What Happens When You Stop Working Out

Now this is an interesting article from Men’s Health. The focus of this site is often about the best ways to go about your fitness efforts and how to go about your diet to build muscle, burn fat and increase testosterone. What we don’t often talk about is what happens when we stop working out. If you live a sedentary lifestyle, this is a must read. It’s remarkable what happens in our bodies when we don’t move and strengthen. I ever wrote a book called The Truth About Exercise as it occurred to me how few people, certainly in London where I’m from, prioritise exercise – or at least daily movement – into their lives.  Did you know your immune system doesn’t function properly when you don’t move regularly? Your lymphatic system which exports dead cells and cancer cells out of your body (like a sewer system), only works when our bodies are moving as, as unlike our blood circulatory system which has a heart to pump the blood around, there is no pump for the lymph system. Did you know that exercise makes you smarter? Anyway, here’s what happens when you stop working out.

Just as a good training program builds you up, falling off the workout wagon can have the opposite effect—sometimes almost immediately.

Experts call this phenomenon “detraining,” and its consequences can weigh even heavier than the gut you see in the mirror. Fortunately, the condition is fully reversible, as long as you get your butt back to the gym.

Here’s what happens when you swap your regular sweat sessions for never-ending Netflix nights—and how long it takes to re-flip the fitness switch.

1. Your Blood Pressure Soars

This effect is near-instant: Your blood pressure is higher on the days you don’t exercise than the days you do. Your blood vessels adapt to the slower flow of a sedentary lifestyle after just 2 weeks, which clicks your readings up another couple of notches, according to a recent study in the journal PLoS.

Within a month, stiffening arteries and veins send your BP back to where it would be if you’d never even left the couch, says study author Linda Pescatello, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut.

Reverse it: The whole scenario unfolds backward when you start sweating again. Your blood pressure drops a bit that day and your blood vessels begin to function more efficiently within a week.

After a month or two, the stress from heart-pumping workouts makes your vasculature more flexible, causing lasting pressure-lowering effects, Pescatello says.

(Want to check it out for yourself? Here’s The Best Way to Take Your Own Blood Pressure.)

2. Your Blood Sugar Spikes

Normally, your blood glucose rises after you eat, then drops as your muscles and other tissues suck up the sugar they need for energy. But after 5 days of slothfulness, your post-meal blood sugar levels remain elevated instead, according to a recent study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

If you stay sedentary, continuously creeping glucose readings can raise your risk of heart disease and diabetes, says study coauthor James Thyfault, Ph.D., of the University of Missouri.

Reverse it: Just 1 week of regular exercise dramatically drops post-meal blood sugar, even in people who already have type 2 diabetes, Thyfault says.

3. You Get Winded Fast

Gasping for breath after just a few stairs? Within 2 weeks of avoiding the gym, your VO2 max—a measure of fitness that assesses how much oxygen your working muscles can use—decreases by as much as 20 percent, says exercise physiologist Stacy Sims, Ph.D, M.Sc.

What’s more, if you recently started a workout plan—like as a New Year’s Resolution—your fitness gains could actually evaporate completely, notes Nikolaos Koundourakis, Ph.D., of the University of Crete.

One reason: You lose mitochondria, or the mini-factories within your muscle cells that convert that oxygen into energy. In fact, in a recent British study, 2 weeks of immobilization decreased muscle mitochondrial content as much as 6 weeks of endurance training increased it.

Reverse it: You can rebuild those mitochondria, but it’ll take you longer than it did to lose them. That’s probably because even active people only exercise for a portion of the day. Staying sedentary, on the other hand, is a 24-hour pursuit, says study author Martin Gram, Ph.D., of the University of Copenhagen.

The good news? It’s never too late to re-start an exercise habit to Get Back in Shape. In the same study, older men gained fitness almost as easily as those 45 years younger did, Gram points out.

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