Fact checkedExpert's opinion

Expert's opinion

The article is a subjective view on this topic written by writers specializing in medical writing.
It may reflect on a personal journey surrounding struggles with an illness or medical condition, involve product comparisons, diet considerations, or other health-related opinions.

Although the view is entirely that of the writer, it is based on academic experiences and scientific research they have conducted; it is fact-checked by a team of degreed medical experts, and validated by sources attached to the article.

The numbers in parenthesis (1,2,3) will take you to clickable links to related scientific papers.

Are Rest Days Important For Weight Loss? What To Know In 2024?

Emma

Updated on - Written by
Medically reviewed by Melissa Mitri, MS, RD

Are Rest Days Important For Weight Loss
Rest days are vital to meet your weight loss goals without burning out. Photo: Shutterstock & Team Design

Exercise recovery plays an important role in health and wellness, thus rest days are extremely essential for the weight loss journey. Many fitness lovers are so focused on how good it feels to exercise that they forget to check in with themselves physically. Are rest days important for weight loss? It may sound silly, but the body needs time to heal.

No fitness goal is too urgent to put your body at risk of injury, even if you’re trying to lose weight fast or burn more calories. Here’s why you should be giving yourself time to recover between workouts, as well as essential tips to keep yourself occupied while you rest.

Are Rest Days Important For Weight Loss?

Giving your body time to rest by taking an active rest day is an essential part of any exercise regimen. When you refuse to rest, your body is not able to recover and rebuild its muscle strength and stamina. In short, rest days are vital to meet your fitness goals without burning out. 

Why Are Rest Days Important For Weight Loss?

When you work out vigorously, microscopic tears develop in your muscles. The movement from exercise reps the delicate strands of your muscular fiber apart with each pump or row.

The contraction of your muscles during an exercise called concentric contraction, and the lengthening of the muscles to their resting state, eccentric contraction, participate in a full-on tug-of-war[1] with one another. Your muscle tissue is at the center of it all. 

After an intense workout session, a process called hypertrophy occurs in the body. This is the system of processes that restores your glycogen (stored glucose) levels and increases the strength and endurance[2] of your musculoskeletal system again.

Myofibrillar Hypertrophy – Muscle Repair And Growth

After a vigorous training session, cells called fibroblasts repair muscle tissue. This regenerative effort is what makes building muscle after exercise possible gains, meet thy maker.

Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy – Restoration Of Your Glycogen Stores

On the other side of this coin: sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, wherein the body’s energy stores are renewed. After repetitive stress, the glycogen in your muscles is broken down and expended. Without these stores of glycogen, our capacity for exercise decreases dramatically[3].

How Many Rest Days For Weight Loss?

A rest day is a day off from formal exercise. A rest day is meant to break a long string of consecutive workout days—we love our long weekends away from the gym, but scheduling them strategically throughout the week may be more beneficial to your long-term progress overall.

How often should you take a rest day? One or two rest days a week[4] between workouts and weight training is considered to be ideal for most ordinary people. More important than the frequency of your rest days, however, is the timing of your rest day schedule. 

Rest days help athletes minimize both training and performance fatigue[5]. The muscle fibers repair themselves, your glycogen is replenished, and you become much less prone to injury after you’ve recovered fully.

How Important Are Rest Days For Weight Loss?

How Important Are Rest Days For Weight Loss
If there have any rest days, your body is not able to recover or rebuild its muscle strength and stamina. Photo: Shutterstock

Professional athletes and bodybuilders are able to attain peak physical performance because they strike a balance between training days and rest days. 

You can do this too with your own training regimen, so you truly maximize the work you’re putting in. How do you strike this balance? You can do this by fitting in periodic rest days. 

Incorporating rest days into a workout routine have been shown[6] to reduce the risk of injury in professional athletes and performers by reducing cumulative fatigue. 

