54- You’re Doing Everything Right: So Why Are You Still Exhausted, Bloated, and Feeling Like Crap?

You’re checking all the boxes: working out, eating clean, getting your steps in—but you still feel exhausted, bloated, foggy, and snappy with the people you love most. In this episode, I share what was really going on with my body when it started breaking down, even though it looked like I was doing everything right.

We dive into what happens when your nervous system never gets a true break, why the stress response matters more than you think, and how the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle helped me connect the dots between overwhelm, fatigue, and how I was training.

If this sounds like your current reality, you’re not alone—and it’s not your fault. You probably don’t need more discipline. You need a smarter strategy that works with your body, not against it.

If you're ready to train in a way that actually supports your energy, hormones, and nervous system, book a free call and let’s chat about what that can look like for you through KatFit Strength.

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Transcript

It's 4:15am and I'm tiptoeing through my house like a ninja, trying not to wake my kids. I'm exhausted, but I'm determined to get my workout in, and yet, despite all the movement, Whole Foods and the hustle, I still crashed. My body gave out, not because I wasn't doing enough, but because I was doing too much while never actually finishing the stress cycle, this episode is for every mom who's felt like that, you're not alone and you are definitely not broken. Welcome to MilesFromHerView. The podcast powered by KatFit strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner and an ultra marathon runner and a strength trainer in her 40s with nearly two decades of experience, I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood, all while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self, compassion and worthiness, whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice, or squeezing in a moment for yourself. I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to miles from review. I'm Kat Your coach, your hype woman, and someone who deeply gets how hard it can feel to take care of yourself when you're also raising tiny to big humans juggling work and trying to be everything to everyone else. This one is for the mom who's doing all the right things, working out, eating clean, checking every wellness box, but still feeling like she's falling apart. I'm recording this, and Mother's Day is just around the corner, and I really want to pull back the curtain on what health truly means for us in the thick of life, and how strength is so much more than reps and routines. Today's episode is real close to home, and we're talking about stress. And I'm not just saying the busy kind, like I'm busy, but the deep, systematic body hijacking kind that creeps in through motherhood, ambition and our desire to do it all right? So we're going to break down what stress really is, how it shows up in our body, what science says. I'm going to drop a book in the notes of this podcast that I just finished, and wow, it was amazing. It is called burnout, the secret to unlocking the stress cycle, by Emily nagaski and Amelia nagaski, I highly recommend this book. While it will not solve all the problems, it provides deep insight and puts some serious language around what so many of us are going through. It is something that is, I feel every every mom, every woman, should read it. Okay, if you're like, I don't want to buy another book. Good news for you. Look at your local library. My Library has the Libby app. Sometimes it's a Libyan hoopla app, or the most common, put yourself on the wait list for this and do the audiobook. Truth be told, I listen to the audiobook. For me, I have a mixture of books I physically read and I listen to. It's just how I can read more books or process more information. While I was reading this book, I was like, I need a copy of this book. So great news for you. Still to benefit authors, the local library, etc, you can go to thriftbooks.com, I believe I'll have it in the show notes. And if you don't want to buy a brand new book, it still benefits local libraries and authors. You can buy a pre owned book. I did that. I've done that before. Books come totally fine. There's no markups in it, and they're full disclosure on how they come. That is just another way that you can add books to your library without going to any other online area. This episode is powered by KatFit, where we help women build strength that heals and not depletes. It's 4:15am, I am forcing contacts into tired, burning eyes. The bathroom light feels aggressive. Let me tell you like it's mad at me for being awake. The house completely still and quiet and I tiptoe down the stairs. Goal number one, don't wake the kids. Every step is like a landmine, embracing myself as that one step creaks, I freeze waiting to hear the soft thump of little. Feet, but it's silence. Oh, I can exhale. I'm out the door. Victory number one on the day, I get to keep my workout, a quick run, then a strength training, partly alone and then partly with the kids waking up. I do squats while Paw Patrol plays in the background. I pause for hugs, Miss reps, rest that takes too long, and rush through other parts, you know the drill. Then the day really began trying to get deep focused on work. In those precious few kid free hours, I'm over caffeinated, under rested and feeling like I'm just constantly playing catch up. By the afternoon, it's back on juggling the toddlers, the emails, the toys, the text, and I'm holding my breath without even realizing it. I get dinner made, laundry started, maybe some meal prep, if I'm lucky. And then it happens, I snap at one of my boys. Something small sets me off. Instant guilt, that voice creeps in. He didn't deserve that. You should have been able to hold it together. But the truth is, my body was screaming, and eventually it shut down. So for me, in