When I stopped making these mistakes with my morning routine I started to easily feel more energetic & alert throughout the entire day
If you feel exhausted by mid afternoon or experience brain fog generally throughout the day, there is a lot you can do about it with small tweaks to your eating habits and your routine.
My advice is to start looking at your morning routine first, what can you change here to set you up for stable energy throughout the day?
First of all, let me tell you the mistakes I was making:
→ Late meals and after dinner snacking
→ Skipping breakfast
→ Having a sugary breakfast or one high in carbs
→ Not having protein in my breakfast
→ Not hydrating myself with water first
→ Drinking coffee on an empty stomach
→ Starting work straight away without having a moment to look outside or tune into myself
Hmmm..does any of this sound familiar?? The above are all big no-nos for me now, and if you’re doing them - reconsider it! Especially if you are reading this because you resonate with the title and want to find out how to have more stable energy throughout your day. Brain fog and falling asleep at your desk are awful experiences.
Once upon a time I had a desk job and I was flat lined exhausted by the afternoon, Those hours between lunch and leaving work were BRUTAL. I couldn’t get anything done, and to be honest my job was not that hard. I was working on admin tasks in the Clinical Trials department of a Cancer Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta. I felt like it was a challenge to hold my head up even and look at a screen, let alone be able to think about the tasks that I had to get done.
Looking back with all of the education I have now, I can easily see where I went wrong. I ate horribly at the time and had the typical SAD (Standard American Diet). Yes that is correct - I used to eat very poorly and had no clue about food, EVEN WHEN I WAS EDUCATED WITH A DEGREE SPECIALISING IN CANCER & GENETICS!!!
Yes I had an entire Bachelors Honours degree specialising in cancer and I had NO CLUE HOW TO PREVENT CANCER WITH FOOD AND LIFESTYLE CHANGES!! I knew all about cancer and how it starts to the tiniest detail like a base pair mutation in a tumour suppressor gene,…but not how to prevent or minimise my chances of getting cancer.
Side note: if you don’t know my story, the whole reason I pursued this education is because my Dad was diagnosed with throat and laryngeal cancer when I was 18 and I wanted to learn about it more and understand why my Dad was suffering. So many people in my paternal family line have had cancer, I am very concerned about mine and those who I love’s future regarding cancer prevention. I also want to educate YOU so you can perhaps take some of this advice on. My Dad smoked cigarettes and my family was told that this was the reason he had cancer. Of course it was a huge contributing factor and I am very anti-smoking for this reason, BUT there were other risk factors too. He drank alcohol frequently and had a SAD diet high in meat and potatoes, low in other vegetables. If only our family knew how to eat properly, I can only imagine a different outcome. He died suddenly from further cancer growth complications when I was 23.
This whole story is for another day though.
Let’s continue on to what I do now in my morning routine to promote energy throughout my whole day: (side note: this not only promotes energy, but is focused on blood sugar stabilisation - when blood sugar is out of whack is when you feel those crashes! Sugar also feeds cancer so this is also part of a cancer prevention protocol, which I am a huge advocate of):
My adjustments to my morning routine:
→ No late meals or after dinner snacking (around 8pm)
This can cause excessive blood sugar spikes and dysregulation through your sleep cycle, basically it can interfere with your ability to fall asleep AND can cause you to wake up in the night when your body crashes from the sugar, then starts to overcompensate by releasing stored sugar from your liver, and spiking cortisol - waking you up! ALSO you tend to feel very hungry in the morning (even HANGRY) if you have eaten late, causing overeating, or poor selection of food for breakfast, which leads to more exhaustion throughout your day from subsequent sugar spikes/crashes AND poor sleep - its a vicious cycle!
→ Eat breakfast
→ Have no sugar or processed food in my breakfast
→ Always have a protein in my breakfast (chia, hemp seeds/powder, tofu, nuts, seeds, quinoa or quinoa puffs, plant based yogurt)
The reasoning behind this is that eating breakfast fuels your body for the rest of the day, buffers the effects of caffeine if you drink coffee or tea, and works on stabilising your blood sugar. Now, I explain below why this doesn’t work for everyone, who it applies to and who it doesn’t. The quality of the food you eat is important because if you’re having a breakfast cereal - its full of processed white carbs and will very quickly spike your blood sugar and cause a subsequent crash. This is not the breakfast you want to have! Eat breakfast (if applicable to you), eat a low sugar breakfast (only natural sugars like from berries or other fruit), and eat protein in your breakfast (stabilises the release of sugars and make you MORE alert, unlike high carbs, which will have a short term effect of feeling energised and a dramatic crash or feeling tired/even can cause headaches). If I eat high carbs in the morning I literally have to have a nap after breakfast and get a headache, which is so ridiculous since I just had an 8 hour nice sleep (usually). Food has a MASSIVE EFFECT on your energy levels.
→ Drink water as the first drink in the morning
→ Drink coffee after breakfast, or if not possible (ie: if practicing yoga early I would avoid breakfast before yoga, but have coffee. Drink the coffee after drinking water, eating a few nuts or a date (personal choice), OR put something in the coffee to buffer caffeine, like mushroom powder and MCT or coconut oil)
While coffee on an empty stomach is not harmful for everyone, if you are prone to anxiety or digestive upset from it - best save it for after you’ve eaten. If you’re fine with coffee first thing and it makes you feel good, then go for it BUT drink water first, like half a glass or so - you need to be hydrated, and I’m guessing your first pee in the morning is probably quite yellow or dark - this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re dehydrated, but either way, water is essential so hydrate yourself! Caffeine can cause you to pee more, so again, hydrate yourself. Being dehydrated makes you feel tired. If you’re tired throughout the day and you’ve done the above with breakfast & had a great sleep - ask yourself if you've been drinking enough water? Research has shown that even mild dehydration can negatively impact your alertness, concentration and short term memory. Drink 2-3L per day, ideally filtered and no plastics bottles. Also if you want to up your water game, drink it at room temp and add a squeeze of lemon to it :)
→ Go out on the balcony & look at the sky, get some sunlight on my skin, breathe the outside air & have a moment to enjoy stillness before doing anything else
Direct sunlight on your body (and your retina/eye picking up sunlight) first thing in the morning has been shown to set up and regulate your circadian rhythms - setting proper wake and sleep cycles - and helping you to feel more energetic throughout the day, boosts cognitive performance and ability to focus. Go outside for 5-10 minutes and soak up the sun. You can wear glasses or contacts, but not sunglasses or blue light blocking glasses. Don’t look at the sun, simply stand outside.
These changes apply:
→ If you’re stressed, anxious, burnt out (your nervous system is in flight or fight mode & needs to be nourished)
→ If you’re experiencing hormonal imbalances (heavy period, no period, PCOS, etc…again your body needs to be nourished by whole foods)
→ If you have blood sugar issues or insulin resistance (managing your blood sugar levels is a key to feeling consistent energy)
→ If you experience problems with sleep, falling asleep &/or staying asleep (your nervous system may be in stress mode or blood sugar spikes in the middle of your sleep cycle to wake you up)
Who this may not apply to:
→ If you’re intermittent fasting this will obviously need to be adjusted & I can hear you Ashtangis or early morning yoga practitioners - I know you’re not likely eating much before you practice, but do try to eat in the manner above shortly after you practice. This is to replenish your energy stores & to help with recovery/repair so you can continue to practice with ease.