Ep #193: Are You Off Track or Just Tired?

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #193. What do you do when you’re not quitting, you’re not spiraling, but you’re just tired? Let’s talk about it.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland. 

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here? Well, if I’m being completely honest, I’ve been a little tired lately. And it’s not in a dramatic kind of way, definitely not in a, I need to blow up my life and move to another country kind of way. It’s really nothing like that. It’s more of a quiet, kind of steady fatigue. The kind of tired where everything is functioning, but there’s not really a spark, no surge, and there’s no big momentum.

And I’ve been thinking about this because we don’t really talk about this version of tired very often. We talk about burnout, we certainly talk about breakdown, we talk about hitting the wall. And those are easier to name because they’re more obvious and they’re more extreme. But there’s another kind of tired that’s quieter. So, this is the kind where you’re still showing up, you’re doing your workouts, you’re eating reasonably well, you’re going to work, you are taking care of your people, and you are handling responsibilities. So, on the outside, nothing looks off. You’re still firing on all cylinders. But internally, things feel a little flat.

So nothing is wrong per se, but nothing feels especially awesome either. Things are fine, just fine. And let me make an important distinction here. I am not talking about clinical depression. I’m also not talking about true burnout where you feel detached or cynical or dread nearly everything. And I’m also not talking about needing a full-on reinvention. Those are very different conversations.

So, what I’m talking about today is emotional fatigue. It’s the kind of fatigue that builds when you’ve been working hard and your output has been high for a long time. It’s when you’ve been responsible, steady, and productive across multiple areas of your life like work, family, health, goals, and you really haven’t dropped the ball anywhere, but you also haven’t had much breathing room. So, you’re functioning, you’re reliable, you’re competent, and nothing has exploded, but you’re not especially energized either. And there’s no feeling of, boy, I’m crushing this, and there’s no adrenaline attached to anything.

And that can make some women nervous because if you’re someone who’s used to momentum, feeling flat can feel very uncomfortable. And here’s what I’ve noticed, both in myself and in many of the women I coach. When you’re wired for growth and doing hard things, and when part of your identity is centered around being disciplined or high-performing or ahead of the curve, you are used to improving something. You like progress, you like intensity, optimization. There’s usually something you’re working on, whether it’s in your body, your career, your habits, your mindset.

And none of that is inherently bad. For many of us, that drive has served us pretty well. But here’s the thing. Constant self-evaluation has a cost. Always evaluating how you’re doing, always asking, is this working? Always pondering, could this be better? Or constantly wondering, should I adjust something? All of that ongoing assessment takes a lot of energy. And if you’ve been operating in that mode for years or even decades, it can cause your whole system to get tired, even if nothing is technically wrong. And so that is what I mean by emotional fatigue. It’s not collapse, it’s the accumulated weight of being responsible and pushing for greatness for a long, long time.

And here’s where it gets interesting. When that fatigue shows up, most of us don’t interpret it as, I’ve been running on a steady clip for a long time. Instead, we interpret it as something’s off, or I’m losing momentum, or I need a jolt so I don’t lose my edge. Because flat feels suspicious. It might even feel unsafe. And it can trigger thoughts like, am I backsliding? Am I getting complacent? Or even worse, is this mediocrity setting in?

And underneath all of that is a quiet belief that if we’re not advancing, we must be declining. And I think for a lot of us, there’s this unspoken rule that if we’re not advancing or improving something, we must be slipping. And that’s not necessarily true, but it runs in the background for a lot of high-achieving women. And so here’s what I want to offer instead.

Flat is not failure. Flat might just be baseline. It might be what steady actually feels like when there is no adrenaline attached to it. And if you’ve spent a long time operating on high intensity, baseline can feel uncomfortable. Not because something is wrong, but because nothing is dramatic. And those are two very different things.

So here’s what I tend to see happen. You start to feel a low-grade fatigue. It’s not dramatic, it’s not urgent. It’s just a little flat or maybe a little blah. And instead of interpreting this as, oh, I’m just managing a whole lot right now, your brain starts scanning for a problem and looking for something to fix. And it doesn’t feel like a panic, it feels like being responsible, like being thorough. And you might start thinking to yourself, maybe I need a reset, or maybe I’ve gotten a little loose. Maybe I need something to train for. Maybe it’s time to tighten things up. And at first go, it sounds reasonable. It even sounds productive, like you’re taking ownership.

