How to feel more energetic
When was the last time you felt truly energized?
Of course, we all want to feel more energetic. We're more productive, creative, and patient when we have more energy. We're kind, caring, and present. Energy is a superpower. We can draw on our inner resources to meet life's challenges and be our best selves.
Energy is much more than just our capacity to work. It comes from the body, mind, emotions, and our sense of purpose. Fatigue is your body's way of telling you something is out of whack. It could be as simple as lack of sleep, over/underuse of your body or a poor diet. However, when we are constantly exhausted, it's an opportunity to reflect on how we are living. How do we use our energy, time, and resources? What supports our well-being?
We must look at the underlying cause of our fatigue, and usually, if we look closely and honestly, we can find what's zapping our energy.
The interrelationship between our minds and bodies is complex. Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes can positively or negatively affect our biological functioning.
On the other hand, what we eat, how much we exercise and sleep, and even our posture can impact our mental state. Since it's all interconnected, it's scarcely news that nutrition, exercise, and sleep affect one's energy. In turn, this affects one's ability to focus and manage emotions.
The acronym HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. HALT is a great self-awareness tool that reminds us that we all need to take care of our basic needs daily. When one or more of these areas are out of balance, we will more likely struggle with health and overall well-being and, as a result, suffer a lack of energy.
The Body - Empower your physical energy.
One of the first places to start is with our physical energy or the body.
Sleep allows you to recover your energy
Getting a good night’s sleep is the most crucial part and can be a struggle for many. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that healthy adults get 7-9 hours of sleep a night.
According to the book, Why We Sleep by neuroscientist and sleep expert Dr Matthew Walker, sleep affects all aspects of our physical, mental, and emotional health, including our creativity and longevity. Insufficient sleep reduces our learning, memory, and cognitive abilities, causes brain impairment and increases the risks of numerous diseases, from cancer to diabetes, coronary heart diseases and even death.
It’s not just the amount of sleep but the quality of sleep. Sleep is our recovery mode when our cells and minds naturally restore themselves. Most importantly, your nighttime routine does not begin at night. It starts with your morning routine, stress levels, and daily physical activity. Developing a bedtime routine that supports your morning routine is critical.
1 - Limit blue light.
Limiting blue light from screens before bed is essential, as it tricks your body into thinking it’s still daytime. Blue light and excess light can inhibit your natural production of melatonin.
2- Limit caffeine
It’s also important to limit caffeine after 2 pm. Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors—the sleep-promoting chemical. Caffeine has a half-life of about 5 hours, which means your caffeine buzz may last longer than you want.
3 - Limit Alcohol
Alcohol, on the other hand, is a sedative. Although sleep onset may be shorter when we consume Alcohol, it can cause more sleep disruptions and less REM sleep. Also, it can reduce sleep quality and lead to more fatigue.
4 - Balance your diet
Lastly, there is some correlation between the quality of your diet and sleep. Make sure you have a good balance of macronutrients and enough micronutrients, especially minerals like Magnesium that help with relaxation.
It’s not just the amount of sleep you get but the quality of that sleep that is important to increasing your energy.
Exercise is the key to boost your energy
When it comes to the body and mind, exercise is the magic bullet. Physical activity can have a significant effect on energy levels. Not only does exercise help with stress reduction, but regular exercise improves sleep for many people.
Moderate-to-vigorous exercise lessens the time it takes to fall asleep and can thus increase sleep quality. Physical activity can also help alleviate daytime sleepiness. However, for some athletes, overexercising or overtraining the body puts unnecessary stress on the body’s systems and can cause insomnia and lead to fatigue. Nonetheless, exercise works both ways.
By optimizing your exercise routine, you can potentially sleep better, and as a result, better sleep promotes healthier physical activity levels during the day. Moreover, when we exercise and do resistance training, we build muscle where we have the most mitochondria. The mitochondria are little powerhouses inside our cells that combine food and oxygen to produce energy. These little factories produce ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which delivers power to our cells throughout our body.
Optimizing the health of your mitochondria can raise your energy levels. It’s probably no surprise that how we feed our bodies affects the number and function of our mitochondria. The mitochondria are especially susceptible to nutrient deficiencies, environmental toxins, and oxidative damage.
Eat well to raise your energy levels.
Consequently, our food choice has an enormous effect on our energy levels. A nutrient-rich diet can boost your mitochondria. We need the right vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients to make energy from food and oxygen.
Our diets should consist of whole fruits and vegetables, lean protein, healthy grains, and good fats while avoiding sugar and starch. You might consider taking a good multivitamin with minerals that are 2 to 3 times the recommended daily intake for most nutrients, especially the B vitamins. Other supportive nutrients include coenzyme Q10, zinc, magnesium, selenium, Omega 3 fats, lipoic acid, n-acetylcysteine, vitamin E, and more.
Eating a whole foods diet with various colourful fruits and vegetables will allow you to get most of these nutrients. You must also be sure you are drinking enough water. Water is the main component of blood and is essential for carrying nutrients to the cells and taking away waste products.
If your body is short on fluids, one of the first signs is a feeling of fatigue. Not only do we need a clean diet, limiting environmental toxins and fueling a healthy gut microbiome, but paying attention to when we eat and the combination of foods can make a big difference in our energy levels.
Eating the wrong foods at the wrong time can affect your energy levels. Not only that, but if you are grabbing foods that are primarily simple carbohydrates, you might get a quick energy boost, followed by a crash in energy.
