I Burned Out As A Running Coach While Doing Everything Right Part 2 of 3 Ep. 188

Part 2 of my Burnout story, I share my personal journey through burnout, highlighting physical symptoms, health risks, and the importance of listening to your body to prevent serious health issues. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to Ella Go. My name is Lisa, and this is not just a podcast about running. This is a podcast to empower women through fitness and health and everything in between. Because let's be honest, ladies, this journey could suck if we don't get our shit together. Hey everyone, welcome back to the ELOGO podcast. My name is Lisa. I am your host. So remember, I was talking about this three-part series, talking about my burnout as a coach. Well, this is going to be the second part of the series. And this is when burnout started showing up in my body. So if you listen to part one of this burnout series, I talked about what burnout looked like from the outside. And honestly, from the outside, I probably looked fine. I was still functioning, still working, still running, still showing up for people, still handling responsibilities, because that's what a lot of high-functioning women do. We push through exhaustion like it's a personality trait, like for real. Okay. And for a long time, I convinced myself that what I was experiencing was normal. Isn't this what normal looks like when you're a high-functioning woman that's very driven? I convinced myself of that. But eventually my body stopped cooperating with the version of me that kept trying to override every signal it was sending. And today I want to talk more about that. Not from a fear perspective, because Lord knows I was so freaking scared. But more from an educational and preventative perspective. Because I think a lot of women normalize symptoms they shouldn't normalize, especially women who are used to surviving. For me, things started shifting physically in ways I couldn't ignore anymore. At first, it was subtle. As many of you know, running became a huge part of my life. Running was my outlet, my therapy, my stress relief, my way of feeling strong. But I noticed that my body wasn't responding the same way anymore. I couldn't recover the way I used to. And one of the first things that scared me was my endurance was changing. I noticed I couldn't comfortably get past nine miles anymore. Then it was eight miles, and then eventually six miles started to feel difficult. And I mentioned that in the part one of the series. I think I said eight miles, but then eventually it became six miles. It was like as if I was declining when you really should be improving during a training, not getting worse. And this wasn't normal for me. Normally, when I'm training, eventually I start getting better. You start improving, your mileage starts improving. You know, what was hard at six miles is now easy, like, oh yeah, six miles. I can do easy six miles. And then eight miles, yes, I could do an easy eight miler, but it wasn't working that way for me. At first, I did what many of us do. I rationalized it. I was like, okay, maybe I was overtraining, maybe I needed better hydration, maybe I needed more sleep, maybe I was just stressed. Because underneath all that, I was fucking scared. When your body suddenly changes, especially when you've been active for a while, it grabs your attention. And my family history added another layer to that fear. So I don't know if many of you know this, but my father had a stroke at 50 and it almost killed him. And right now he's still with us, but he had to go on disability. He couldn't work anymore. He's being taken care of by my stepmother. And he walks with a cane and he's taking a lot of meds. I believe he has some epileptic experiences.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

But, you know, he his condition is stable, but still at 50, he almost died.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

But the most shocking of them all was my mother. My mother, who is in great shape, very active, not a smoker, doesn't drink hardly, is just like from the outside, you think, wow, this is just an amazing, energized older woman. But she had a quadruple bypass at 60. She had what we would call the widowmaker because if you had that type of heart attack, you would make your spouse a widow. It was the thing that was truly going to kill you. She never experienced a heart attack. She went ahead and went to the doctor and did all the things that many of us don't do, and they found out that her arteries were 70%, 90%, 85% clogged.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

So going through that, I'm thinking something is wrong. Something's happening. I went there. And I want to pause here and say something important.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

This episode is not about health anxiety. This is about learning the difference between ignoring symptoms and being preventative because women are often taught to minimize what they feel. We say, I'm probably fine, it's probably stress, I just need to push through, I don't have time to deal with this. And sometimes it is stress, but that doesn't mean we should ignore our bodies. And I can honestly tell you that not only will you be saying those things, but so will a provider. Because over the span of five months during this time last year, I found myself in urgent care multiple times. Multiple times. I'm gonna say probably close to five times in five months. I had X-rays, CT scans, blood work, an echocardiogram, my calcium score. And honestly, this was all emotionally exhausting because there's a certain kind of fear that comes when you don't recognize your own body anymore. And I will say that through this experience, I can tell you everyone looked at me and said, You're fine. Oh, you're only 51, you're fine. You're not having a heart attack. Oh, you're a runner, you're fine. When I wasn't fine, I had every nurse, every doctor tell me I was okay, that I'm overthinking it, that I had uh anxiety, and that it was maybe menopause. I even got to the point where maybe it's menopause. Maybe it's my it's my menopause that's making me feel this way. But deep down inside, I knew something just wasn't right. And I know some people might hear all of these tests that I had and think, wow, that's pretty excessive. But I don't see it that way. I'd rather be preventative than dismiss something serious, which is what a lot of us women do. And there is a strength in advocating for your health. There's wisdom in paying attention. And if you have family history like I do, it's even more important to be proactive. The funny part is that if you have these conversations with other fitness people or personal trainers or people who go to the gym or even runners and ask them, hey, you ever thought about getting an echocardiogram? What is your family history? They look at you like, why would I need that? When how many times have we heard of a person who is an avid runner, a marathoner who had a heart attack at the end of the race? Just because you look healthy on the outside doesn't mean you are healthy on the inside. And even though we talk about this, a provider is going to think the same thing. So I had all of those done. And I'm glad I did because now I know my calcium score. I now am able to look every year and see if it has gotten worse, you know, and how I can change my diet. I learned a lot about my diet. I learned a lot about preventative things that I can do so that I don't end up like my father or my mother and trying to do my best to not eat things that are going to create plaque in my arteries because that is what clogs your arteries, is the plaque, which comes from the food that you eat. I learned a lot from this experience. So, what's interesting about this is that this experience, this burning out, doesn't just affect your emotions. We often think burnout looks like you're being mentally exhausted, emotional breakdowns, lack of motivation, but burnout can absolutely show up physically. And a lot of people don't realize that chronic stress impacts almost every system in the body.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