Overtraining for an extensive period of time without rest perpetuates a negative cycle[7]. The more overworked your muscles are, the more damaged they may become. This will make it harder for them to regenerate later on, which can negatively impact your muscle gains. 

To avoid this, we recommend managing your training schedule actively, taking rest days into consideration along with active exercise days. Some of the benefits of taking a rest day include:

  • Less soreness after training
  • More tangible improvements in flexibility
  • Better performance during subsequent training sessions

Taking a day away from the gym shouldn’t cause you distress, especially if the quality of your workout is something that you value. Your recovery days will bring more energy, more muscle, and more progress. 

With this, you’ll put your body in a much better position to succeed and see the results you aspire to.

Signs When Rest Days Are Needed

For people who used to have a regular exercise routine, the feeling of pushing your body too hard at the gym is undeniable, even if you don’t actually end up sustaining an injury. 

For the sake of your health, be on the lookout for any of the following red flags that point to something called overtraining syndrome[8]. If any of the following apply to you, a recovery day might be just what the doctor ordered:

  • Heavy, sore, or stiff muscles
  • Muscle pain
  • Muscle fatigue
  • A distinct lack of drive
  • Hypertension
  • A reduction in motivation
  • Insomnia
  • Agitation and irritability
  • Difficulty concentrating

You’ll be astounded by how much better you feel after even just one day of rest. On your rest days, you can enjoy gentle activities like walking, using a foam roller, or bedtime yoga if you prefer to do something active on a daily basis.

What To Eat On Rest Days?

What To Eat On Rest Days
Consuming protein on rest days helps your body recover faster. Photo: Shutterstock

Plenty of evidence suggests that adequate protein intake on a regular basis stimulates both types of hypertrophy[9], which allows your body to heal more thoroughly on your rest days. However, protein isn’t the only thing you should be eating. 

Peri-exercise nutrition is the art of planning the way that you eat around your workouts. Focusing on good quality nutrition at the right time will help maximize your results. 

Depending on your macronutrient goals, you may be able to optimize[10] your body’s performance during workouts through the way that you feed it, both on your off days and on the days when you’re extremely active. 

Fat burners for men (and women!) may also be highly beneficial to your health and your body; many contain protein, vitamin supplements, and other ingredients that help your body recover. 

It all comes down to your own personal health and fitness needs, habits, and goals.

Conclusion

Most people can feel when it’s time to recover and take a rest day. By taking a rest day just a couple of times a week, you’ll see a noticeable difference in your exercise performance, progress, and energy levels.

The studies we shared in this article prove how important rest days are. Any personal trainer would also be able to attest to the beneficial effects of rest days. So the next time you find yourself burning out at the gym, try skipping your workout the next day. Remember that it is okay to do so, and it will truly help your performance in the long run.


+ 10 sources

Health Canal avoids using tertiary references. We have strict sourcing guidelines and rely on peer-reviewed studies, academic researches from medical associations and institutions. To ensure the accuracy of articles in Health Canal, you can read more about the editorial process here

