6 Ways to Naturally Increase Energy

It is not normal to feel tired all the time and to feel like you're just dragging yourself around all day or that you have a difficult time getting out of bed. These things are not normal. And there's actually a lot that you can do when it comes to your nutrition and lifestyle that can help to support your energy. So today we're going to get into the ways that you can start to think about supporting what's called cellular energy with nutrition and lifestyle. And then I'm going to give you six tips that I think will really help as the starting place for being able to support your energy and have more consistent energy throughout the day. So before we get into that, I just want to give you a brief snippet of my personal story, because I know exactly what it feels like to be extremely tired. I've for the last 17 years, been focusing on maximizing my energy potential. It's the biggest driver for me behind the nutrition and lifestyle changes that I'm making because I was focused on falling asleep pretty much every second of every day when I was in high school and was diagnosed with narcolepsy. And through making a lot of diet and lifestyle changes, have been able to really improve how I function on a daily basis and keep my energy levels much more consistent than I used to in the past when I couldn't control when I fell asleep. And we also work with a lot of clients in my virtual nutrition coaching business, where my dietitians and I will work with people to help them improve their energy because of just being able to recognize how much it can really decrease your life quality when you're feeling like you have to go take a nap every hour of the day. So it's something that not only do I have that personal experience with, but we also have worked with so many clients to help to improve, because, of course, you want to have optimal energy. So let's talk about just the idea behind shifting your mindset from this idea of, like, let me limit the foods that I'm eating because I'm trying to count calories, to this idea of fueling your cel cellular metabolism or fueling your cellular energy. So you have 37 trillion cells in your body. It's a lot of cells, and they're basically your factories of your energy. So if they're not getting the right ingredients, we could say then they're not going to be able to perform at their highest level and they're not going to be able to help you feel like you're functioning and really thriving. So these Cells are like those energy factories that I just talked about. You've probably heard of mitochondria. If you haven't. Just a brief background of mitochondria is that they're the powerhouse of your cells. So they help to take your food that you're eating and then convert it into energy, or what's called ATP, which is adenosine triphosphates, which is our cellular energy, literally. So the role of the mitochondria is to create this level of energy for your cells. So when it comes to being able to do that most efficiently, there's a lot of things that are impacted by your nutrition and the foods that you're eating and your lifestyle that can help to support those energy factories to produce more energy, essentially. So when it comes to my six tips for you to do that, I wanna just break them down step by step so that they make a lot of sense. And then hopefully you can pick a few takeaways. The first one is to maintain balance, balanced blood sugar throughout the day. So if you're eating, like, let's say a sandwich that has two slices of bread and then a side of potato chips, or you're eating something like pasta or pasta salad or something along those lines, and that's like, let's say your lunch, you're likely gonna feel really tired within an hour after eating that. Because what's happening is it's spiking your blood sugar, and then your blood sugar will, within that hour, is gonna start to crash after the peak. That happens at about one hour after you eat. So when you start to crash is when you're gonna typically feel more tired. And I sometimes relate it to feeling like you're just swimming through mud in your brain, that it's just like, you're not powering on and you're not firing on the level that you want to be in order to process things cognitively. And I personally feel like everyone's brain is one of their biggest assets, right? Not only does it help you have energy, but it helps you function and do the things that you need to do, and it helps you perform and achieve your goals and all those things. So the brain does need some glucose, but when it has too much is when it becomes a problem, and it will create a higher level of fatigue. So you want to maintain balanced blood sugar, have enough protein and healthy fats and fiber with each of your meals to help you to do that. I want to show you just a video that I created that compares two different foods that I ate that have the same number of calories and the difference that you can see in my blood sugar response. So that you get the sense of what I'm talking about.

Today I'm testing two meals on my level cgm. They both have the same number of.

Calories, but let's see if they create.

The same blood sugar responses. The first meal that I tested were eggs, avocado, brussels sprouts and blueberries. Meal number two was whole grain, gluten free toast, peanut butter and orange juice. Let's see my glucose response. The eggs led to a 20 point gradual glucose incline, which was awesome.