You know that saying stress kills? Guess what? It can.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

It can. That was another thing that I experienced through this journey is that when you are stressed out, your blood pressure goes up, your heart rate goes up. And I do not have high blood pressure. You can seriously cause yourself to get to the point where you're feeling like this every day, that is not healthy for your heart. It can kill you. But besides the cardiovascular symptoms that I had while I was going through my burnout, it can also look like fatigue that sleep doesn't fix. So no matter how many hours I thought to myself, okay, you know, this weekend I'm just gonna catch up on sleep. No such thing. You can't catch up on sleep that you haven't had for years. It doesn't work that way. You have to be consistent with your sleep. Then there's the brain fog. And that's how I know for sure something's going on when I start having brain fog. Then, of course, the digestive issues, which I am not a stranger of. I mean, if you know my story of 2013 when my body, my stomach stopped digesting food, that was from stress. Then there's the increased anxiety, panic attacks, muscle tension, poor recovery, which is what I was experiencing, disruptive sleep, exercise intolerance, inflammation, headaches, chest tightness, nervous system dysregulation. I mean, doesn't all those things sound like you're about to have a heart attack or stroke? And when you've been operating in survival mode for a long time, your body eventually starts demanding attention. I always say that you get to the point in your life where your body's like, okay, I'm done. I've had enough. You were making me go through this every damn day for years. I'm over it. And I feel like I had experienced that many different times of my life. Definitely the first one was in 2013 when my body stopped digesting. And I was getting the brain fog, the fatigue, all those symptoms that I just named, I was having because I was in a terrible marriage.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Well, those same symptoms were happening last year when I was going through my burnout. One thing I really want women to understand is this just because you are functioning doesn't mean you are healthy.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I'm gonna repeat that. Just because you are functioning doesn't mean you are healthy. Just because you're running 10 miles, 20 miles, training for a marathon does not mean you are healthy. And I think a lot of women confuse the two, especially single moms, especially caregivers, especially women used to carrying everything. We become so accustomed to pushing through that we stop recognizing when our body is struggling. And I certainly did that last year. For me, getting a coach actually became a turning point. So I mentioned in the part one series that I reached out and I hired a running coach. And it wasn't so much of teaching me how to run, and she knew that. She's like, you're a running coach, you don't need that, you need accountability. And she gave me a lot of emotional support, which that's something I give to my clients, but you can't give that to yourself. But I gotta say, that was one of my saving graces because I felt that she was catching on to my symptoms and letting me know that, hey, you might want to slow down. Like this is not me imagining things. She's seeing what I'm seeing. I started realizing I wasn't just tired. I was depleted. And there's a difference. Tired gets better with rest. Depletion affects your body, your nervous system, your emotions, your cognition, your relationships, everything. I mean, I was having a lot of blowouts with my daughter, blowouts with my mother, you know, it was just making me feel like a big old mess. And yet I was getting up every day, and yet I was going to work, and yet I was still training, and yet I was still putting content out on my social media platforms, and yet I was still looking like a normal human being.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

I couldn't out-train it. I couldn't out-achieve it.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

I couldn't stay busy enough to avoid it. My body was forcing me to pay attention. And I think many women wait until their body forces them to stop before they listen. I think the difference is in 2013, it was my digestion. You know, I knew off the bat, okay, something's going on, I can't eat. Where this just looked like I was just tired, I was fatigued. It didn't make sense in my head that, hey, maybe we're having that same situation that we had in 2013. I also want to say this clearly: getting checked medically is important. And can I just say how many people, when I was telling them some of my symptoms or saying, hey, you know what? You should consider going to see a doctor or go get a cardiologist, you know, just to see to make sure that there aren't any potential issues. I can't tell you how many women look like looked at me like I was crazy. Getting checked medically is important. Please do not self-diagnose everything as burnout. If something feels off, advocate for yourself. Get evaluated, know your family history, ask the questions, take symptoms seriously, and do not go to Chat GPT. Because I did that. I certainly went to Chat GPT. And I gotta say, Chat GPT was like, hmm, maybe this isn't burnout. Being preventative is not being traumatic. And honestly, I think women have been conditioned to ignore themselves for too long. And like I said, I experienced this when I went to the urgent cares. You're fine. You're having anxiety, you're having a panic attack, you know, not really even asking me the questions of how is your sleeping? How's your life? How is life going for you? I think if I was asked that, I probably would have broken down. What I eventually realized with all this, because it was definitely a journey last year, my body wasn't betraying me. It was actually communicating with me. And instead of treating my body like the enemy, I had to start listening to it differently. And that changed everything. And that brings me to part three of this series because eventually I realized I couldn't keep living at the pace I have been living. See what I did there? So for the first time in a very long time, I stopped running. And in the next episode, I'm going to talk about what rest actually looked like. I always say this to people: the worst thing I ever say as a running coach is tell a client to slow down. Well, I know how that feels because there was so much of an emotional discomfort of slowing down, not even just from running, but from life. And let me say, when you have your boundaries, people are not gonna like it. People are gonna hate you. People are gonna be mean and not want you to be in their lives or have you as a coach because that's how it is. Nobody likes boundaries. I'm gonna stop right here. And if this episode resonated with you, I hope it reminds you of this. You're allowed to take your health seriously, you're allowed to slow down. And listening to your body is not weakness, it's wisdom. So, for part three of this series, I'm gonna talk about what I did or what I'm doing to help with my burnout. Okay, until next time. Bye.