Six Ways to Boost Your Energy Levels

Do you need to boost your energy levels? For those who often feel sluggish or suffer from mild to chronic fatigue, building up stamina is one of the biggest key factors to feeling normal. Unfortunately for those who constantly feel this way often don’t understand why they feel tired or don’t even know that they’re suffering from a condition. Sara Tomm, Healthcare Freelance Writer for the San Francisco Chronicles (SFGate) highlighted that “energy fuels your body’s internal functions, repairs, builds, and maintains cells and body tissues, and supports the external activities that enable you to interact with the physical world”¹. When people lack energy, they feel like a zombie as they go through the motions of life. Whether it’s with work or with their social lives, nothing excites them as they don’t have enough energy to be motivated for anything.

In order to feel more “alive” during the day, there are certain things that people can do in order to give themselves a natural daily boost. With that being said, here are six ways to boost your energy levels.

1. Change Your Diet

The foods that we consume have a large influence on how energized we feel during the day. For example, foods that are high in added sugars, preservatives, caffeine, fats, cholesterol, and carbohydrates tend to have negative effects on how we feel during the day due to their lack in protein, fiber, and vitamins that are essential in boosting daily energy.

LifeWorks Wellness Center recommends the Paleo Diet; a “caveman” diet that is designed to adapt the dietary habits of our ancestors from 2 million years ago, to help improve daily energy. The diet consists of everything that hunter-gatherers consumed such as nuts, fish, lean meats and vegetables without added pesticides.

2. Take More Supplements

A daily intake of vitamins and minerals are vital in supplying our bodies with natural stamina. As children, most of us can remember when our parents made us eat those chewable Flintstone Vitamins that helped strengthen our immune systems and provide us with daily energy. As adults, we have to decide on our own what the best supplements are for our own bodies.

When it comes to naturally boosting energy, we suggest BodyHealth’s PerfectAmino (a supplement that provides protein to build more amino acids for enzymes in the body), and BodyHealth Complete Multi + Daily Liver Support (provides all supplemental vitamins, minerals and nutrients to the body).

3. Get More Sleep

The body runs on a timer and in order for it to have enough energy to last all day, it must be completely charged. It is recommended that people get around 7-8 hours of sleep each night to feel completely energized for the next day. For those night owls who always have random spurts of adrenaline at night and have trouble trying to relax, try to turn off all electronics, music, TV and avoid discussing topics such as politics or personal issues that can potentially increase your heart rate and keep you up. At 9:00 pm, try to lay in your bed and read a book. You don’t have to go to sleep right away, however, it’s best to make your heart rate and brain go into their resting states. Eventually, falling asleep will follow suit.

4. Exercise

When people hear the word “exercise”, they often correlate it with a workout which makes people internally sigh and roll their eyes. However, exercise doesn’t always have to mean that you have to enroll into a fitness gym and lift 50 pound weights. Exercising can be something as simple as taking a nice walk to the park with your dog or riding your bike for at least an hour. Anything that involves going outside, breathing fresh air, getting your heart pumping, and getting your body moving will help you burn calories, boost your metabolism and increase your energy levels.

5. Avoid Smoking & Drinking

Both tobacco and alcohol are toxins that poison the body’s immune system and cause future health risks such as diabetes, cancer, and liver disease. According to Healthline, cigarette smoke and tar “reduces the efficiency of your lungs and can reduce the amount of oxygen transported, around your body, making you feel tired”².

On the other hand, alcohol is a sedative drug that can cause drowsiness if too much is consumed. Sometimes, people will use alcohol to help them fall asleep faster, however this is not a healthy way to get rest.  You won’t have a restful sleep and will wake up still feeling tired and groggy. Alcohol will only make people oversleep, thus causing them to lose energy and not gain it.

6. Stay Hydrated

Did you know that the human body is made up of about 55-75% of water? Drinking enough water during the day is an essential part of regulating body temperatures, delivering nutrients to cells, improving the quality of sleep, preventing infections, and improving our mood and cognition.

Drinking filtered water is crucial to replenishing the liquids that we lose during the day from urinating, sweating, and expectorating. If one is losing body fluids and is not drinking water throughout the day, this can lead to dehydration, and when someone is dehydrated, this can greatly lower someone’s brain functions, mood and energy. Many believe that drinking liquids such as Gatorade, Iced Tea, Coffee and Redbull counts as providing their body with fluids. These high sugar drinks will be counterproductive. While they are all technically liquids, these contain too much sugar and will only give people a temporary boost instead of a natural boost. LifeWorks recommends that its patients drink at least eight glasses offiltered water a day or as recommended by your practitioner.

If you feel weak, fatigued or low in energy, call to schedule an appointment at 727-466-6789.

References:

1. Does Everyone’s Metabolism Metabolize Calories at the Same Rate? (sfgate.com)
2. 9 Natural Ways to Boost Your Energy Levels (healthline.com)