🔴 Website 👉 https://u-s-news.com/
Telegram 👉 https://t.me/usnewscom_channel
If our culture of coffee, energy drinks and espresso martinis tells us anything, it’s that we’re all pretty tired these days.
And how could we not be? We live in a go, go, go society where everything and everyone is vying for our attention — our families, friends, work, the 24-hour news cycle and social media, just to name a few things. Modern society makes it easy, even normal, to feel depleted at all times, which makes it really hard to break the cycle of exhaustion.
But that doesn’t have to be your reality. There are habits and behaviors that can help you feel less exhausted. Below, doctors share what they are and how you can incorporate them into your everyday life:
1. Move every day.
You can’t expect to sit around all the time and have energy, said Dr. Chris Scuderi, a family medicine physician in Florida. If you want to feel more awake, you should prioritize movement of some sort, whether it’s walking, jogging, cycling, yoga, HIIT, Zumba or something else entirely.
“Movement is really big, it’s just great for the body,” Scuderi said. “Exercise moderately at least five days a week. I always try to encourage my patients to do something every day. Try not to have a zero day, even if it’s a 10-minute walk after dinner or just doing some stretching or some calisthenics — that daily movement is just so good for our bodies.”
Exercise is known to help you sleep better, too, which in turn will give you more energy.
“When you are exercising on a daily basis, you have less sleep latency, so you fall asleep more quickly, and I think you get to deep sleep in a much more rapid fashion, which is the restorative benefit of sleep that a lot of people who don’t exercise don’t really get to,” said Dr. Patrick Doherty, an assistant clinical professor of neurosurgery at Yale Medicine in Connecticut.
2. Eat food that fuels you.
There’s a time and place for all food (no, I will never give up pizza), but certain foods are known to be a drag on your energy levels.
The food we put into our bodies is what drives us, Doherty explained. This is why people fuel up with carbs the night before a marathon or eat a protein-packed meal after a weightlifting session.
The idea is to prioritize the “right proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, fats [and] the right amount of fruits and vegetables,” as well as limiting “processed foods [and] avoiding foods with a high glycemic index, as much as possible,” Doherty said. “The food that we bring in is vital to [our] well-being, and certainly to our energy level.”
This doesn’t mean you have to live off of nuts and berries, but you should aim for balance with a focus on food that makes you feel good, Doherty noted.
“Food is fun and we need community, and sitting at the table with our friends and family is great for us,” Scuderi said, adding that you should also ask yourself: “Am I eating in a way that’s going to help me to feel energized, versus grabbing something quick, that’s ultraprocessed, that’s maybe going to make me feel good for 10 minutes, but then drain my energy an hour or two later?”
3. Seek out habits and experiences you enjoy.
“I think it’s vital to find something that satisfies you and that makes you literally physically and emotionally energized to get through the day,” Doherty said. “For me, it’s my career, my surgery, but it’s also time with family, and particularly travel. I like to experience new things.”
Take time to consider what you enjoy. “If we’re doing things we love, it’s not work, it’s a call, and it does energize you versus if I’m doing something I’m miserable doing or I’m in a place where I’m not happy, it’s an energy drain,” Scuderi said.
Think about it: If you’re excited about gardening a few days a week, you’ll have more momentum to move through the more monotonous moments.
“I think we had this little spurt of energy after COVID, because the world shut down, we had this new lease on life — ‘oh my gosh, I’m going to travel, I’m going to do this, I’m going to exercise, I’m going to any number of things,’ and I think most of us have settled back into the normal daily grind that is not particularly energizing,” Doherty said.
What energizes you will be different from what energizes your neighbor, partner or sister. Make sure you carve out time to do whatever it is that excites you each week.
Oleg Breslavtsev via Getty Images
4. Get your stress under control.
“[Stress is] a literal drain, physically and mentally,” Doherty said. And it plays a major role in your energy levels.
If you’re stressed, you probably won’t be sleeping well, you may not have the energy to make nutritious meals and you might even skip your workouts.
“We need to look at ways to make sure that we’re having that balance where the body has time to rest and recover,” Scuderi said. This could mean taking time to vacation, meditate, pray or spend time in nature, he added, or it could mean something else altogether.
Seeking support from a mental health professional can be another good way to manage stress.
5. Limit how much caffeine and alcohol you drink.
Caffeine may give you that morning boost to start your day, but Doherty said you should be mindful of just how much coffee you’re drinking.
“In moderation, [there’s] nothing particularly wrong with it, but I wouldn’t have more than a cup or two of coffee a day,” Doherty said.
He added that you shouldn’t have caffeine in the latter part of the day. “I would probably stop any coffee ingestion towards the early part of the afternoon, because having coffee within probably six hours or so of trying to go to sleep is going to disrupt [sleep].”
Another beverage that can get in the way of good sleep: alcohol.
“In moderation, small amounts [of alcohol] once or twice a week is reasonable, but daily drinking is certainly not healthy, and drinking within an hour or two of bedtime disrupts the sleep cycle,” Doherty explained.
6. Don’t be afraid to say “no.”
Overextending yourself certainly isn’t going to do your energy level any favors. So being able to say “no” to requests that drain you is a crucial skill to learn, Scuderi said — “whether that’s saying no to technology, whether that’s saying no to toxic relationships, whether that’s saying no to demands of the people around us, or maybe our job that’s hurting us.”
If you agree to see a friend who dumps their trauma on you over and over, you’ll only leave the gathering feeling depleted. Or if you agree to take on an extra project at work that keeps you working well into the evening, you’ll only be more tired.
“There’s almost a badge of honor for being busy, and I fall into this as a physician, but we need to be our best selves, and that’s taking time to make sure we’re recharging our batteries, too,” Scuderi said.
7. Get high-quality sleep.
Even if you follow every single piece of advice mentioned above, if you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t feel more energized.
It’s important that you go to bed at a reasonable hour, get seven to nine hours of sleep and wake up at a consistent time each day, Doherty said.
But sleeping for seven to nine hours isn’t always good enough. You’ve probably heard of “junk sleep,” which is low-quality sleep that doesn’t actually leave you feeling refreshed.
“Quality sleep is [something] that I think people don’t appreciate,” Scuderi said. Certain habits such as looking at screens right before bed, eating late and taking late naps can also keep you from getting the quality sleep you need.
“You can read, you can just lie there and think and meditate and not rev up the brain at that point, but just sort of try to wind down,” Doherty said.
A cool, dark and quiet room can also help facilitate high-quality rest.
If you’re still struggling with low energy, talk to a doctor.
Doherty said that if you’re still not feeling rested, there might be something else wrong. “Maybe you’re not sleeping well for a reason, maybe you’re not exercising for a reason. Maybe you have a thyroid issue, maybe you have sleep apnea, maybe you have some kind of metabolic disorder.”
He recommended having a medical professional assess your energy levels.
But regardless of the cause, you shouldn’t have to go through life depleted and tired. Whether there is something medically going on or you’ve fallen victim to some energy-depleting habits, there are things you can do to feel more energized each day.