I used to spend most of my time at work battling drowsiness and struggling to stay awake in the middle of the day, so I did what a typical person would do—I went on the internet. It turns out that we all have an internal body clock dictating our bodies to feel either energetic or lethargic... and mine needed an upgrade.
I believed I needed a lifestyle change to improve personal energy but having a 9-to-5 job made it seem impossible. However, I was not about to give up on improving my health and productivity. I’ve taken it upon myself to make adjustments geared towards appropriate diet and getting the right amount of nutrition I needed.
Here are simple ways to boost your energy and your overall health:
1. Get Snacky
It’s a common diet misconception that in order to stay fit, you need to lessen the number of times you eat in a day. WRONG! Limiting yourself to three meals a day results to you eating too much per meal to get by without starving until the next meal.
I used to eat three meals a day, but each meal felt like it was enough to feed two people easily. It came as no surprise that I was putting on more weight and losing more energy. Unbeknownst to me, I actually ended up overeating because I ate less frequently, which meant that my metabolism wasn't as active as it could've been.
Eating too much is disastrous for your metabolism, your energy, and your digestion. A part of the nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for telling the heart and calls more blood in the body to help the intestines in the digestive process.
More blood in our digestive tract means less blood in our brains, and less blood in our brains leads to us feeling sleepy. This is exactly what happens after you go nuts on a buffet and overeat. This is also exactly what was happening to my body when I ate three big meals instead of five small ones.
Compared to before I started eating more meals in smaller portions, I no longer felt sleepy after meals, and that allowed me to perform better at work. When I tried eating more meals in smaller portions, I felt like my energy was restored. I was able to do more work, felt less tired, and ate less.
So, yes, get more meals in your day—think along the lines of five meals in small portions. This will allow your metabolism to keep working, prevent hunger pangs, which will then lead to binge-eating, and even regulate blood sugar!
2. Eat Better
When I say eat more frequently, don’t go around thinking that it gives you a free pass to snack on junk. Pick up an apple instead of that chocolate bar, yes? Snack on sweet potatoes instead of chips. They’re good and really inexpensive, just like most of the food that are great for your nutrition.
Maybe skip the greasy, fried fast food meal tonight. Have you forgotten how fun and inexpensive cooking is? Pro-tip: buying fresh poultry saves you more money than that oil-bathed platter of wings. It’s time to think about choosing the right kinds of food for a well-balanced and appropriate diet.
As the saying goes, you are what you eat so be aware of what you put into your body, and it'll do a world of wonders to your digestion and your energy boost.
To
help you choose, let me go a little bit into this thing called Nutritional
Quality Index or NQI. It’s a system developed by Yale's Griffin Research Center that
ranks food from 0-100, indicating how nutritious they are, with 0 being the
least nutritious. That simplifies things for us when we’re planning out a
balanced diet.
This
helps us choose the right food that pack in the most nutrition and make do
without the ones that are basically just fillers:
What we're seeing here is that the more sugar there is in food, the less it helps with your nutrition and level of alertness. It's easier to understand this when we know how sugar affects our bodies and our energy levels.
This table warns us against eating high-carbohydrate and low-protein foods such as rice, noodles, and white bread. Our bodies are designed to break them down into sugar very easily, leading to an increase in insulin secretion. Insulin then transports tryptophan into the brain, and this is where the trouble begins.
Tryptophan is an essential material to creating the sleeping hormone, melatonin. The more melatonin you have in your bloodstream, the drowsier and less alert you’ll feel.
Knowing
this now, maybe it’s a good idea to think twice before putting sugar into your
coffee or getting an extra cup of rice.
Proper
diet has been simplified by NQI, and we really have no excuse not to eat better
now.
Not
only has this table helped me make better diet choices, but it's also helped me
to shop smarter. I've stopped spending so much on food that won't benefit my
health and vitality. I now feel healthier, more energized, and more responsible
with my finances.
3. Drink More Water
Did
you know that the average American only drinks 2.5 cups of
water a day?
A DAY! While we should be drinking at least 8 cups a day, most of us don’t even
get half of the water we need. It’s astounding but also not quite unbelievable,
considering how much soda and coffee we drink daily. Although 8 cups a day is
the recommended amount of water for adults, it’s not necessarily always true
for everyone.
A
simple formula has been made for us to be able to tell how much water our
bodies need to have “enough.” As a
general rule of thumb, the formula tells us to take our body weight in
pounds and divide it in half. Whatever number you get is the ounces of water
you need to be drinking.
Of
course, if you're doing exercising or if you're pregnant and lactating, this
formula will have to be tweaked a bit, and you'll need to add 12 and 24 to 32,
respectively.
This
is going to sound a little funny, but your pee is actually a good indicator of
how hydrated or dehydrated you actually are. Have you noticed how it's not
always the same color? Like for me, my urine is usually a little more yellow
than usual in the morning.
This
is because the more hydrated you are, the lighter the color of your urine is.
That’s a useful little tip, isn’t it?
Hydration
is key to maintaining healthy and well-functioning organs. It’s also the key to
keeping skin young and fresh, so that’s always a great advantage. Not only
those, but it’s important to stay hydrated to maintain high energy and to avoid
getting headaches and keep blood pressure in check.
Oh, but you need coffee and sugar to keep you awake through the day? I’ve learned a little trick, I down a glass of ice-cold water instead and I haven’t needed coffee to wake me up since. Give it a try, you stay alert, and you're getting hydration as well! I never go anywhere without my trusty tumbler of water these days.
It’s
often overlooked how water is an important part of our nutrition. Water
essentially allows our organs to do their jobs so depriving ourselves of it
would hinder most of our bodily functions. So let’s do ourselves a few favors
and stay hydrated.
Conclusion
From
nutrition to exercise and getting enough rest—it seems complicated how all of
these things affect our levels of alertness and energy, right? Well, let me
tell you that it's not. It's simple. Everything you've just read is simple,
doable, everyday things that you can integrate into your daily activities.
Being
truly healthy isn’t just about appearing lean and fit, it’s also about how well
you feel. When your energy is maximized, you can achieve more. It only makes
sense that you’re more productive when you feel your best.
While
there’s a delicate balance to staying truly healthy and it might take a little
while to get used to the changes, the most important thing is that you start
today with these three easy steps:
eat
small frequent meals; know which foods should be in a proper diet, and remember
to stay hydrated.
Doing
these three things regularly will surely keep the drowsiness away and up your
energy levels. When you're feeling energized, you'll want to keep doing more,
and that will lead you to being a better, more rejuvenated version of yourself.