If you were to eat cereal or a pastry in the morning, you might find your energy lagging a couple of hours later. It’s best to reach for whole grains with a low glycemic index (the rate at which food increases blood glucose levels) and combine it with fat and protein so that your energy is sustained and more even.
Often, we find ourselves on an energy roller coaster, and when we crash, we reach for that candy bar or cup of coffee, starting a vicious cycle. Blood sugar spikes and dips can put undue stress on the body.
The Mind - Empower your mental energy
MENTAL, EMOTIONAL, PURPOSE
Beyond the physical body, mental and emotional stress significantly affects our energy levels. The stress response begins in the brain. Whether you are running from a bear or reacting to 5000 emails in your inbox, the answer is the same.
However, when you suffer from the chronic stress of emails, work deadlines, or pressures from home, your body and hormones cannot keep up. Your adrenal glands are working hard to keep you alive by releasing cortisol; eventually, they can no longer produce enough cortisol, and you become exhausted.
Over-stressed and depleted adrenals also seek the production of more stress-fighting cortisol by eliciting cravings. More often than not, the cravings are for sweets, stimulants, and caffeinated beverages. This leads to more swings and disrupted sleep.
In a state of adrenal fatigue, the body will stimulate the thyroid gland to boost metabolic activity to supply energy to meet the demands of chronic stress, making it also exhausted.
When we stimulate the nervous system to make the energy it doesn’t have, the adrenals borrow energy from the “sex” hormones, progesterone and testosterone, that convert into cortisol. This can create a significant hormonal imbalance linked to weight gain, mood issues, and reproductive and libido issues. With adrenal distress, it is your body’s way of letting you know it’s time to change.
Although you can support the adrenals with adaptogens and supplements such as Rhodiola, ashwagandha, ginseng, B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, magnesium, zinc, and some other trace elements, you can’t solve the problem without addressing the root cause of the stressors.
Change your routine to manage your energy
Creating new habits to handle mental and emotional stress is imperative for managing your energy. First, you must become aware of your thoughts and emotions and how emotions feel in your body. Working with the breath and developing a mindfulness practice can ease stress naturally.
Breathe to manage stress
Breath is intimately connected with the mind and the nervous system. Thus when we begin to control our breath, we calm the body and mind. Breathing deeply to expand the ribcage and abdomen, along with breathing through the nose, is more efficient and effective at tamping down the sympathetic nervous system.
When you inhale, your heart rate speeds up. When you exhale, it slows down. When you lengthen your exhales, you signal the vagus nerve, which triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for the “rest & digest” body responses.
Learning to slow the breathing and double the length of the exhale in a moment of distress will slow the system down, allow you to pause, and profoundly affect how you feel and respond.
Feeling irritable or impatient is a mental energy drain that can lead us to react to situations unskillfully, leading to more exhaustion. Using the breath to get back on track when we feel triggered can help to raise energy levels.
Mindful practices to support your nervous system
Likewise, regular mindfulness practice can also support the parasympathetic nervous system. When you stop and listen to your inner experience, you become more attuned when you are out of balance. You can learn to see your thoughts as just thoughts and not threats.
With mindfulness, you learn to stay present with whatever is happening, pleasant or unpleasant. When you allow yourself to feel, acknowledge, and name your worries or any other complex thoughts and emotions, this helps them dissipate. Over time, you can learn to reframe the stories you are telling yourself. How can you change the channel in your mind?
What might be true if you were to look at your situation from another person’s perspective through a reverse lens? If you were to look at the situation from a long lens, how might your situation look a year from now? What might you learn from your concern if you took a broad, panoramic view?
When we become skilled at reframing and relating to our experiences differently, we can cultivate positive emotions that take us out of an overactive fight or flight response.
Developing a practice of gratitude can also move us out of negative thinking. Even thinking daily of one thing to be grateful for can shift one’s perspective. Also, expressing appreciation directly to others can boost the psyche.
Another mindfulness technique, the body scan, can help you stay grounded and relax areas of tension in the body. By tuning into the body, you can learn when you feel anxious or stressed before you cognitively even know it. This technique can also change how you respond to the stressor.
Making meaningful connections
On a deeper level, when we are connected to a deeper meaning and purpose in our lives, we can better manage our energy. When how we live our days is consistent with what we value most, we gain a sense of meaning, purpose, and spiritual connection.
If what we do really matters, we typically feel a more positive energy. If we are running empty with no time to ask ourselves who we are and what we are doing, we will feel drained of energy. It’s essential to allocate time and energy to what you consider most important. It’s helpful to identify the things in your life, whether the work you do or something else, that give you feelings of being in “flow.”
What gives you sentiments of joy, effectiveness, effortlessness, absorption, and fulfilment? If we can intentionally tap into those feelings along with a connection to our higher purpose, we can boost our energy.
Create new habits to feel more energetic
In the end, we must create new habits for healthy energy.
We mentioned in the beginning that it is most important to address the underlying causes of fatigue, and thus, we must reflect on how we live our lives.
Beyond food, sleep, and exercise, the intention to live a mindful lifestyle can re-wire your entire outlook on life. Learn to notice signs of sagging energy, from yawning to hunger to difficulty concentrating.
How do we use our energy, time, and resources? Yoga, meditation, breathwork, understanding your “why,“ practices of gratitude and generosity, openness to loving relationships, and service to others and friends all help fill your “energy cup.”
When you are intentional about how you live your life, the effect on your energy will be immeasurable.
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If you want to be more energetic, email me: sharyn@truenorthwell.com or book a call with me.