 Do you feel lightheaded or nauseous with really hard workouts? Want to figure out what's going on? Watch this. Our next caller is Xavier from Massachusetts. Xavier, what's happening? How can we help you? Yeah. Well, first off, I just want to say hi, guys. You know, I've been listening to you guys for a few years now, and you've definitely helped me do my own coaching thing and whatnot. Yeah, so I guess I'll get right into it. So I I've been feeling, I would get extremely nauseous in the middle of some of my workouts, and I've been feeling that way since I've been running track and since high school. And it would only be during my extremely hard workouts. Now recently, I first noticed it during a really hard leg day. I got extremely like sweaty, passed down the floor. Well, I didn't like lose consciousness or anything. And then right after that, I had to go straight to the bathroom and take a number two, I guess you would say. So I thought it was food related. So I stopped eating before my workouts. I didn't help. I thought it was pre-workout related. What else? And I looked towards water and salt, and none of those things worked out for me. So I was hoping you guys would have some sort of answer. Yeah. Yeah, I got an answer for you. Just work through it. Push yourself, throw up, and change his weakness. You'd never hear that from us. You know what you're doing? I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you a little story. So it's just, I'm going to make something up here. Just imagine your friend is literally standing against the wall and just banging it against the wall. And they're like, yeah, my head hurts. And I thought I was dehydrated. I'm drinking more water. I didn't seem to help. And I thought, yeah, I took some Advil, but it didn't really help that much. And I thought maybe I needed more sleep and I've been sleeping more. And you're looking at them and you're like, you're banging your head against the wall. That's probably why. The obvious answer is you're working out too hard. I think the reason why that's not obvious to you is because you think to yourself, this isn't that hard. Why am I feeling this way? Right? Right. And it doesn't always happen, right? You're okay with upper body workouts. And if you go easier. Well, no. So I'd be lying to you if I say I haven't felt it during an upper body day. I will say this though. I did feel it. I've been running that Santa Bolic recently. And I felt it during the first set of squats. And it was the, I don't know if I can talk about this. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's the two by 12. And I felt it during my first set. I was able to push through it. Didn't have to run to the bathroom that time, but I did get extremely exhausted. And I, I, yeah, I guess I don't want to accept that. Maybe I'm working too hard because it just, it doesn't feel, it doesn't seem like I am. Okay. Let me ask some more questions here. I actually used to experience this. So, and I would consider myself a hard gainer. So mine was actually food related, not getting enough food. I wasn't, I wasn't fueling my body with enough calories to support the intense workouts I was doing. Also, something that I heard you say was, so you stopped eating food before your workout. So that would only make that situation worse because you're even lower calorie now. And then in addition to that, if you take a pre workout on an empty stomach, caffeine will give that feeling on an empty stomach a lot of times too. So I don't know if you've ever experienced having like a cup of coffee first thing in the morning and sometimes you feel nauseous if it's like a really strong cup of coffee. Caffeine will do this sometimes. And have you messed with your carbohydrate intake like, you know, like fruits or like oatmeal or like what kind of breakfast did that consist of? So when this first started, again, you know, I stopped eating and then I started doing it again. I would have maybe like oatmeal and a banana at first. But now I've been doing the bagel, cream cheese, banana, um, elementy. And that's kind of been getting me through it a little bit longer. What about the pre, are you taking a pre workout? Yes. Yes. Yes. How many milligrams of caffeine is in your pre workout? What are you taking? I think it's one. Oh, 200. Actually, I'm sorry. It's 200 milligrams. Okay. So a few things here. One, um, when you, I would schedule a physical, get a routine blood test, just make sure that there's no, no lacking nutrients, make sure your iron is okay. Okay. Your B, your B vitamins are okay. Cause sometimes I can cause that number two might be a deficiency somewhere. Number two, um, this doesn't happen during normal workouts. This typically happens with hard, strenuous ones. So I want to say yes. Yeah. Okay. So I would, I would just not go super hard for a while. I would treat exercise or workouts like practice. I would practice the movements, train within your limits. Cause going past your limit, whether you think so or not is not, is not helpful. Right. Getting to the point where you feel like you're sick, setting you back. Yeah. Regardless of the reason is just not, it's not going to benefit you. Even if it's a nutrient deficiency, going past that point is not going to help you. So I would go easy. I would either go lighter or less reps or rest longer or less volume or all of the above. And then slowly work your capacity up very little by little work your capacity up. Those are the things I would do, uh, right out the gates. Have you checked your blood pressure in a while too? Yes, I actually did. It was a perfect okay. Cause I know I had to do that. It was a, it was a one 10 over 70. I believe I would, um, I would tease out the advice that Sal said, I think we all agree, go get checked to be safe. None of us are doctors here. There could be something under, there could be an underlining issue that you're, something you're not getting or something going on that we should check just to be safe. So I, that's, we're going to start with that advice from all of us. But then I would also, I would tease out the pre-workout. Um, you know, I've, I've taken, I've taken pre-workouts before and, and, and definitely when I'm on an empty stomach and I go to train and that makes, it makes me nauseous, makes me, it makes me have to go take a shit like all the above. So, um, if you haven't teased it out, I would tease that out and see if that makes a difference too. Yeah. I, uh, I used to take a few different pre-workouts. I've been like