So maybe you adjust your macros or increase the intensity of your workouts or sign up for the half marathon, or add a new rule or create a new system. You add structure. And on the surface, it doesn’t look concerning. You’re not unraveling, you’re not quitting. In fact, it’s actually the opposite. You’re looking for ways to double down. But if we really slow this down and look at what’s happening, it gets interesting.

Think about it. Most high-achieving women are very comfortable and in fact used to operating with momentum. There’s usually a next goal, a next benchmark, a next level of improvement. And that forward movement gives you both energy and clarity. Momentum gives you direction. But when that pull forward disappears, even temporarily, it can feel disorienting. Your nervous system, it will take notice. And not because anything is wrong, but because you’re used to activation.

And if you’re used to operating with a certain baseline level of drive or pressure, that drop can feel unsettling. It can feel like a loss. Your system notices the absence of intensity. And if part of your identity is tied to being disciplined or capable or ahead of it all, that feeling of flat can start to feel like a threat to your identity. So, what does your brain do? It starts filling in the gap of momentum with a story, like if I’m not improving something, I must be slipping somewhere.

And then, that’s where escalation comes in. And it’s not because you actually need to escalate anything, but it’s because that escalation restores your feeling of control. Escalation restores activation. It gives you focus, a target, and suddenly, you’re back on it. And then, you’ve replaced what is really a neutral steady baseline with more force and intensity.

And here’s the part that’s easy to miss. If you’re experiencing emotional fatigue, meaning your brain is carrying the mental load of sustained responsibility, making decisions, and managing pressure for months or years, adding a new goal doesn’t reduce that load. It just adds to it. You’ve just added another thing to manage or another metric to track or another way to evaluate yourself. And maybe that gives you a short burst of clarity, but at the end of the day, it’s still more output that you’ve got to generate. So it’s not recovery.

So, it’s not that you were off track, and you most definitely were not slacking off. You were just tired. But if you misinterpret steady as slipping, you end up tired and managing a new project on top of it. And sometimes that’s where women end up even more depleted than they started.

Now the question becomes, if escalation and adding something else isn’t the answer, then what is? Sometimes, when you’re straight-up tired, what you actually might need is fewer decisions, lower intensity, the same habits, but without the added pressure of having to optimize or improve anything. That means less drama and more boring consistency. And all you’re doing is two things. You’re keeping the cognitive load from becoming too much, and you’re protecting your energy by not spreading it too thin on just one more thing. In essence, you’re protecting your time and your energy, but you’re also protecting your brain from the mental load of taking on more.

And I know that doesn’t sound exciting. I get that. But sometimes, when you’re tired, the most disciplined thing you can do is not add anything more. So, I’m going to slow it down because I know I tend to talk fast at baseline, but I really want you to sit with that for a second. Think about it. Sometimes, the most disciplined thing you can do is not add one more thing.

For a lot of the women I work with, discipline has always meant pushing. It means tightening up, raising the bar. But what I’m talking about today is a quieter version of discipline. It’s the ability to hold steady even when nothing feels dramatic. It’s the ability to look at your current plan and your current habits and say, this is working. I don’t need to make it any harder. And that is uncomfortable. Trust me, it is much harder than it sounds. Because when you don’t escalate, nothing changes externally. You lose the excitement that comes with a new goal. You don’t get the dopamine hit of a fresh plan. You don’t get to feel the surge of I’m back on it. You just keep on keeping on. You just continue repeating the same habits.

And repeating what works can feel surprisingly plain. But the discomfort there is not laziness. It’s just that you’re used to measuring yourself by forward motion. When you are wired to constantly improve, steady can feel oddly unsatisfying, even when nothing is wrong. It’s maintenance. Maintenance means you’re doing the work, but instead of aiming higher, you’re protecting what you’ve already built.

And honestly, that is the part that we don’t celebrate enough. Keeping what you have worked so hard to build and preventing decline. Because we love improvement. We love visible progress. But what if the goal right now isn’t to improve? What if the goal is just to not unravel? Meaning you don’t lose the habits you’ve built and you don’t slide backward into extremes.

