Ep #405: Is It Burnout… or Just Boredom?

Welcome to the Not Your Average Runner podcast. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running coach, and your running BFF here to help you start running. Feel confident and love the journey no matter your size. Now, if you’ve ever felt like you just weren’t meant to be a runner, think again. I believe that running is for all bodies, even yours.

This podcast is your warmup buddy, giving you tips, motivation, and the support you need to lace up and get moving. I’ve helped thousands of women become runners, and now I wanna help you. Let’s go.

Hey, hey runner, and welcome back to the show. Now, today’s episode is for you. If your workout routine has been on a little, uh, hiatus lately. Maybe you started out strong, you bought the cute planner, you set the reminders, you laid your leggings out the night before, and for a few days or weeks. It was clicking, you were doing it, feeling strong, pretty badass, and then, and then you weren’t, and you started thinking, oh, I must be burned out, and okay, hey, that could be true.

Burnout is very common, especially for midlife women. But I don’t know. What if you’re not burned out? What if the problem isn’t your body or your willpower and you’re just a little fucking bored? Could be. Let’s break it down. So burnout is that fried feeling. You know how it feels. You’re exhausted on every level, mentally, emotionally, physically, even brushing your teeth feels like a chore, and you’re not just avoiding your workouts, you’re avoiding everything.

And you might be sleep deprived, overwhelmed, anxious, or just real deep indecision fatigue. That’s burnout. Boredom, on the other hand, is a different animal. Boredom looks like putting off your workout for just one more scroll or repeating the same playlist and looking and doing the same route every single time.

And like, instead of being like it feels comfortable and relaxing, you’re watching the clock the whole time. Like, when am I gonna be done? When am I gonna be done? Um, boredom looks like. Doing the moves, but feeling nothing like no spark. No satisfaction. No connection. On the surface, they kind of feel a little bit similar.

They give you the same result, right? You feel unmotivated, you, you’re stuck, but the fix is different. But with burnout, you need rest. And restoration and maybe professional support. To be honest with boredom, you need some variety. You need some play, some joy, a new challenge that excites you instead of draining all your energy.

I. For most of the time, especially for Wi Midlife women, I think it’s probably a mixture of burnout and boredom, let’s be honest. But if we can fix the boredom piece, maybe that would lift some of the burnout. So let’s talk about why that boredom hits so fricking hard. Most brains crave novelty. They crave, you know, differences and variety so they can stay engaged and.

If you have been running for a while or walking or whatever exercise you’re doing, and you’re doing the same workout, the same app, the same routine every single time, you might not be getting that novelty and variety that that you’re craving. And you’ve probably also been taught that real fitness has to be structured and repetitive.

You stick to the plan. They say consistency is key. But for your Gen X, perimenopausal, maybe postmenopausal, emotionally exhausted self, that plan might be the exact reason that you keep checking out because it’s boring and worse. It’s not just boring, it’s guilt written. So you’re not just uninterested, you are judging yourself the whole time for being uninterested.

It’s like trying to force yourself to keep watching a TV show that you hate. ’cause someone said it gets better by season three. Spoiler. It won’t. You need a different show. So here is the good news. Boredom is not failure. It’s just feedback. It’s literally just information. It is your brain saying, okay, we’ve done this to death already.

Let’s just try something else. And that doesn’t mean. You gotta scrap everything and start over from the beginning. It just means you need to shake things up a little. And honestly, I feel this so much in my own life because I get into these ruts where I walk the same two mile route, or I run the same two mile, uh, loop, and I listen to the same playlist.

And I start watching, you know, looking at my watch every few minutes, like, am I done yet? Am I done yet? But if I switch it up a little bit different route, listen to a podcast instead of a playlist, or get a really good book going, suddenly it feels a lot more engaging. So. Here are some ideas for you. Swap out that playlist for a podcast.

Swap out the playlist for a book. Um, throw on music from your high school years. If you listen to Spotify there, if you’re, if you’re an eighties kiddo like me, there’s eighties playlist. They, they’ll just literally play all the hits from when you were in high school. If you’re a nineties kid, same if you’re a seventies kid.

Same. Right. So put on that podcast or that, uh, playlist and you could go for a walk. You could go for a run. You could just dance around your living room like you’re back at prom. Remember prom, um, you could try five minutes of yoga, but do it in bed, literally in bed. Bed yoga is fun. It’s very comfortable.

Um, go outside and just move your body without any plan instead of, oh, I need to do two miles today. Pick. Just pick a route that looks interesting and stop worrying about your mileage. Stop worrying about your steps and just go out and enjoy the outside. There’s so many different ways to kind of shake it up that don’t have to be like a big, totally different workout routine.

You can just do things a little bit differently. You don’t need a breakthrough moment. We all think that we just need to find the perfect plan for us, and then it’s gonna be fine. No. The perfect plan is great for a few weeks, maybe even a couple months, but then your brain is gonna wanna do something different.

So if you’ve been doing the exact same thing over and over again, let’s, let’s stop with the predictability and throw caution to the wind and try something different. Now, you might be thinking, well, that sounds nice. That sounds all good and fine. But I won’t be consistent unless I have a plan. All right.

That’s fair. Most of us have been trained to think that fun is flaky and structure is what we need to be successful. But what if you could have both? What if you had gentle guidance and a loose framework, and then you also had some built-in flexibility and variety and room to be human? What if your movement, air quotes plan felt more like an invitation than a chore?

So that is the idea between behind the program that I’m launching next week. It is called the Midlife Movement Makeover. I’m gonna just call it M three for short, because Midlife Movement Makeover is a lot to say, but it is a four week reset that is designed for midlife women who’ve had enough. Of just falling off the wagon and starting over, over and over again.

There will be no burpees unless you want them. I don’t know anybody that wants burpees. There are no rigid schedules. There’s no body shaming bs. There’s no counting and tracking. None of it. It is going to be bite-sized joy forward movement, realistic routines. That fit into your real life, and of course, mindset work to help you feel at home in your body, in the body that you have right now that is no longer 20 years old, right?

It is the body that is changing and evolving as you age. Let’s figure out how to feel at home in that body because consistency, yes, consistency gets results, but it doesn’t come from being strict. It comes from having a reason that is meaningful to you and that lights you up and you get to define what that is.

So doors on M three open on August 18th. We will be starting the program right after Labor Day. Um, I will have all the details next week on next week’s podcast on how to join. But if the idea of pressing reset makes your heart just sort of exhale, make sure you’re on my email list. So you don’t miss it.

If you don’t know how to get on my email list, just go to my website, not your average runner.com, sign up for a six week freebie or whatever’s there at the top and you will be on. Okay? Or you can just listen to the podcast ’cause I will have all the links here next week. So if you have been beating yourself up for not feeling motivated, maybe the question is not what is wrong with me?

Maybe it is what’s missing from my routine. Give that some thought, my friend. Next week I will be right here in your ear with all the tea on the Midlife movement makeover. Until then, make it weird, make it playful, make it fun because bored brains don’t stick to boring plans. All right, I’ll talk to you soon.

Real quick before you go, I’ve got a fun challenge for you. Take my exerciser personality quiz to find out exactly what kind of exerciser you are and how to make running feel easier and more enjoyable.

Just head over to not your average runner.com/quiz to take it and get your results. That’s not your average runner.com/quiz.