you. Moving at a pace that it can tolerate is a great way to return the favor.

One way to work against pushing too hard or setting unrealistic goals is to write yourself a menu of micromovements (standing up out of your chair 5 times, 10 air squats, some light stretching) alongside larger movement goals (going for a walk or a run, attending a yoga class, strength training). Commit to doing something, anything, from the menu at a certain frequency each day or each week. Sometimes once you allow yourself to engage in some movement, you'll find your body responding by gifting you with a surge of more energy. Other times, you may not notice an improvement in energy levels but you'll still be building confidence by showing up for yourself like you said you would!

Starting Small and Working with What You've Got

I mentioned the power of micromovements in the last section and I think it's worth going over a few more ways we can introduce gentle movement to increase our energy throughout the day. Starting your day with a minute or two of light stretching can be a fantastic way to transition from sleep into preparing your body for the day. Stiffness in our muscles and fascia from lack of movement are not only painful over time, they can also create issues with overall mobility, circulation, and lymphatic drainage. Finding content creators that model some gentle stretches, showing you how you can carefully and effectively stretch your feet and your calves, your neck, your stomach and your back, as well as your hips and glutes can truly transform your day and eventually your quality of life. Stretch different body parts on different days to make the goal more approachable.

If getting up feels like an impossible task, that's okay! Try some light stretching while sitting or lying down, pulling a knee to your chest or try lifting a leg or an arm and holding it in that position for a couple seconds. You can also use gentle rocking or swaying movements to activate your core and improve your circulation.

Finding other ways to care for our bodies can help to support movement goals, as well. Practices like breathwork, doing guided meditations with imagery, and even rebounding after dry brushing are great examples of habits that support the nervous system and the lymphatic system. Health of the nervous system and the lymphatic system ultimately encourage overall health and, thus, can translate into greater energy stores for more movement. Dry brushing is a practice that moves a specific kind of brush across the skin towards the heart at a low pressure to support the movement of lymph towards our lymph nodes, small structures within our immune system that serve as filters to fight infection. Rebounding is a gentle bouncing, sometimes done on a small trampoline, that further supports lymphatic drainage. Sedentary lifestyles can disrupt things like optimal lymphatic drainage and gut motility (both ways our body moves toxins out of our system), causing things like inflammation, constipation, and a decline in immune function. If we are working towards better overall health in an effort to feel capable of moving more, practices like these can make a very big impact with very little effort! 

With the help of breathwork and meditation, a happy nervous system makes for a happier mind and body. It is the bridge that connects our mental and physical health. Taking a few minutes a day to do a guided meditation or a few seconds to take some deep belly breaths can not only help to calm your body in the moment, over time it can lead to improved mood, better quality sleep, lower anxiety, and better digestion. These are all improvements that lend to more energy for movement and any other goals you may have for yourself! 

The Many Gifts of Walking

Sometimes being armed with information is our greatest resource. Walking is one of the most accessible forms of movement for anyone that is able to do it. It's free and, weather and safety permitting, you can do it almost anywhere. Walking supports heart health, it can lower blood pressure, support joint health, improve balance and coordination, regulate sleep, improve immune health, support lymphatic health, brain health, mood, blood sugar regulation, and improve energy. I mention this because, in a world full of complicated health guidance, walking can be overlooked in its simplicity. Simple as it may be, its benefits are broad. Let's look at a few tips for how to utilize walking as an accessible tool for increasing movement despite fatigue while reducing fatigue through its many benefits.

Did you know the time of day you choose to walk tacks on some pretty fantastic health bonuses? The sun is a powerful part of human health. Sun exposure not only provides a necessary form of vitamin D, it is also a natural support for regulating our circadian rhythm, our internal clock that regulates alertness and sleepiness over the course of the day. If you are someone that has difficulty falling asleep at night, a morning walk in the sun is a practice that offers many benefits, including sending a message to your symphony of neurotransmitters to begin secreting melatonin, the hormone that helps us to fall asleep and stay asleep. Sleep cycle aside, there is an immeasurable benefit to starting your day with an action aligned with caring for yourself. It sets a tone and an intention that is likely to reinforce motivation and boundaries throughout your day in support of your goals. But if mornings are tough and evening goals are more your speed, a gentle walk around the golden hour of the day (approaching sunset) can have similar benefits for your circadian rhythm while also helping to reduce stress, lower cortisol, and give you time to gently and intentionally transition from the chaos of the day into a more restful evening. Walking after meals can support digestion and blood sugar regulation. Improved digestion can mean improved vitamin and mineral absorption, better fueling your body to create more energy. Improved digestion at night can also support better quality sleep, allowing us to start the day rested. Blood sugar regulation is a powerful way to avoid big dips in energy throughout our day, especially the dreaded post lunch slump. 

There is no perfect plan of action but there are many routes to progress!

A Compassionate Invitation to Move

I remind my clients often, if it matters that you didn't do it then it matters that you did. So often we're quick to criticize or condemn ourselves for our mistakes but meet ourselves with silence in moments of progress. Please be your own cheerleader! Be as relentlessly encouraging as you can be towards yourself! Imagine someone or several people that love you cheering you on, being silly with you to take any exaggerated heaviness out of the goal, or celebrating with you upon completion. These imaginary interactions have a powerful effect on the nervous system, improving our resilience and inviting us to keep going. Consistently giving 25% effort to a goal is infinitely better than giving 100% once or twice and then 0% after that. Let's oust all or nothing thinking, honor our bodies, challenge our minds' tolerance of discomfort, reframe negative thinking that anchors us in unhelpful patterns or routines, and respect our limits. Fatigue and chronically low energy can be a barrier to movement goals but, with the right supports, they are not an immovable wall! Whatever your motivation and whatever strategies you choose to support yourself in pursuit of your goals, I wish you every success!

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