  1. Evans, W.J. (2002). Effects of Exercise on Senescent Muscle. [online] 403, pp.S211–S220. doi:https://doi.org/10.1097/00003086-200210001-00025.
  2. ‌Taber, C., Vigotsky, A.D., Nuckols, G. and Haun, C.T. (2019). Exercise-Induced Myofibrillar Hypertrophy is a Contributory Cause of Gains in Muscle Strength. [online] 49(7), pp.993–997. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-019-01107-8.
  3. ‌Burke, L.M., Loon, van and Hawley, J.A. (2017). Postexercise muscle glycogen resynthesis in humans. [online] 122(5), pp.1055–1067. doi:https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00860.2016.
  4. ‌Yang, Y. (2019). An Overview of Current Physical Activity Recommendations in Primary Care. [online] 40(3), pp.135–142. doi:https://doi.org/10.4082/kjfm.19.0038.
  5. ‌Angela Mary Calder (2010). The scientific basis for recovery training practices in sport. [online] ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234000504_The_scientific_basis_for_recovery_training_practices_in_sport.
  6. ‌Orlando, C., Levitan, E.B., Mittleman, M.A., Steele, R.W. and Shrier, I. (2010). The effect of rest days on injury rates. [online] 21(6), pp.e64–e71. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01152.x.
  7. ‌Carfagno, D.G. and Hendrix, J.A. (2014). Overtraining Syndrome in the Athlete. [online] 13(1), pp.45–51. doi:https://doi.org/10.1249/jsr.0000000000000027.
  8. ‌Kreher, J.B. and Schwartz, J. (2012). Overtraining Syndrome. [online] 4(2), pp.128–138. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1941738111434406.
  9. ‌Moore, D.R., Tang, J.E., Burd, N.A., Rerecich, T., Tarnopolsky, M.A. and Phillips, S.M. (2009). Differential stimulation of myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic protein synthesis with protein ingestion at rest and after resistance exercise. [online] 587(4), pp.897–904. doi:https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.2008.164087.
  10. Cintineo, H.P., Arent, M.A., Antonio, J. and Arent, S.M. (2018). Effects of Protein Supplementation on Performance and Recovery in Resistance and Endurance Training. [online] 5. doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2018.00083.
Emma

Medically reviewed by:

Melissa Mitri

Emma Garofalo is a writer based in Pittsburgh, PA. A lover of science, art, and all things culinary, few things excite her more than the opportunity to learn about something new." It is now in the sheet in the onboarding paperwork, apologies!!

Medically reviewed by:

Melissa Mitri

Journal of Physical Education and Sport

Trusted Source

Go to source

SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online

Trusted Source

Go to source

African Journals Online

Non-profit Platform for African Journals

Trusted Source
Go to source

Journal of The American Board of Family Medicine

American Board of Family Medicine

Trusted Source
Go to source

Informit

RMIT University Library

Trusted Source
Go to source

European Food Safety Authority

Science, Safe food, Sustainability

Trusted Source
Go to source

OrthoInfo

American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

Trusted Source
Go to source

American Academy of Family Physicians

Strengthen family physicians and the communities they care for

Trusted Source
Go to source

Agricultural Research Service

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Trusted Source
Go to source

The American Journal of Medicine

Official Journal of The Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Database From National Institute Of Health

Trusted Source
Go to source

Lippincott Journals

Subsidiaries of Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Institute on Aging

Database From National Institute Of Health

Trusted Source
Go to source

Translational Research

The Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine

Trusted Source
Go to source

Cell

An All-science Publisher

Trusted Source
Go to source

Journal of Translational Medicine

BioMed Central

Part of Springer Nature
Go to source

Federal Trade Commission

Protecting America's Consumers

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Human Genome Research Institute

Database From National Institute Of Health

Trusted Source
Go to source

Food Production, Processing and Nutrition

BioMed Central

Part of Springer Nature
Go to source

BMC Gastroenterology

BioMed Central

Part of Springer Nature
Go to source

ACS Publications

A Division of The American Chemical Society

Trusted Source
Go to source

Annual Reviews

Independent, Non-profit Academic Publishing Company

Trusted Source
Go to source

PubChem

National Center for Biotechnology Information

National Library of Medicine
Go to source

PLOS Journals

Nonprofit Publisher of Open-access Journals

Trusted Source
Go to source

Thieme E-books & E-Journals

Peer-reviewed & Open Access Journal

Trusted Source
Go to source

European Journal of Agriculture and Food Sciences

Peer-reviewed International Journal Publishes

Trusted Source
Go to source

Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing Home

Chemical Science Journals, Books and Database

Trusted Source
Go to source

Frontiers

Publisher of Peer-reviewed Articles in Open Acess Journals

Trusted Source
Go to source

De Gruyter

German Scholarly Publishing House

Trusted Source
Go to source

Hindawi

Open Access Research Journals & Papers

Trusted Source
Go to source

Oilseeds and Fats, Crops and Lipids

EDP Sciences

Trusted Source
Go to source

Cambridge Core

Cambridge University Press

Trusted Source
Go to source

FoodData Central

U.S. Department Of Agriculture

Trusted Source
Go to source

Journal of the American Heart Association

Peer-reviewed Open Access Scientific Journal

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

The Americans with Disabilities Act

U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division

Trusted Source
Go to source

Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Organization of Food and Nutrition Professionals