And that reframes everything. And that is why maintenance becomes a skill. Maintenance requires something different. It requires emotional steadiness. It requires tolerating the low-grade discomfort of boredom or even neutrality and not reacting to it. Because remember, nothing is going wrong here. You’re just doing your baseline work. And that means you wake up, you do your workout, you eat your protein, and you go to bed at a reasonable time without needing any of it to feel exciting. You repeat what works without constantly needing to upgrade it.

And maybe most importantly, maintenance requires you to shift the question from, how can I make this better to, is this working well enough? And that is a very, very different way of approaching it. It’s a different mindset. And for a lot of high-achieving women who are used to forward motion, that feels unfamiliar. When there isn’t a next limit to push, your brain will try to create a new one. And it’s not because you’re dramatic, it’s because you’re used to activation.

Steady can feel like stagnation, but it isn’t. And that can be really hard to manage if you’re used to constantly driving ahead. So the work here is not adding something. It’s resisting the urge to add something. That is huge. And so that might mean saying, my workouts are solid, I don’t need to make them any more intense. My nutrition is stable, I don’t need to tighten anything up. Or my routine works, I don’t need to reinvent it.

And let me make something really clear here. When you’re tired, that’s not complacency. It’s calibration. And by calibration, I don’t mean lowering your standards. I mean, matching your effort with your current capacity and adjusting your effort, output, and expectations accordingly. There are times when your capacity is high. You’re sleeping well, work feels manageable, life is predictable. And that might be a season to push or build or improve.

And then there are times when your capacity is lower because your life is heavier and more full with decisions, responsibility, or just more emotional load. And during those times, pushing harder doesn’t prove or add discipline, it just adds strain. So, here’s your takeaway. If you’re already feeling flat, more intensity is not discipline. It’s miscalibration. And sometimes the smarter move is adjusting your output to match your bandwidth.

If you want to feel better, you have to take into account what you have the time and energy for instead of defaulting to amping up your effort. We often do that. We often just ramp it up and completely ignore ourselves, but that just makes everything harder and more exhausting. Let me give you an example that I see so often with the women I coach. Imagine this. You’re sleeping six to seven hours a night. Not terrible, but not amazing. You’re working full-time. Your job requires you to think and decide and manage. There are high stakes.

And meanwhile, you’re training four plus days a week. You’re not sedentary. You are showing up. And you’re managing a household. There are schedules, logistics, and people who depend on you. You’re eating reasonably well, not perfect, but solid. And you feel tired. And often, the immediate reaction is, I need to dial this in, whether that’s to tighten up nutrition, increase your exercise intensity, add a goal, or create a new system.

But pause for a second. And here’s the question to consider. Is dialing it in actually what’s missing? Or is it possible that your recovery hasn’t matched your output for a really long time? Like a long enough time that operating at tired just feels like the status quo. Because those are two very different problems.

So, to make this clear, if the issue is effort, meaning you’re inconsistent, you’re skipping workouts, you’re overeating most nights, you’re drifting, then yes, structure helps. Tightening things up makes sense there. But if the issue is capacity, meaning you’re already consistent, already responsible, and already operating near your limit, then adding intensity does not fix that. It just increases your already full load.

And that is the distinction. Sometimes the problem is consistency or discipline, but sometimes the problem is depletion. And if you don’t differentiate those two, you end up treating depletion like a discipline problem. So that is what I mean by calibration. It’s about accurately diagnosing what’s going on instead of reacting to discomfort.

And here’s the part that’s easy to underestimate. Sometimes, maintenance is the most disciplined move you can make because if you can hold your floor when you’re tired, and if you can protect the habits that are already keeping you going, you don’t lose your ground. You don’t swing into extremes. And instead, you preserve your capacity, and that’s very strategic. So, when you choose deliberately not to escalate, when you decide to keep your habits as they are without making them harder, you’re not settling. You’re thinking long-term. You’re acknowledging that you don’t have an infinite supply of energy and that preserving the energy you do have matters more than trying to squeeze out an incremental improvement right now.

