Are Your Workouts Helping You — or Hurting You?

Are Your Workouts Helping You — or Hurting You?

By: Marcy Schoenborn

Exercise is supposed to make you stronger, leaner, and more energized.
But for a lot of people—especially women over 40—it’s doing the opposite.

If you’re working out consistently but noticing fatigue, stubborn weight, poor sleep, anxiety, or slower recovery, the problem may not be motivation or discipline. It may be timing and physiology.

In short:
👉 Your workouts might be stressing a system that isn’t ready to handle stress yet.

When Workouts Backfire: The Adrenal Connection

Your adrenal glands regulate how your body responds to stress—all stress, not just emotional stress.

That includes:

• Intense workouts

• Fasted training

• High-volume cardio

• Too many HIIT sessions

• Under-fueled strength training

When adrenals are already strained (from years of stress, dieting, poor sleep, blood sugar swings), hard workouts act like pouring gasoline on a fire.

Instead of:

• Building muscle

• Improving metabolism

• Increasing energy

The body responds with:

• Elevated cortisol

• Blood sugar instability

• Muscle breakdown instead of repair

• Fat storage (especially around the midsection)

This is why people can be doing “everything right” and still feel worse.

Why “Just Push Through” Is Bad Advice

The fitness world often treats fatigue as a mindset problem.

But biologically, fatigue is often a protective signal.

When the body doesn’t have:

• Enough micronutrients

• Stable blood sugar

• Adequate protein

• Proper recovery capacity

It cannot adapt to stress.

So instead of adaptation, you get compensation:

• Slower thyroid signaling

• Hormonal disruption

• Inflammation

• Plateaued or regressing results

More effort doesn’t fix this.
Better sequencing does.

Nutrition Comes First — Always

Before asking the body to perform, you have to give it the tools to recover.

That means:

• Stable meals (not skipping, not under-eating)

• Adequate protein to protect lean mass

• Fiber-rich plants to lower inflammation

• Minerals and electrolytes to support adrenal signaling

• Enough calories to tell the body it’s safe

Without this foundation, workouts become another stressor, not a stimulus for growth.

This is the piece most programs skip.

How We Do This Differently at Scho Fit

At Scho Fit, workouts are never prescribed in isolation.

We start with:

1. Cellular nutrition — feeding the body so systems can stabilize

2. Digestion and blood sugar regulation — so fuel actually gets absorbed

3. Inflammation reduction — so recovery can happen

4. Adrenal support — before layering intensity

Only then do we build:

• Strength training that supports hormones

• Movement that improves resilience, not exhaustion

• Progressions that match where the nervous system is right now

This is why many clients report:

• Better sleep before major weight loss

• More energy before increasing workouts

• Reduced pain and inflammation early on

The body responds quickly when it’s no longer being pushed beyond capacity.

The Right Question Isn’t “Am I Working Hard Enough?”

It’s:

Is my body resourced enough to adapt to this?

If workouts leave you drained instead of stronger, the solution isn’t quitting movement—it’s earning intensity back through proper nutrition and recovery.

When the foundation is sound, workouts finally do what they’re supposed to do:

• Build strength

• Improve metabolism

• Increase confidence

• Support long-term health

That’s not weakness.
That’s physiology.

And when you work with it, everything changes.

Citations

1. Hackney, A. C. (2006). Stress and the neuroendocrine system: the role of exercise as a stressor and modifier of stress. Expert Review of Endocrinology & Metabolism, 1(6), 783–792.
   → Establishes intense exercise as a physiological stressor affecting adrenal hormones and cortisol.

2. Kraemer, W. J., & Ratamess, N. A. (2005). Hormonal responses and adaptations to resistance exercise and training. Sports Medicine, 35(4), 339–361.
   → Details how inadequate recovery and nutrition alter cortisol, testosterone, and anabolic signaling.

3. Meeusen, R., et al. (2013). Prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the overtraining syndrome. European Journal of Sport Science, 13(1), 1–24.
   → Explains how excessive training without adequate recovery leads to hormonal disruption, fatigue, and performance decline.

4. Duclos, M. (2010). Cortisol and exercise: implications for stress and metabolism. Hormone Research in Paediatrics, 73(6), 408–413.
   → Shows how repeated high cortisol from exercise stress impairs metabolic and endocrine balance.

5. Loucks, A. B. (2007). Low energy availability in the marathon and other endurance sports. Sports Medicine, 37(4–5), 348–352.
   → Demonstrates how under-fueling relative to training suppresses endocrine function, including adrenal and thyroid signaling.

6. Mountjoy, M., et al. (2018). IOC consensus statement on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). British Journal of Sports Medicine, 52(11), 687–697.
   → Confirms that inadequate nutrition combined with exercise impairs metabolism, hormones, bone, immunity, and recovery.

7. Ishak, W. W., et al. (2012). Energy, fatigue, and the neuroendocrine response to stress. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 73(6), e702–e710.
   → Links chronic stress, cortisol dysregulation, fatigue, and impaired recovery.

8. Manore, M. M. (2015). Weight management, exercise, and hormonal regulation. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal, 19(2), 21–27.
   → Explains why nutrition adequacy must precede increased training load, particularly in women.

9. Heikura, I. A., et al. (2018). Low energy availability is difficult to assess but outcomes have large impacts on health and performance. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 28(4), 339–349.
   → Reinforces that fatigue and poor adaptation are often nutritional, not motivational, issues.

10. McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation. Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873–904.
    → Foundational paper on allostatic load—how chronic stress (including exercise stress) overwhelms adaptive capacity.