But the toast and OJ led to.

A 79 point enormous glucose spike. These meals have the same number of calories, but completely different glucose responses and effects on the body. The toast shown in green led to a massive glucose spike that took hours to come back down, whereas the eggs.

Led to a smooth increase in decrease.

For steady energy and fewer cravings.

Okay, tip number two is to eat more nutrient dense foods that have the micronutrients in them that fuel this energy metabolism process. When you take your foods, you have your carbs, fats and proteins that I'm sure you've heard about. Those are like the building blocks of your metabolism. You then need to convert those into or energy. And the super interesting thing is that it's actually the micronutrients, meaning like the vitamins and minerals that are coming in through your diet that are the CO factors and COENZymes that help that every step of that process actually happen so that you can take your food and you can convert it into energy. So some of the nutrients that are really key for doing that are some of your B vitamins, like vitamin B1, B2, B3. Magnesium is super important for that as well. CoQ10, which is technically an antioxidant actually, but we'll still include it under your vitamins and minerals. So you want to eat foods that have more of this nutrient density behind them so that you have the coenzymes and CO factors to be able to like a domino effect of pushing down all the dominoes until you get to that place of optimal levels of energy conversion. So foods that you can eat that are really rich in some of those nutrients are gonna be a lot of your whole foods, but particularly things like pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, even organic chicken and certain animal meats, broccoli, spinach are just a few. Definitely make sure that you're getting more nutrients in the foods that you're eating. The third tip for naturally improving your energy is going to be hydration. Your cells need to be hydrated and if you want to be able to have that consistent energy throughout the day. So it's like a plant that you need to continue watering if you want it to feel like it's flourishing throughout the day. And dehydration is not only the fastest way to develop premature wrinkles, but it's also one of the fastest ways to feel like you're really tired. So one, I would suggest making sure that you are trying to get at least half of your body weight in fluid ounces. So that means like if you Weigh, let's say 140 pounds, that would be about 70 fluid ounces. The second part is going to be making sure that the water is filtered. I personally like reverse osmosis. It does strip some of the minerals, but you can replace those. But making sure that it's a filtered water source or reverse osmosis. We have a reverse osmosis system underneath our sink and we just installed it, so it was pretty easy. But you can also get some that are like on your countertop. The third thing is making sure that you have enough electrolytes to keep you hydrated. So what I see sometimes is people that are drinking a lot of water and then they have to pee a lot because they don't have enough of the sodium, potassium and magnesium in their diet to help to bring that water to the intracellular space. So when you're drinking a lot of water and you don't have the electrolytes, it'll stay extracellular, like your extracellular fluid. And then you'll basically just pee it all out. When you have the electrolytes, it helps to cross into that intracellular space so that your cells actually recognize that you have hydrated. So that's really key too. Making sure that you have an electrolyte that doesn't have a lot of added sugar or unnecessary ingredients is really key as well for overall hydration. Step number four, we're gonna get into some of the non food factors because you could be eating a perfect diet, but if you aren't addressing some of the other lifestyle factors, you're not gonna be able to maintain your highest level of energy. And again, there's actually so many things that you can do to support energy. I could make this like 20 tips, but I want to start out with just like six very specific things so that you can take one or two and try to maintain a certain level of consistency around them. So the fourth tip is around sleep. In order to feel Energized throughout the day, you need high quality sleep at night. And one of the key ways that you can do this is with proper sleep hygiene. And the first step of proper sleep hygiene is aiming for going to bed around the same time every night and then waking up around the same time the next morning. So if you're going to bed around 10:30, trying to stay consistent with that every night of the week, and then waking up at 6:30 every morning so that you're helping to support what's called your circadian biology, or it's also called circadian rhythm, which is essentially when your body knows when to expect to be sleeping and then when it can expect being awake. This helps to tie in hormonal regulation so that you're producing melatonin at certain times of the night and, and you're producing serotonin and cortisol at certain times of the morning that are gonna help you feel more asleep and then more awake in the morning. So being able to have that natural rhythm is very, very helpful, especially if you're someone that feels like you can't really stay asleep. Trying to just get in the habit. And