How to Effectively Manage Your Energy
People find it very difficult to manage their energy. Especially if the energy comes from considering one’s food intake, hydration, exercise, sleep, and etc. It almost feels as if the difficulty comes not with the lack of focus or time. But the lack of habit to condition ourselves into doing so. Looking into these areas would actually lead to a good energy flow, as well as making us more productive in the process. Chelsea Stegman has an undergrad degree at Miami University of Ohio. Got her dietetic internship in Louisiana, and worked with the worst diabetes, and kidney dialysis. Afterward, she became a dietitian, moved to Cincinnati, and worked in a health club for three years. Now, she’s in downtown Chicago, worked in another health club, finished her master's, and started her own virtual business. She now joins the podcast to talk about energy management. Specifically, about managing nutrition, how to decrease burnout, increase energy, productivity, and performance. Managing your nutrition Managing nutrition often depends on the person but the most realistic way for you to start, with priorities in general, is finding that needle mover that moves all these other habits. Health-wise, it's focusing on exercise, and a lot of nutrition habits, water intake, and eating frequency. But a big priority with most people that leads to all these other things is managing blood sugar throughout the day and looking at macronutrients’ meal timing. And that can also help with productivity and reducing brain fog throughout the day. The Blood Sugar and Diet You don't have to look at blood sugar, or blood values consistently. It's really what makes up your meals. Starting off the day with adequate protein, non-starchy vegetables, a complex carbohydrate, healthy fat, or overall a well-balanced meal. Also, looking into the components of each meal throughout your day, and ensuring that you are eating or snacking to just keep that blood sugar stable. So, you don’t ride the blood sugar roller coaster. And symptomatically we can feel it, we feel the cravings, we feel the brain fog, the energy dips, and rises and everything that comes with it. Hence, what people should look at is what they are eating and noticing that link between a lot of those symptoms. Also, we kind of life in a world of extremes, there are some components that do help with brain health, people with actual disorders, such as epilepsy. It can be beneficial for the general population. Not advised for that, just making more of a well-rounded approach. Because carbs can support brain health, muscle development, and so many other things. So just making sure we have all those components to keep it stable, and not just go into the extreme forms of dieting. All is right. Cortisol and Energy It is your stress hormone, it takes a diurnal rhythm, that spikes in the morning then slowly taper off throughout the day. And has an inverse relationship to melatonin. For instance, at night, when cortisol is supposed to be low, melatonin is supposed to be high. But some people could have that imbalance if their cortisol is high. A lot of people with productivity energy levels throughout the day performance, like at work or at the gym, are looking more into those cortisol levels and how they're managed. Also, it has a very close relationship with blood sugar too. Managing blood sugar can help manage that cortisol throughout the day. If blood sugar is super low, your cortisol spikes and vice versa. Also, you can tell symptomatically if you're tired and wired throughout the day. Your brains keep on going but...
