Hey, hey, beautiful human. Can I steal five minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Labbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned. If you're ready to embrace a real, let's get it.

Let's go.

Hello and welcome back to another bonus episode on the Embrace Real podcast.

Today we're diving into something that a lot of

us feel but don't always catch in the moment and that's burnout. Not the regular kind of tired

where good night's sleep just fixes it. Like the deep lingering exhaustion that follows you

into the next day, the next workout, the next conversation. I'm just going to dive right into

today's episode. Let's just talk about burnout. So here's the truth

that a lot of people don't talk about, which is burnout kills your ability to see results. And I'm not

just talking about feeling tired. I'm talking about that deep exhaustion that lingers,

matter how much sleep you get. When you are in burnout mode, your body is not operating from balance.

It's operating from survival. So in cortisol, which is your main stress hormone, stays elevated for too long, it starts throwing everything else off. Your sleep, your hunger cues, your recovery, your hormones. You might even notice that your workouts start feeling harder even though you're not doing anything different. You crave sugar more often. Your patience wears thin, and the scale or the mare stops reflecting all of your effort. Why? It's because

your body is overwhelmed. It's prioritizing survival, not progress. It's thinking like, okay,

how do I keep myself alive, not how do I build more muscle or shed fat? Even if you're eating clean,

you're tracking macros and

showing up for every single workout, if your nervous system is stuck in overdrive, your body cannot

adapt the way that it's supposed to. You might actually be sending these mixed signals, right?

One minute, you're asking your body to grow stronger and the next minute you're flooding it

with stress hormones that say we're in danger. that constant push and pull is exhausting it really does slow muscle recovery

it disrupts your metabolism and it messes with their motivation before you know it the thing that

once felt empowering which is moving your body starts feeling like another task to check off

your list so here's what i want you to remember that rest isn't a reward. It's a requirement. Like taking a rest day, getting outside for fresh air, doing a gentle walk, or even just choosing sleep over another 5 a.m. workout doesn't mean that you're slacking. It means that you're honoring your body, right? I say that all

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