You're not overtraining. You're under eating, under sleeping, and under recovering.

There was a stretch where I ate 1,800 calories a day on purpose. I thought lighter meant faster and discipline meant hungry. I was tired all the time, and if the internet had told me I was overtraining, I would have believed it and trained less. The problem was never the training.

That confusion has a clinical name now. The IOC calls it relative energy deficiency, and the consensus statement reads like a runner's bad season. Bone health down, hormones down, immunity down, performance down. The symptoms overlap almost exactly with what runners self-diagnose as overtraining, which is why so many athletes cut mileage when they should be adding dinner.

The tell is that the fixes point in opposite directions. If you are truly overcooked, rest helps. If you are under-fueled, rest just makes you a slower hungry person. Energy in has to cover both living and training, and the living part alone is bigger than most calorie apps will admit. My measured resting rate is 2,500 before I take a single step.

I went from 1,800 a day to 4,500 to 7,000, and my training doubled while my weight held at 180. Eating became the thing that let me absorb the work. If your progress has flatlined and everything feels heavy, audit the plate before you audit the plan. The full breakdown of how to measure this on yourself is in the metabolic testing write-up.