that time, it was in my mid to late 30s, I started to develop an autoimmune like response that forced me into multiple doctors offices, blood work, different appointments, tests scarce, and you know what they told me, physically, I was doing everything right. I was working out four to five days a week. I was eating whole foods. I was walking over 10,000 steps a day, sleeping around six to seven hours. But my nervous system was shocked I wasn't living a healthy lifestyle. Even though I was doing everything on the books that looked healthy, I was living in a constant stress cycle with no exit. So let's get into really the nitty gritty of what was happening to me, and maybe in that brief story that I told you, or all the things I'm saying right now, you might be like, Oh, my goodness, I'm living this life too, all right. So like I was saying I was doing everything right, or working out four to five days a week. I was doing training two to three days. And I was running consistently. I was hitting that 10k step a day, daily in and around my workouts, I ate quote, unquote, clean Whole Foods, and I slept six to seven hours a night, because that's all I could get. But my body felt like it was breaking down. I was exhausted, foggy, brain snappy at the littlest things, my body composition with all that working out was not changing, the scale wouldn't budge. My goal at the time wasn't to necessarily lose weight, but I wanted to gain muscle and change that body composition a little bit more. I was bloated all the time, and my cycle was irregular. My inflammation markers were climbing. That's because I was not completing that stress cycle. I wasn't releasing the tension I was carrying. I was just stacking it higher and higher. Am I training? It wasn't working anymore because my nervous system was maxed out. So let's dive into that science. The truth is, your body isn't a robot, and it's just not a calories in, calorie out, type calculator. It's a survival machine. And when you live in chronic stress, even low grade stress, like rushing through your day caring for kids, never getting a break, your body flips into survival mode. So let's break this down. Chronic stress activates your sympathetic nervous system, the fight, flight, freeze. So that's think about primal times where you fight or flight or you freeze. It also increases cortisol, this is your primary stress hormone. And quarter when cortisol stays elevated over time, it starts to decrease muscle mass, increase fat storage, especially around the belly, disrupt your sleep and recovery, suppress thyroid function. Thyroid controls your metabolism and alter your menstrual cycle and hormones. It can also cause bloating and poor digestion. So even if you're crushing your workouts and eating clean your body may not feel safe enough to build muscle or let go of fat. It's not broken. It's purely protecting you, because your your body is where you survive. So it's going to protect you at all costs. Stress becomes a physiological weight that you just carry every single day. So what are some ways to know if you're in this cycle, stress cycle, if you've been feeling you know, from my personal story, you're like, oh my goodness, that is me. I'm trying to figure this out. I'm doing all the right things. I've been trying to work. At this for years, I have taken all the tests, but nothing, everything's within the normal range. Well, stress is that invisible thing that nobody really talks about. So let's look at those signs of what or how to tell if you're in that stress cycle. And here's how, also how I knew something deeper was going on. You feel tired, but you're wired. You're easily triggered or reactive. You're doing all the healthy things but not seeing results. Your sleep isn't restful. You feel disconnected from your body, your joy and your people around you. You keep thinking, this shouldn't be so hard, or why can't I just feel like myself? That's clear, a clear sign that your body is just holding on to stress, even if your brain thinks the stressor is gone. And that's why movement, food and even sleep can stop working unless you support your nervous system too. So I'm going to give you some things that I've learned, things that help shifted, things that are backed by research. And when I give you this list, I strongly suggest you don't sit there and try incorporate their six tools, all of them at one time, with completing the stress cycle, with reducing stress, it is going to take time something that culturally we don't like. It's been conditioned. We're supposed to have it figured out yesterday, and if we don't get it figured out by tomorrow, we're failing, and that attributes stress. What I needed to do was stop this isn't part of it, but I'm just sharing a little bit more of my perspective from where I was at. This process took me a number of years to figure out does not mean I'm failing, because I will share where I'm at and how I evolved through this. One of the things I didn't just train harder. I had to start training smarter. I had to start weaving these six things into my day, and my body had to start trusting me again. My brain cleared, my energy started to come back, and my strength started to come back. So these six things took time to work in. Number one, intentional movement. Okay, so we want to focus on movement that is not punishment. It's not just burning calories. We're talking about nervous system regulation, a walk in nature, a tempo run that feels rhythmic, a strength session that makes you feel more in your body than depleted. That may sound like, well, I work out every day. I move with intention. Let's strip that back like, really sit in your body when you're doing that movement. Because, yeah, I thought my goals with running and strength training were pretty clear. I was not working out to punish myself or to burn calories. Yes, I was looking for that body composition change, but I was not sitting there calculating the amount of energy and calories that I was burning and looking at calories in, calories