Yeah, I mean the “euphoria” thing isn’t necessarily like a mind-blowing MDMA experience or anything… It’s kind of more like how I think my dog feels after he gets to play some fetch: Content, relaxed, the opposite of pent-up. The intense euphoria isn’t something that (most) people experience just from a regular workout… But you might get very occasionally during moments of extreme exertion: When you dig deep to finish a marathon, or complete a super heavy deadlift close to your maximum ability.

There seem to be two problems with your effort:

• Your workouts leave you feeling trashed
• You aren’t actually that fired up about your fitness journey

Does that seem right to you? I don’t want to put words in your mouth or anything, but that’s my sense.

For the first one… Yeah, it’s been elusive to figure out what’s going on. I can think of three broad approaches:

Troubleshoot

I’d be happy to help you just go point-by-point to troubleshoot (as I’m sure lots of people here would be), but it’s kind of a process: Reviewing what you’re doing in detail, and modify things one-by-one until the problem is isolated, or some other clues emerge. Like debugging: Methodical, tedious, usually effective eventually.

Triangulate

Another approach is just to mix up what you’re doing and triangulate the problem from there: Find a yoga routine or bodyweight routine for beginners on YouTube (or Piped 🙃), do that for a week or two, and see if you still feel the same this-doesn’t-feel-right burnout. Can you go swimming? Drop in on a pickleball game? Climb some rocks? Go for a slightly-intense-for-you uphill hike? At first, I’d lean toward something where there’s a little more guidance from an instructor-- It’s hard to go wrong with the YouTube yoga routine, for example, because the person is taking you through every moment of the session.

If you notice that activities A, B, and C leave you feeling like a cigarette butt, but activities X, Y, and Z give you that “dog who just finished fetch” feeling, then that’s good data! You can either just stick to X, Y, and Z, or figure out what the pattern is and go from there. Remember that you aren’t necessarily planning to stick to any of these activities, just see if they feel different… So if your local kickboxing gym offers a free trial week, that’d be a great thing to experiment with.

Model

Just pick someone who does something that you do (or would do) and produces content about it, and copy what they do for awhile. Try to figure out how they eat, when they work out, what their other activity levels are like, etc. If this person is already super fit, dial their routine down, but try to form a detailed mental model of what they do and follow it closely. Steal their wisdom-- they won’t mind.

If that goes well, you can start to figure out what to adjust to fit your life better… For example, if they’re a vegan and you don’t want to be a vegan, you might try their diet for a bit, but eventually reintroduce meat. “Right for them” might not be “right for you,” and it can be hard to know in advance… So it’s okay to just bail if it’s not working and try someone else.

As far as not being that fired up…

I guess nobody asked the “why?” question… Which, fair enough-- it can be kind of annoying if you’re like “I need help with X” and someone is like “But why do you even want X?”

But since we’re talking about it: It might be helpful to know why you’re trying to introduce this into your life. Both because it’ll suck less if your activity is aligned with your goals, and also because there might be a shorter/easier path to what you want. Lots of people waste a ton of effort on exercise that doesn’t help them get what they want… Which is fine, if they just like spending their time that way… but you kinda hate it right now, so you’d better make sure it’s at least gonna pay off 🙃