Burn Calories even on your rest day: Here's how...

We all know how important it is to exercise regularly to stay fit and healthy. Many of us have a certain fitness goal in mind that we are working towards. To stay fit, going to a gym or a fitness center, following a strict workout routine, and following a proper diet is very important. However, there is one more thing just as important as all of these are, and that is proper rest.

Those of us who are very thorough for our workout often disregard the significance of rest day. Others consider the rest day as the time to sit on a couch and do nothing. While there is nothing wrong with the latter, it is always better to have an active rest day so that our body keeps burning calories even when we are resting.

It is notable here that when we do exercises such as weight training regularly at the gym, our body builds muscle tissues. These muscles constantly need calories to carry out the process of repairing any wear and tear. Normally our body uses up calories to carry out natural processes like breathing but, when our muscles repair themselves, they burn the fat and uses up more calories. So, we are burning calories even when at rest.

Before that, we must see why rest days are important for our physical as well as mental fitness. This is especially necessary for those who take physical fitness very seriously. Taking rest once in a while helps us just as much as exercising does.

Importance of rest days

As mentioned earlier, like regular exercise, proper rest is also good for our bodies. Several benefits rest at regular intervals can give us. We used this blog to list out some of them below.

Helps in avoiding burnout

Excessive exercising can make our body to experience burnout. Falling sick because we exercised too much may later become a reason to quit exercising altogether. Having a rest day allows our body to recover from the soreness, fatigue, and pain caused by regular exercise.

Supports muscle recovery

The muscle tissues in our body undergo minor wear and tear during exercise. A good rest day allows our body muscles to relax and repair themselves.

Reduces the chances of overtraining

Exercising daily promotes hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that boosts our energy levels to keep up with the workout. However, these hormones can cause a chemical imbalance in our bodies. A day’s rest stabilizes our body by balancing the hormone levels and promotes better sleep.

Makes our gym performance better

When we work out constantly, our body tends to get sore and tired. This can affect our performance greatly. When we are tired, we often slack off while working out. An appropriate amount of rest can make us feel refreshed so that we can work out with renewed rigor.

Avoids potential injuries

If we are tired while working out, the fatigue can affect our postures. Wrong postures are one of the top reasons for gym injuries. A rest day can get rid of all the tiredness and make us feel more recharged so that we won’t lose our posture and avoid any potential injury.

Now that we know what all benefits a good rest can provide us, we must make sure that we take the right amount of rest between the exercise days. But resting does not have to be about spending the day on the couch or bed. There are many ways to have a productive rest day where you can let your body rest but also fulfill your heart's desire to stay active.

How to make rest days productive?

Rest days are important; we would not want to go too strong while staying active on the rest day. The whole point of the rest day is to relax and repair our body to make it function better. Therefore, there are two things that we can do to stay active and burn calories even on our rest day.

1. Try low impact workouts

Low impact exercises like walking, swimming, riding a bicycle, or simply cleaning up the house can help you stay active while also giving your muscles the much-needed rest.

These activities not only keep our bodies active but also help us to relax our minds. We know that staying healthy mentally is just as necessary as keeping our bodies fit. So, we can also choose to do some light yoga or meditation that keeps us mentally healthy. Going out for a hike or joining a dance class will also be very helpful in staying active on rest day while making us feel refreshed.

If we cannot go out for a hike, we can try doing some easygoing stretches to keep our body moving a little bit. To list them out, here are the things we can try to keep ourselves active on our rest day.

·       Walking

·       Swimming

·       Light yoga and meditation

·       Hiking in nature

·       Easy stretches

With these low impact exercises, our bodies still tend to burn some amount of calories while not disturbing the muscle rest. There is one more thing that we can do to protect our fitness on a rest day.

2. Maintain our diet

We all agree that we burn lesser calories on our rest day as compared to when we do regular exercise. Subsequently, our diet should also fit our rest day. What we can do is put a small cut on our carbohydrate intake while maintaining our proteins.

This can help us to maintain our current fitness levels even during a rest day. We must understand that a rest day does not mean a cheat day for diet. So, we cannot go around eating junk food on our rest day. If anything, we should control our diet more strictly on the rest day.

EndNote

Giving ourselves some time to rest is equally important as doing the right kind of workout. However, we can always choose how we want to spend our rest day. It could be about spending the day inactively, or it can be spent making sure that our body is still staying fit and burning calories.

Doing light exercises like walking and swimming is a great way to ensure that our body relaxes while we still stay active. Recreational activities, such as dancing and hiking, can make us physically active and mentally relaxed.

Apart from that, the other way to control our calories is by maintaining and altering our diet to fit the rest day. As compared to regular gym exercising day, we need to consume slightly lower amounts of carbs to maintain our fitness levels even when we are resting.

However, we would like to say again that the best way to burn calories is by going to a good gym and following a proper exercise routine (along with periodical rest days). So if you have not joined a gym yet or are working out at home, it is time to join a gym. Before you decide, here is what you should look for in your ideal gym or fitness center.