out, but what I needed to do was take a step back and really feel how my body felt in workouts. Some of my runs turned into a walk in nature, a run that did not feel rhythmic and was supposed to be a tempo run, turned into a walk in nature. When my body felt good to do a tempo run. It did a tempo run, or I pushed it to do a tempo run because it felt rhythmic and smooth. And a strength training workout, I backed off some weight or reduced sets and reps so that it made my body feel more and more strength than depleted. So number two, breath work. Breath work kind of gets overshadowed, like I don't have time to breathe well, we need to breathe every day, but intentional breath work slow, diaphragmic Breathing is like hitting the brakes on your stress response. It stops it immediately. It allows for that cycle to start to close. So I had to stop myself, close my eyes. Yes, the chaos of life was still around me. I want to tell you this. You know, being a mom, you cannot pull yourself out completely. So this was done in everyday life. I just had to slow it down. I had to get back into my body and listen to what it was telling me. So with the breath work, there was Paw Patrol. There were kids in the background. I was there, and I just had to focus on my breathing. I was not stressing out. When I tell you some things that I did, was not stressing out if it wasn't done perfectly, it was just okay. I'm gonna inhale for four, hold for seven, and exhale for eight. Maybe I inhaled for two, held for maybe four, and exhaled for three. But it was that intention of stopping and focusing on the breathing. It was the intention of getting in tune to my body and calming that system it's going to support. With that digestion, the hormones, the sleep, this breath work is something that I still enjoy. I can also tell when I don't incorporate it in, you know, I don't do this daily, but if I take it out of the cycle for a week or two, I can feel some of that stress building in my body, all right. Number three connection, stress is meant to be shared. Okay? So in our culture, it's like I can't share if I have a problem, I have to handle it all. I can't reach out to someone, but even a short conversation with someone you trust, a hug from your kid or holding hands with your partner, can signal to your body we're safe now. So do you have that circle? Do you have someone to be like, ah, feeling a little unsettled about this? And I know we're in a busy world where everyone has their things, and we don't want to trouble other people with our problems. And trust me, I am someone who's like, I got it figured out. I'm not going to reach out for help, but stress is meant to be shared. Ways you can do this is if with a therapist, with a licensed accredited psychologist, therapist that is a great space, if you have that trusted friend, and maybe you put it in a container, like, Hey, we're gonna air our stress. And maybe you don't want the feedback. Put it in that container of like, hey, I need to get this off my chest, not looking for feedback, but I just need to put it out there. Awesome journal about it that is something that can help you too. Just get it out so it's not inside your body, all right. Number four, crying and laughter. I know it sounds kind of basic. This is something that should, shouldn't, have an impact on your stress, but they are both where the body just full body just discharges, okay? They help your nervous system reset. You don't want to suppress it, let the tears come. Honestly, true. Confession, there's something in trail running, and I think almost every trail runner experiences this, but I have gotten to a point, and it's not always for me. If you're new listener, I'm someone who does enjoy running, as you've heard some of this in my story, but I'm also someone who really enjoys ultra marathons, which is anything over 26.2 miles. And in an ultra marathon, there's a lot of emotions, because your body does get worn down. Talk about stress right there, you do become more emotional. So both on the male and female aspect of this, people tend to cry on the trails. So on some long runs, I almost look forward to those random long runs that are not in an ultra marathon race, where I'll just maybe have a little crying about, does that mean I'm sitting there wailing on the trail and like sobbing, it's just releasing. It's something where my body feels natural. I'm in this beautiful landscape, and maybe I'm not even thinking about something stressful, and crying will help release it. It doesn't need to be perfect, so you just have to find your own thing. Don't stifle the crying if it comes. Trust me again. I am someone who was like, I cannot cry. I must be totally like, keep it together all the time. Laughter came much more normal to or easier for me, find that area where you can let it out. Number five, creative expression, journaling, dancing, doodling, writing, playing music, just this is how you give that internal world somewhere to go. It's not woo ish thing, but it's based on neurology. It's based on how your brain processes emotion through motion and expression. So throw a dance party on in their kitchen. Who cares? Nobody's watching. I've done that. I felt weird. But you know what, my kids join in. We do the silliest dance moves, doodling. I love doodling. So my notes always have doodles next to them. Play music, play something that is just going to be nourishing to your mind, to your soul. And number six down shifting. This means intentionally creating a moment in your day where you do not optimize, you do not perform, you just be
okay. This is hard in such a fast paced world. This
is hard
