the curious case of the post-lift sleepies🕵️‍♀️

There’s a mysterious condition that sometimes plagues the newer members of the elite She’s A Beast subscriber Liftcord. They come in hot, charging through the early weeks of LIFTOFF, thrilled to see their mobility and strength build, the wonderful journey of coming back into possession of their bodies spooling out before them. And then a few weeks in, they start finding themselves periodically exhausted, so exhausted they can’t keep their eyes open, so exhausted that it becomes existentially dangerous to, for instance, sit still at a desk, lest they put their head down for a split second and then fall asleep. What on earth is going on?

Far be it from me to eliminate the possibility of sudden-onset narcolepsy or some other actual medical condition (in which case, see a doctor). But it is far more likely to be a phenomenon that the Liftcord has dubbed “the post-lift sleepies.”

We have talked before about the two things everyone gets wrong when they start to lift, one of which is not taking care to eat enough. If a person doesn’t eat enough, their muscles can’t build, their body can’t refuel its energy stores or get all its other processes going, and they find themselves like a mud-logged tire, getting no traction no matter how hard they spin. The post-lift sleepies are a version of this same problem, but they have to do more with when and what exactly a person eats. (In the biz, this is referred to as “nutrient timing.”)