A few weeks ago I received a question from a reader about exercise guilt.

“Do you ever feel exercise guilt when you are unable to exercise for a few days? I ran my first 1/2 marathon 2 weeks ago and I have not been as active as I was prior to my race. Any advice, tips, personal suggestions would be so appreciated!!!”

I thought this was such a great topic to devote discussion towards.

So one of my workout (and life) philosophies is to try to move my body every day. I don’t assign a “right or wrong” to how I decide to move my body…I just move.

Sometimes I move by running.

Sometimes I move by practicing yoga.

Sometimes I move by strength training.

Sometimes I move by CrossFitting.

And sometimes just a walk with my girls will do just fine.

Here’s the thing I tell my yoga students all the time. Your body is so different every day. It’s a gift to be in-tune with that and it’s a skill to learn to listen to it. This is why I don’t plan out my week of workouts. I wait and see what my schedule allows and how my body is feeling.

Of course, that changes if I’m actively training for something like last year’s half marathon. I did adhere to a training program with scheduled workouts but these days that’s the exception not the rule. There was a time that I felt that I always needed to be pushing, training, working towards something…now I just love to move. I’m find myself more energetic, less injured and overall more happy with my body and my training when it comes from an intuitive place.

So with that, here are this week’s workouts which are heavy on the yoga…because after a long weekend in NYC and how my body was feeling overall…it was all I felt like doing.

Monday

REST

Tuesday

Hot Yoga

Wednesday

Hot Yoga

Thursday

Hot Yoga

Friday

Circuit Training

I went to a circuit training at Madabolic class with a friend. Our workout was 30 minutes of intervals of boxing, skier machine, jump squats, Russian twists and single arm snatches.

Saturday

Yoga

Sunday

7 mile run + teach Total Strength

I met a friend to run thought we’d do 4-5 but every time we had the option to turn to head back we decided to keep going. It was one of those runs that surprises you! I credit all the rest and yoga I got all week to a great run. I taught Total Strength later in the day at the Y and it was a nice overall strength workout.

I would love to hear your take on exercise guilt. Is it something you struggle with or have in the past? How have you learned to deal?