And that does not happen by accident. Most of us default to escalation. It’s in our wiring. We feel uncomfortable, so we add something. We feel flat, so we push. But when you resist the urge and tell yourself, this is fine. I don’t need to make anything harder right now, that is intentional. That is awareness. And that’s thinking proactively instead of reacting. And that is often the real win.

So, let’s make this practical. If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, yep, this is me right now, here are a few ways to sort out what’s actually going on before you go sign up for something or commit to new macros or add a new program to your life. The first question is simple, but sneaky. So ask yourself, am I actually off track, or am I just not excited? Those are not the same thing.

Sometimes nothing is wrong. You’re consistent, you’re showing up, you’re doing the things you said you would do, but it doesn’t feel electric. It doesn’t feel wild. It just feels normal. And if you’re used to intensity, normal can feel like a decline. But here’s the thing, excitement is not a requirement for consistency. You don’t need a surge of motivation to maintain a habit. In fact, if your habits only survive when you’re excited, they’re not habits yet. They’re bursts. So, separate the two. Are you drifting, or are you just bored? That distinction is important. Okay?

Now, restless is different. Nothing is falling apart. It just feels quiet. And that quiet can feel uncomfortable if you’re used to momentum. So, before you escalate anything, pause and ask yourself, is my system tired, or am I just uncomfortable with steady? If it’s fatigue, your system needs less output, less pushing, and more recovery. If it’s restlessness, your work is restraint and learning to tolerate boredom without blowing up your plan.

And then, the third question. If this is a maintenance season, what does that actually look like? So, not quitting, not backing off, just maintaining. And then you think through what that means for you. Maybe it’s keeping your workouts exactly the same, but pulling the intensity back instead of chasing PRs. Maybe it’s sticking with your current nutrition plan and dropping the constant tweaking. Maybe it’s going to bed at the same time without adding cold plunges, supplements, or blue light blockers.

And the point is that maintenance often looks very ordinary. It’s protecting the floor that you’ve already established. And I want you to hear this clearly. You do not have to improve everything all the time. You are allowed to let something be good enough for a while. That doesn’t make you complacent. It makes you strategic. Because if you can hold steady during a tired stretch and protect your baseline without escalating, you don’t have to rebuild from scratch later. All right?

So, let me leave you with this. What if this version of tired is not evidence that you’re slipping? What if it’s just information? What if it’s not proof that you’re losing your edge, but it’s just data about where you are currently, what season you’re in? Because a lot of high-achieving women are very quick to interpret fatigue as failure. We assume something is wrong and we assume we’ve got to fix it and that we’re falling behind.

But tiredness does not automatically mean you’re off track. Sometimes it just means you’ve been producing at a high level for a while. And instead of making that mean you need to accelerate, what if it means you need to stabilize? So, maybe you’re not losing your edge. And maybe instead of pushing, you practice holding.

Not every season is for acceleration. Some seasons are for letting habits that you’ve already built run quietly in the background without adding anything new. You’re protecting your foundation so that when you do decide to add or improve or optimize, you’re doing it from something already solid. And if you’re in a tired season right now, please really hear this. This is probably not the time to blow up your life. It may not be the time to overhaul your food or sign up for something extreme or completely reinvent everything. It might just be time to protect what you’ve already created. And that is not weakness at all. That is self-leadership.

And if you can learn how to do that, if you can learn to stay steady without escalating every time you feel flat, you build trust with yourself. You prove that you don’t need drama to stay consistent, and you just keep going. All right?

And if you want help with this, let’s talk. If you’re not sure whether you’re off track or just tired, that is exactly what we sort through in coaching. We sort through your eating, your training, your thinking, and your capacity and build a plan that matches your actual life instead of the idealized version of it. So check out my website. Send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact and let’s talk about how coaching can help you stay steady even when you feel tired. All right? Thank you again for hanging out with me and I’ll catch you again next week.

—

Hey if you want to build muscle but don’t know where to start, I’ve got you covered. Head over to CarrieHollandMD.com/buildstrength and download my free guide to help you maximize your strength training. Inside, you’ll find the essential exercises for building muscle, plus simple one, two, and three-day workout plans you can follow with just dumbbells and a bench.

You’ll also find strength training tips to help you train smarter and see real results. My goal is to help you get strong and this strength-training guide will help you do it. Go to CarrieHollandMD.com/build strength and check it out.

Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.