Well, I’m sure the answer is “many things” and a lot of these I’m aware of. But still… Every time I try and get some exercise done I get ill. Two runs last week and a day’s graft in the garden and I’m wiped out. This is a cycle that I can’t break out of. Exercise for me is fairly sporadic due to 24/7 shift rota, two young kids and attempting to be a family man. Often I have to take my exercise at work on my break.

I don’t eat brilliantly (sometimes terribly) but I do try every now and then. Sleep is variable, times of, length of and quality of can all vary. I also suffer from exercise induced asthma and perennial rhinitis but if I keep taking the meds they don’t affect me.

Clearly my immune system is pretty bloody weak, this is the third time this year I’ve managed to do a meaningful amount of exercise in one week but it always follows the same pattern (had the same issues last year as well), 2/3 bouts of decent exercise then some kind of illness (cold, chest infection, flu, aches and chills, it varies). I guess really what I’m asking is, why am I so bloody weak? 43 years old, 6ft and 87kgs on the last chub club weigh in, for what it’s worth. Always been more of a diesel, go all day, just not particularly quickly. Not any more.

Sleeping and eating well are two key factors when it comes to recovering from exercise and you admit that yours are not good.

You can make a concerted effort to sort out your diet now and the sleep will get better in time.

I remember how rubbish my sleep was when my children were young, but things are much better now.

Your tired. You need to become less tired and better fed. FWIW exactly the same happens to me if I push without any foundations

Does that shift rota involve nights? If so, your sleep patterns may be jiggered and sleep is failing to do its job, particularly if you are abusing caffeine as well.

Maybe try some melatonin a few hours before you need to sleep.

Sounds like nutrition and rest are the keys.

I’ve had prolonged bouts of ME/CFS in the past. Not suggesting you have it, but as other have said rest and nutrition are very important, but along with that you need to do just enough when you do stuff to get trigger some fitness adaptation, but not so much that recovery is lengthy.

Basically avoid boom and bust. It’s easy to really over do it when you feel good and do that for a few sessions and then crash. I’m still guilty of it. Instead of going for a ride and stopping when I still feel good I’ll push on until I’m suffering and then recovery takes so long that any potential fitness gains are lost.

As others have mentioned, better quality sleep, rest and better nutrition. I suffer from asthma and perennial rhinitis and take Fostair for asthma and Montelukast for the nose.

IMO it would help if you quantified your exercise, by using a heart rate monitor. You might be simply ruining yourself too often, with not enough quality recovery time between efforts, leading to overtraining and consequently lowering your immune system.

If you aren’t already, grab a hrm and use it while recording your exercise to then upload the activities to a free Strava account. Then use a tool, which can be a freebie like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/elevate-for-strava/dhiaggccakkgdfcadnklkbljcgicpckn?hl=en or https://cricklesorg.wordpress.com/ to monitor your fitness/fatigue/form.

Your kids will be carrying all sorts of bugs from school without necessarily coming down with the lurgy themselves, your immune system will be lowered immediately after doing hard exercise, so spending time with your kids in the initial ~60mins after exercise could increase the risk of you falling ill.

I use a smartphone app called ithlete – https://www.myithlete.com – which measure heart rate variability every morning to give you an idea of how well recovered / overall well you are. It’s a really useful tool for getting a more objective measure of whether you’re good to go / okay / on the verge of being broken.

Also second the advice on the post-exercise immune system suppression. It might not always be practical, but if you can avoid snotty kids post sessions and focus a bit on hand hygiene generally that might help.

I can empathise. Picked up a bug on a group riding holiday in Mallorca a couple of months back which has properly screwed up my on-bike performance and recovery.

Lower your sugar intake.

I had exactly the same- read an article about how raised blood glucose lowers immune system function dramatically as the white blood cells bind to glucose rather than vitamin C – they use vitamin C to bind infections but when blood sugar is elevated this mechanism screws up big time.

If your sleep is broken you are way more insulin resistant and chances are your blood sugar is elevated (not to diabetic levels but more than is optimum for health).

Cut out refined sugar and lower your carb intake- completely transformed how often I got ill when I was experiencing the same thing 2 1/2 years ago.

Yeah, nutrition and rest. I know that was the answer, maybe I was trying to see if there could be any other underlying factors whilst conveniently avoiding the fact that my lifestyle is worse than I thought.

