How To Have More Energy, Part 2

In part one , I talked about how crucial food and water is to maintain enough energy to do everything that needs to get done in your life. Just to refresh, the two most important points to take away from it were:

1. Eat foods that contain one ingredient i.e., chicken is chicken, an almond is an almond, a banana is a banana. This makes it easy for your digestive system to process thus leaving you with more energy.
2. Drink plenty of water. The body is made up of 60 percent water and your brain is 80 percent. When the body is dehydrated it has to work harder to function.  Make sure to drink at least half your body weight in fluid ounces of water a day.       

By not providing your body with the right nutrients you will never have enough time to do anything because you will never have enough energy to do anything. It is impossible to get anything done if you are tired. The advice in last weeks and this week’s column will give you at least an extra four hours a day worth of energy and make you feel alert for the other 12 you’re awake. The next three requirements to have energy are a limited caffeine consumption, avoiding white carbohydrates and to exercise.

The amount of coffee consumed in a day needs to be reduced to 1-2 cups of coffee and avoid energy drinks at all cost. Regardless of how much energy eight cups of coffee by 12 p.m. might give you for the first four hours of your work day, the trade-off is an awful, groggy feeling that is guaranteed to hit you in the afternoon.  This much caffeine will dehydrate you and as you learned last week, that makes you tired.

White carbohydrates are the opposite of foods with one ingredient. This category of carbs includes bread, pastas, cereals, sugar, donuts and pretty much everything that is made of flour or enriched/bleached flour. These carbohydrates will spike your blood sugar levels giving you a lot of energy for a short period of time. This is quickly followed by a feeling of a crash in the form of being hungry again very soon and feeling tired.  

The last strategy to battle low energy levels should be an essential routine in your life for so many reasons. Exercising will get blood circulating in your body which will feed your muscles and brain more oxygen. I highly suggest doing three full-body weight training workouts a week and two days of cardiovascular training. Each session is one hour long. The amount of energy you experience after working out like this will be unlike anything you have in the past. 

By following the five requirements to have more energy, not only will your quality of health improve but you will notice you are doing better at work, socially, studying, and in your relationships. Never have I worked with or met someone who told me following these guidelines did anything less than change their life for the better.