tr
Go to source

Sage Journals

Database From Sage Publications

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Institute of Drug Abuse

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

The ClinMed International Library

A Repository and an Open Access Publisher for Medical Research

Trusted Source
Go to source

The Royal Society Publishing

United Kingdom's National Academy of Sciences

Trusted Source
Go to source

APA PsycNet

Database From American Psychological Association

Trusted Source
Go to source

The Pharma Innovation Journal

Peer-reviewed And Refereed Journal

Trusted Source
Go to source

Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical Research and Development

Peer-reviewed Bimonthly Journal

Trusted Source
Go to source

British Pharmacological Society

Journals - Wiley Online Library

Trusted Source
Go to source

American Psychological Association

Scientific and Professional Organization of Psychologists

Trusted Source
Go to source

AAP Publications

Database From American Academy of Pediatrics

Trusted Source
Go to source

Karger Publishers

Academic Publisher of Scientific and Medical Journals and Books

Trusted Source
Go to source

Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Database From Cambridge University

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Institute of Mental Health

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

MDPI

Publisher of Open Access Journals

Trusted Source
Go to source

Bulletin of the National Research Centre

Part of Springer Nature

Trusted Source
Go to source

The New England Journal of Medicine

Massachusetts Medical Society

Trusted Source
Go to source

Economic Research Service

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Trusted Source
Go to source

MedlinePlus

Database From National Library of Medicine

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

National Institute of Health

An agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Trusted Source
Go to source

Trusted Source

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

The BMJ

Weekly Peer-reviewed Medical Trade Journal

The British Medical Association
Go to source

The British Psychological Society

The British Psychological Society is a charity registered in England

Database From Wiley Online Library
Go to source

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

PubMed

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S National Library of Medicine
Go to source

DailyMed

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S National Library of Medicine
Go to source

Google Scholar

Go to source

Science.gov: USA.gov for Science

Government Science Portal

Go to source

ResearchGate

Social Network Service For Scientists

Find and share research
Go to source

American Heart Association

To be a rentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives

Go to source

BioMed Central

Research in progress

Go to source

JAMA Network

Home of JAMA and the Specialty Journals of the American Medical Association

Go to source

Springer Link

Database From Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Springer - International Publisher Science, Technology, Medicine
Go to source

ODS

Database from Office of Dietary Supplements

National Institutes of Health
Go to source

Federal Trade Commission

Bureaus of Consumer Protection, Competition and Economics
Go to source

Trusted Source

Database From U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Governmental Authority
Go to source

Oxford Academic Journals

Oxford University Press

Trusted Source
Go to source

Taylor & Francis Online

Peer-reviewed Journals

Academic Publishing Division of Informa PLC
Go to source

WHO

Database from World Health Organization

Go to source

Journal of Neurology

Peer-reviewed Medical Journal

American Academy of Neurology Journal
Go to source

ScienceDirect

Bibliographic Database of Scientific and Medical Publications

Dutch publisher Elsevier
Go to source

Wiley Online Library

American Multinational Publishing Company

Trusted Source
Go to source

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

U.S. National Public Health Agency

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

Trusted Source

Database from U.S. National Library of Medicine

U.S. Federal Government
Go to source

U.S. Food & Drug Administration

Federal Agency

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

PubMed Central

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S National Library of Medicine
Go to source
Feedback

Help us rate this article

Thank you for your feedback

Keep in touch to see our improvement