Nutrition I can sort but I do need discipline. Very easy for me to feel trim and healthy and use that as an excuse to eat like a pig. Rest is somewhat more difficult to manage. A three year old and a six month old take a fair bit of parenting, if you’re gonna do it right, plus my shifts are daft. Three weeks of nights out of the last four, the last one of which had a day off in the middle of it. Next week I cover all shifts, I go from an early, through two lates and finish on two night shifts. I try to rest as well as I can but sometimes my body doesn’t want to play along.

@chillled76, I know I need to cut my sugar intake but that is really good advice, thanks.

two young kids

There you go, that’s your problem right there. I’ve never been so ill, so regularly than during the nursery years.

I get this and for me Longdog speaks sense. Avoid boom and bust; little and often is key. Also, the old chestnut – listen to your body. If you’re tired, stop and don’t carry because you “should”.

It’s simple. But it’s not.

You’ve said that you suffer after exercising 2-3 times in a week; is this followed by a week or two of suffering?

Have you tried just exercising once a week for a few weeks on the trot? If not see whether your fatigue builds up or whether you’re less tired/ill than usual. It may be that you’re doing too much in too short a time and need to give your body time to adjust.

Apologies if you’ve already thought of and/or tried this. If not it’s got to be worth a shot.

Let us know how you get on OP.

EDIT: I find that if I get into the rhythm of regularly exercising then the food, and amounts of food, I want to eat changes and my preferences become healthier. I can only assume it’s my body knowing what it needs and steering me towards better choices.

I’ve been feeling like this a lot recently, just generally tired and heavy legs on the bike.

Most of the above ^ rings true, the wee man is 22 months now and is hyperactive, great fun but tiring. He also spent one night vomiting which laid his mum and I out for a weekend.

Besides that I think I was just generally over-doing it on the bike, it didn’t feel like I was doing huge miles or crazy high intensity, but instead was doing that sort of ‘junk’ mileage and intensity, when I was spending long enough working hard enough that I wouldn’t recover before the next ride, and I think it just became cumulative.

Using a heart rate monitor now just out of curiosity, it’s educational to see just how easy you have to take it to genuinely stay in the ‘recovery’ zone!

Good reminder about refined sugar etc. It’s my go-to when I’m feeling low and slow, always feel like a wee hit of sugar will pick me up. It never does though, and that ‘wee hit’ becomes a whole 4 pack of cookies or something…

Shift work.

I’m fighting tooth and nail to avoid going back on night shifts. It takes a massive neurological strain which is probably livable with if you’re in your twenties and are able to recover properly (which is simply impossible if you have kids) but at our age all it’s doing is taking years off our lives. Literally, in some cases.

As the kids get older it will get better.

I use to get this allot. My theory is that for me, also an ex diesel, is that lactate is bad. So either keeping effort down on longer sessions or short intervals so you stop before the lactate builds up. The 3 x 20 second sprints 3 times a week might work for your current life style

Don’t reduce your sugar intake like that.  You never stated what exercise you were doing, so to knock “sugar” on the head may reduce energy reserves you need to support your obviously weak wellness situation.

instead start to defer to a balance diet and ensure you getting your energy from healthier sources.  Then have a read up on the types of energy needed for the exercise you are doing and refine further based on that.  Remember that fuel isn’t just for exercise – you need it to support wellness and your immune system but you probably just need to polish up on the quality and maybe even the quantity.

I’d recommend keeping a diary, so you know exactly what’s going on. Write everything down – your shifts, hours of sleep, your food intake, exercise taken, illnesses. Then you’ll have a much better understanding of the situation.

My Fitness Pal is useful for recording meals and snacks.

Also, maybe have a month where you really focus on eating a healthy diet, and getting as much sleep as possible. And concentrate on things like hand-washing. Don’t “exercise” as such, although gentle walks or rides might be good.

After a month, hopefully you’ll feel much better, and ready to resume exercise.

So much good advice here, thank you all. It’s been a bit of a wake up call, a reminder that I’m not the person I was ten years ago and life is a lot harder mow with kids. I need to look after myself better (diet, mainly) whilst not exercising and when I fo exercise realise that I have my limitations these days. Not ridden a bike properly in a few years now, so exercise is just running on my break at work (No time at home, it’s either kids, housework or sleep!) which makes it sporadic as there are only a few jobs that I get the chance to go for a run on. Tomorrow night is one, as it happens but I’m probably best not doing so, aren’t I…?

As for rest I can only do what I can do within the parameters ofy shifts and family life but the way I see it, if I eat well and hydrate properly then hopefully that will aid decent rest. I’ll take a look at your responses again as it’s all been great advice and I’ll take it all on board and hopefully we’ll see some changes. Thanks again.