the routine of going to bed at the same time is really key and can help to get you into a deeper stage of sleep. In my virtual nutrition business, my dieticians and I, we often will look at people's sleep data through things like an aura ring or a whoop band. And it can tell us not only how many hours of sleep you're getting at night, but also how deep the stages of sleep that you're getting into are. So that helps to see how much REM sleep you're getting. And then it also helps us see how much deep sleep you're getting. And in order for you to get more of that REM sleep and that deep sleep, you wanna try to go to bed around the same time. And then you also want to try to cut off your exposure to blue light at least one hour before bed. I'm guilty of this. Or sometimes I'm working late into the night on my computer, which obviously is gonna expose you to some blue light. And so what I'll do is I'll put on some blue light blocking glasses to help to decrease that. My phone I keep on the lowest setting of actual light emission so that I'm not getting overly stimulated by it before I go to bed. So you can use things like blue light blocking glasses. You could change out your light bulbs in certain places of your bedroom where then you're turning that lamp on that has the red light that's going to be more calming and less stimulating. And then also in an ideal situation, you would just cut off the exposure to blue light at least one hour before bed. But I know that's not always possible. Then the next tip that I have is to incorporate regular movement into your day. Not only is this important for blood sugar and metabolic health, but it's also super, super key for mitochondria, supporting your cellular energy. So when it comes to movement, physical activity and exercise is very helpful and very important. Strength training a few times per week. But the other thing that you could just start with, let's say that you're not moving at all, would be trying to get more steps in throughout the day. Ideally it would be 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. But if you're starting out at let's say, like 2,000 steps per day, then just try to increase that to 4,000 or 6,000. And you could track this on like an Apple watch or even your phone or some other kind of Fitbit or other tracker in order to see if you don't want to go to that level of tracking. Then you could even just start with blocking out 20 minutes in the morning and then 20 minutes in the afternoon to have that regular movement. So this helps with mitochondrial health. Living a long life is what it helps you to do in addition to supporting your mitochondrial health and your metabolic health. So maybe you're not getting a tracking device to track the number of steps that you're getting and you just block in like a 20 minute walk first thing in the morning and then a 20 minute walk in the afternoon so that you're getting that regular consistent movement. The thing you want to prevent doing is just like setting aside 30 minutes at the end of the day to work out and then sitting for the rest of the day. So in order to stimulate your mitochondria, you need movement. And incorporating that throughout the day can be really, really helpful for supporting your overall energy. Like the more stagnant that your actual body is, the more stagnant that you're gonna feel. The last tip is deep breathing. Taking deep breaths throughout the day is so key for helping to support your energy. I've been using this for so many years. When I'm feeling tired throughout the day, I like immediately will will step into deep breathing exercises. So you want to breathe deeply through your belly so that you feel it actually inhale and expand in your belly and then a deep enough exhale where it's contracting. Now I'm 24 weeks pregnant, so I literally hardly felt my stomach move. But if you aren't pregnant, then your body's probably expanding and then contracting with those deep breaths. This is much better than shallow breathing, which is what people tend to do when they get really stressed or they're just like in the moment and they're not being very conscious of their breath. They'll typically shallow breathe, which can change some of your stress hormones and will actually make you feel more wired and tired at the same time. So the key is really to try to activate more of that parasympathetic state, which is your rest and digest state and and not be in that fight or flight or that overly stimulated, wired and tired state that can make you feel absolutely exhausted. So the parasympathetic state you can activate at any time of the day just by taking those deep breaths. The reason that I love deep breathing even more than like, meditation or yoga or other things like that to start out is because it doesn't require any additional time in your day. Like, you don't have to set aside 10 minutes to to breathe like you do for meditation. You can just set a little sticky note on the steering wheel of your car or at your kitchen sink or in your bathroom mirror to remind you to take those deep breaths so that you can just integrate it into the things that you're already doing versus having to set a time, set aside additional time to do them at different times of the day. So I hope that these tips were helpful. Write in the comments below what you're gonna try to do to improve your energy. Include any questions that you have, and I'll see you soon. It.