6 Habits That Are Sucking Up Your Energy

Did you drag yourself out of bed this morning after ‘snoozing’ your alarm as long as you could and still feel like a zombie even though you got a decent night’s sleep?

It’s the worst, right?

And you know the rest of the day is going to be a struggle to get anything done. Might as well hook up to an IV of caffeine so that you don’t crash – right?!

Now, how often does this happen to you? A few times a month? Or more like every week??

Spoiler – this should not be your normal routine.

Sure, not getting enough sleep is one reason you could be tired, but what about those days where you get more than enough sleep and still don’t feel awake? How the hell do you turn this struggle bus around?

See how many of these habits could be sucking up your energy:

1. Stress

Stress is all too present in our lives. The stress of working 50-60 hours a week, meeting deadlines, struggling to pay bills, building relationships, working towards your life’s purpose, confronting injustice. Life is heavy.

Even though stress is usually perceived as emotional or environmental, other contributing factors add stress to the body including excess alcohol, caffeine, sugar and refined carbs, lack of nutrients, lack of sleep, indigestion/imbalanced gut, skipped meals, excessive exercise, food intolerances.

When you’re under a lot of stress, your body will prioritize the production of some hormones (especially cortisol) and stop production of many other essential hormones. When cortisol is high it makes it more difficult for your body to keep a good blood sugar level.

Your body is made to help you survive stressful events in the short term – like if you’re being chased by a bear in the woods, like in ancestral times. But it doesn’t support you in this modern lifestyle, and long term stress causes imbalances and depletes your body.

If you are feeling extra tired, burnt-out, moody, with brain fog, body aches, headaches or indigestion; your body may be telling you it’s out of balance and it’s time to chill and pay attention.

2. Not Enough Quality Sleep

An ideal amount of sleep ranges from a consistent 7-9 hours each night. Within that chunk of time, your body cycles through 5 stages of sleep and it’s necessary to get an adequate amount in every stage. This gets your body fully refreshed so that you can feel your best. If you’re waking up in the middle of the night or never feel fully asleep, you could be skipping some important stages of your sleep cycle.

Sleep is a refresh for your brain. When you’re sleeping the brain sorts and stores information from the day, and it restores the brains neurons so that it’s reactive when you wake up.
There are also important processes that contribute to healing, regeneration, repair, and detox in the body.

Sleep is critical to lower inflammation, support the immune system and reset hormones. Without proper sleep your insulin is more sensitive. That means your blood sugar levels are more sensitive making it more likely that your energy will crash throughout the day.

3. Over Consuming Sugar & Refined Foods

You know when a kid eats ice cream and within 5 minutes they’re running around and screaming. Then about 30-40 minutes later they crash, start whining or fall asleep. This same thing happens in adults, but maybe with less screaming.

Ever find yourself reaching in your candy stash cause you need a little pick-me-up? Candy or a coffee can make you feel great for about an hour, but shortly after that you crash.

This is your blood sugar trying to find balance and taking you on an emotional rollercoaster ride where you keep chasing that sugar high. 

But fair warning, that sugar high comes with a crash, where you’ll be reaching for more coffee, candy or anything else to give you a boost.

4. Under Eating or Undernourishment

Under eating is far more common than you may think. Especially in our culture, many people are often concerned about eating too many calories that they end up not eating enough. Under eating can cause just as much, if not more harm than overeating. Remember, you need food so your body can create energy.

Metabolism is the conversion of food to energy. Without enough food, your body has a harder time making enough energy.
Under eating puts a lot of stress on the body. (Go back and read #1.) If your body doesn’t know where its next meal is coming from, it can go into “fight or flight” and slows down the digestive process, immune response, hormone production and adrenal regulation.
On the flip side of this, you can be eating enough calories but still be undernourished. Processed foods have ample amounts of calories. Think of a piece of pizza. You have a carbohydrates (from the dough), fat (from the cheese), and maybe protein from the toppings. But as a whole, those ingredients are depleted in most of the vitamins and minerals that the body needs to support the immune system, adrenals, hormone production and, yes, energy.

5. Gut Imbalances & Indigestion

You are filled with millions of bacteria – we all are! But we want to make sure we have the right imbalance of bacteria in our gut or else opportunistic bacteria can take over.

All these bacteria have very important jobs like producing serotonin and short chair fatty acids (these guys help us make energy too!). These bugs also influence how your food is digested and how easy, or difficult, it is for your body to regulate your blood sugar.

6. Not Enough Movement

Your muscles like to be moved. When they’re used, your body can use energy more efficiently. When you don’t use your muscles very much, then your body can have a harder time optimizing and regulating your blood sugar. That means more energy and mood shifts all day.

All of these habits can have a major effect on one important system in the body: blood sugar regulation. When your blood sugar is imbalanced your energy is imbalanced and it can feel like you’re struggling to keep up.

Imbalanced blood sugar is way more common than you might think and often the underlying cause of your exhaustion, moodiness and poor sleep.

Imagine if you could actually jump out of bed with energy that lasts all day.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to power through your day, stop living off coffee and wasting your time dragging your feet through another day? Enough is enough.

Join me for my upcoming workshop Get Your Energy Back!

We’ll discuss what foods you should be eating to reclaim the energy you want – and deserve.

In this free workshop you will learn:

• Why it’s so hard to muster the energy you want & why you feel the NEED for coffee every day.
• What meal is most important to have the most energy.
• What foods you should eat to get your energy back & what foods are making your energy crash.
• Healthy brain booster foods for when you need a little something.