now when I share how I do this, I don't want you to rush out and get a dog unless that's on your list of things to do. But how this started for me was having when we got our first dog, we have two. We got our first dog in actually, Mother's Day weekend of 2021. Came home, drove home on that Saturday, and on that Sunday was Mother's Day. And let me tell you, nothing says Happy Mother's Day by being up all night taking care of the sweetest, cute little puppy, I was happy to do it. Getting this dog has allowed me to take more down shifting times in my. Okay, getting the second one, same thing. So the morning is going out on the patio, no matter what temperature it is, it's sipping my coffee and watching them run in the yard. It is something that gives back to me on so many levels. And if you can hear them, they are barking in the background. Hopefully that is not in the audio, but this is real life. I My office is in my house, and what it might look look like for you is drinking coffee in silence, lying on the floor with your dog, watching the sky shift. It's how you remind your body that you're not in crisis anymore. It tells the body that it's like who we're awake. We can be safe. We're here. So when I started working with my stress instead of against it, that's when things started to change. My inflammation went down, my muscle tone started to come back. I started to be able to build my muscle, my cravings normalized, my emotional reactivity softened, and I started to feel like who I am again. Now let's get where I am today, still mom, still juggling this fast paced life. My kids, yes, have grown a little bit more. They are now in the grade school era when this started. To give you some perspective here, this started before all the events of 2020. This started. This journey started and kind of fell apart with all the things that 2020 brought. 2020 brought us. But I stuck with it because I started getting glimpses of me back, starting to get that energy, starting that feeling like I was plugged in, that I was no longer in survival mode. And here is what is different. My ability to handle more has gone up. This does not mean I'm sacrificing on anything. It means I'm able to lift heavier than ever. I'm running longer distances. When I first started on this, I wanted to get into Ultra marathoning. I wanted to do more endurance running, but my body could not handle it. Now I have been able to finish, I don't know, over a dozen races from 30 miles up to 200 mile race to 100 mile races. I'm not at the 200 mile mark yet it's on the list. I wake up feeling refreshed and not wrecked, not like I have never slept before. I wake up feeling good. Truth be told, I am sleeping deeper and still getting the same amount of hours of sleep that I did before. This is not an advocate that you don't need more than six to seven hours right now. This is all my schedule can get, just because to seven to nine hours are the norm and what is said. But if you're not sleeping well, well, we need quality of sleep there. So my quality of sleep got better. Yes, again, I would love to get eight hours of sleep at night, but my schedule and the season of life I'm in just does not provide for that to happen. My mood is so much better. I'm able to handle more. And trust me, having a teenager is not for the faint of heart. I'm able to stay more regulated, and, you know, set boundaries and keep my cool better less things are triggering me. My body feels so strong. I'm not swollen. I do not feel inflamed. My digestion is better, and I recover quickly without needing more days off that were unexpected. Honestly, I'm in my early 40s. I feel so much better than I ever did in my 20s before kids, and it's all because I stopped asking my body just to keep up, and I started asking it what it needed. So if you're sitting there, or wherever you're at listening to this and thinking, I've been doing everything right, but I just still feel like I'm falling apart. I want you to hear this. Please take a moment. Don't get distracted. I genuinely want you to hear this. You are not failing. Your body is not broken. You are definitely not lazy, ungrateful or dramatic. You're a mother navigating a world that rewards burnout, praises exhaustion, and really it just does not make space for invisible labor that you know the to do list that lives in your head, the emotional weight you carry, the way your needs get just get pushed to the bottom, over and over again, and your body. She's not mad at you. She's asking for safety. She's begging for that softness, that stillness and for breath. This is what I do inside calf at strength. You know, it's not just about lifting weights. It's about lifting that weight off your nervous system. It's about building strength that heals and strength that just does not deplete. I help you train your body and your mind so it works together, you know. And if any of this hit home for you, I invite you to ask yourself this, am I chasing energy or am I creating it? Am I surviving my workouts or recovering from them? What's one small way I can tell my body you're safe today, healing. Does. Happen in overdrive. It happens in pause, and that pause can be so powerful now, especially as we head into Mother's Day, the one day a year where you're told relax while still managing everyone's needs. Let me say this to you. You don't have to earn your rest. You don't have to prove your strength by holding it all together. You are worthy of care today and every day. This episode is powered by KatFit, where we redefine what it means to be strong for women, moms in every version of you in between, ready to feel better, stronger and more you than ever. Head to at KatFit strength on Instagram, and let's start your next chapter. If this episode had landed with you, forward it to another mom in your life who might need to hear it today. Thank you for spending a part of your day with me, and until next time, keep breathing, keep showing up and know this, you are enough. You are strong. Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromHerView powered by KatFit strength, if this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself, hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast, and I'd love to hear what's working for you, or what topics you want to dive into next you can connect with me on Instagram at cat fit strength, or share this episode with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.