Hi Reader,

Tara said she'd wake up on a morning and something would feel different. Good different! The joint pain dialed down to a 3 instead of a 7, the fog finally lifted, and she'd think, Okay. Today's the day. Get it all done.

So, she'd scrub both bathrooms, run four loads of laundry, drive across town for groceries, meal prep for the week, and answer every email she'd been avoiding. By dinner she felt almost like her old self again. The woman everyone at church called when something needed doing, the one who never said no.

And then, like clockwork, the next morning she couldn't get off the couch. For three days. Aching, foggy, too exhausted to even hold her phone up to read, watching the clean laundry sit in baskets she didn't have the strength to fold.

"Every single time," she told me, "I think I'm finally getting better, and then I ruin it. I just don't know how to not push. I've been pushing my whole life. If I stop, I feel lazy. If I don't stop, I crash."

I know some of you are living inside that exact loop right now. I've been in that exact loop! You have a good day that feels like a gift you have to cash in all at once. Then there is the crash that follows, and the guilt that piles on top of the crash.

That exhaustion is real. So is the grief underneath it. Grief for the version of you who could go all day and still have something left.

You're not lazy and you're not weak and you're not ruining anything.

The Science

Researchers who study chronic fatigue have a name for that "next day crash": post-exertional malaise. The CDC describes it as a worsening of symptoms after even small amounts of physical, mental, or emotional exertion. Notice that list includes emotional, not just physical.

That hard conversation, that stressful appointment, that day you spent holding it together for everyone else? Your body counts that too.

The strategy the CDC points to for preventing those crashes isn't pushing harder. It's pacing or learning to plan when and how you use your limited energy so you stay within what your body can actually tolerate.

According to their guidance, fewer crashes can mean steadier or even improved pain, sleep, fatigue, and thinking. Pacing may meaningfully improve quality of life.

Researchers call the amount of energy you truly have on a given day your "energy envelope." Sounds cute!

In a 2013 review, Dr. Leonard Jason's team at DePaul University described more than fifteen years of work teaching patients to track their energy, pace their activities, and stay inside that envelope and they found that it helped people manage symptoms and could significantly improve their quality of life.

A 2012 consensus paper in Disability and Rehabilitation noted that pacing has consistently been rated one of the most helpful strategies by patients themselves, and that it can help stabilize the condition and reduce the severity of exertion-related symptoms.

And in 2021, the UK's national health guideline body made a striking change: it stopped recommending exercise programs built on fixed, ever-increasing activity for Myalgic Encephalomylitis/Chronic Fatigue Sydnrom, and put personalized energy management (including rest and respecting your own limits) at the center instead.

Most of this research comes from ME/CFS specifically, and the science on pacing is still growing but, in my experience, the push-and-crash cycle shows up in so many of the people that I work with (autoimmune, chronic pain, gut issues, burnout) and the principle holds well.

At a cellular level, your body isn't punishing you for the good day. It's sending you the bill for energy it didn't actually have to spend. Your symptoms are data and the crash is your body telling you, as clearly as it knows how, where your envelope really ends.

Which means the most healing thing Tara could do on her good days wasn't to do more. It was to do less than she could. To stop before the tired, not after.

That felt almost impossible to her, "So I'm supposed to feel good and just... sit there?"

The Scripture

Read who Jesus is talking to. All who labor and are heavy laden.

Notice what He doesn't do. He doesn't remove the yoke entirely.

A yoke was a tool for work and he offers a different one, one fitted to you, carried alongside Someone gentle, at a pace that doesn't break you.

You are not quitting the work of your life. You are carrying it in a way that's actually sustainable and rest is built in, not stolen in a crash.

Rest isn't the opposite of faithfulness. In fact, it might be one of the most faithful things your body ever learns to do.

The Steps

First, each morning, give your energy a number from 0 to 10 before you plan anything. This is just a gut check, no tracker required.

Second, on your next good day, choose a stopping point before you feel tired. Something like two bathrooms instead of the whole house. And then actually rest, even though you could keep going. It will feel strange but that strangeness is your nervous system learning that a good day doesn't have to end in a crash.

Third, when the guilt shows up, try praying Jesus' words back to Him: "Lord, I'm laboring and heavy laden. Teach me Your pace. Help me receive Your rest without earning it first."

Healing is possible, even if you've been stuck in this cycle for years and you don't have to figure out where your envelope is all by yourself. If the push-and-crash pattern sounds like your life, I'd love to help you find your actual pace rather than the one guilt sets for you.

​Book a free Balance Blueprint call here, and let's look together at what your body's been trying to tell you on the crash days.

With you at a gentler pace,
Andrea DuMez, RN, CHN, NBC-HWC
​Registered Nurse | Holistic Nutritionist | Integrative Health Coach | Certified Metabolic Balance Coach

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P.S. The first time Tara stopped at "good enough" on a good day, she left one basket of laundry unfolded on purpose and sat on the porch with her coffee instead. She texted me: "I didn't crash. First time in months."

It was the beginning of trusting a pace that didn't require her to burn out to prove she was trying. If you're ready to find yours, grab a spot here. I'd love to walk it with you.