experimenting with myself and whatnot and, um, definitely had to rule out one, but even though it was like my favorite brand, I had to rule them out just because like I just wasn't agreeing with my stomach. Um, yeah, I don't know if this correlates at all, but also when I eat a ton of carbs, I tend to feel the same feeling. Okay. Well, yeah. Okay. Go get a physical, make sure that your blood sugar and your insulin sensitivity is okay. Okay. Yeah. Do you ever feel like an unquenchable thirst? Can't say that I have felt it before. Okay. I would still go get, go get, go get a physical, let your doctor know, have them do routine blood tests, just to rule anything out in the meantime, train well within your limits because you're not doing yourself any favors by getting to the point where you feel like, you know, you need to throw up. And then as far as eating too many carbohydrates in one sitting and making it feel crappy, well, uh, you know, until you figure out what the deal is, I would eat less at a sitting. And again, just stay within your limits until you figure out or rule out that there's any major medical issue like your, like again, your insulin sensitivity is off because blood sugar issues can cause that and cause nausea. It could cause you to make you feel like passing out. It can, you know, so it can, it can cause a lot of things. So check that out, make sure there's no nutrient deficiencies and train within your limits. If your tests come back, doctors like everything looks fine. I don't think we need to do any further testing than just stay within your limits and gradually move yourself up and you can do it. So long again, as there's no major deficiency or medical issue, you can slowly move your tolerance up and up until, you know, you're able to train at a high intensity and not feel like you're going to die. As a hard gamer, I would attempt, I would attempt to, uh, to eat a good, good high calorie meal about two hours before workout. I don't know if you're, if you're timing it right now or paying attention to that. Um, yeah, I, uh, I wake up first thing in the morning and usually go just because that's how my schedule works. Um, so it's kind of, it's kind of hard to wake up at early wake up. See, this is why I think it's low cal, this is why I think it's low calorie. You're a hard gainer. So I'm assuming we have kind of a fast metabolism. You're on the leaner side. You're fasted all night where you don't eat. It sounds like you're eating oatmeal and you're talking about four, 500 calories tops. Yeah. Um, and then you're also taking this super caffeinated drink. To me, I think getting yourself better fed, maybe try doing your workout at a later time, just to test this and see if it's not that. Again, back to the first advice, go get tested. That's first and foremost, but there's some other things that I would also play with. Like I would try, like I, I, I don't ever feel great working on the morning. Just never have it. So, and I get some feelings like this. I normally have to have two good meals in my system before I get a lift. And that's a real easy way to, to figure out if that's an issue. Cause if you find that, man, anytime I work out at two in the afternoon or later, I never have these problems, but I only have these problems in the morning when I train. Well, maybe it's just that your body needs more calories. You're not feeding it enough for the workout that you're doing. And then you're feeling the, the blood pressure, blood sugar thing going on that could cause a nausea. So I would look into that. Okay. Yeah. I, I mean, I guess I should also add that I have been doing more of like a part building style of exercising and it's not super high rep with the heavier exercises. So, you know, maybe that's definitely playing a part. Yeah. I mean, honestly, you just do, it's too much for whatever's happening. It's too much train with your, within your limits and go make sure that there's no major medical issues underlining kind of, you know, what's going on and circle back with this Xavier. I'd love to hear what happens. So I want to, I want to know what, what's going on with you. So we get the bottom of it. Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah. All right, man. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. This is why I, one example, why I recommend good trainers and coaches have a network of people they can work with because I would love, I experienced this a lot. This was like a, I actually experienced this quite a bit. Now, obviously that's my situation. Maybe his is completely different. But there was two main things that really made a big difference for me. Actually, one of them was getting out of the, the body part split because what this was leg day for me. Oh yeah. 20 sets for legs. Yeah. Every idea about it because of every leg day I was, I was on the edge of throwing up every workout. And even when I thought I was backing off the intensity, I would look at how everybody else is training and I see what I'm doing. I'm like, God, I'm such a wuss. Like I want to throw up and this is all I've done. Like, and you are a wuss. It doesn't matter, right? It was just too much. But I also, I also noticed that if I, if I was very well fed, you know, two meals or so before my workouts that I didn't experience this feeling. And he already commented about him being a hard gainer. He might be just a lot lower calorie. I mean, hard gainers normally are not eating enough calories. That's what that's already an obvious thing with hard gainers. So he's probably low calorie. He's in the morning time. Okay. When he's been basically fasted all night, throw some caffeine on that. Yeah. Then throw some caffeine on that. He said four or 500 calories, then he's going right into his workout. I mean, it's probably what it is, but I definitely think if you're feeling like this, uh, you know, you want to rule things out, right? Because, uh, you know, that could be something that's just kind of hidden. Uh, but yeah, none the less, I mean, it is crazy because the last thing a person wants to say is, well, I'm working out too hard. Because what we do is we look at our workouts and we say, well, this is not too hard. Well, obviously handle this though, or you compared others like I did. I was looking at what my friends and everybody else was, and they were doing twice as twice the intensity as I was, but I was struggling with that. So, totally. Hey, if you enjoyed that clip, you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe.