007: How to Effectively Manage Your Energy

Crushing the Clock

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 you're physically tired. If you're relying on coffee throughout the day, there's a lot of factors with that. But cortisol or stress hormone is what you should look at. When you're stressed and have no sleep, it’s a stressor on the body too. You power through things until you can't anymore until you feel the intense brain fog until super low energy throughout the day, and you kind of try and look into what's wrong with you. And it all makes sense, just looking into your history, or it was just looking more into the science that your cortisol is low.

Hydration

Hydration delivers all the nutrients to all your cells, all your organs. It helps with that in a natural way. But yes, it's not as quick. It's not as noticeable at first, but after a while, once we get that hydration up, you can feel it definitely. People talk about how they struggle to drink enough water. And some experienced a couple of heat exhaustion. If we start forcing ourselves to drink more water and really do that. We eventually got into a habit. Others drink eight glasses of water a day. But still, a lot of people struggle to be able to drink the water that they need. And they drink very little. So, how can they be able to? Well, first of all, how much water and how can they be able to implement drinking water more into their day? The general recommendation would be half your body weight in ounces, which sounds like a lot for people just starting out. But again, baby steps. Keep a water bottle with you that has the ounces. Start off with maybe one bottle and then go to two, and just gradually increase. After a while, most people crave more, they get thirsty, or they want it more. It just takes a certain amount of time to get to that point.

Balancing with Supplements

When it comes to supplements, it's quality over quantity. A good quality multivitamin, covering those bases. B vitamins can help with energy and other things as well. Omega threes and fish oil help with brain health. And Vitamin D is super low with a lot of people so a baseline dose through a multivitamin or heightened dose if it is pretty low. Magnesium is also deficient in most people, especially in their diet. Usually, you can get it through dark green leafy vegetables, and then greens, but usually depleted if you have a lot of caffeine and alcohol intake. And if you're very active or very stressed, you do need more. At night, just taking a good quality dose, and that can kind of help you relax at night, it's called the relaxation mineral. And these are the general ones and certain protein powders, though not necessary, but good for convenience if you feel like you can't prepare the adequate protein that you need. Your multivitamin should have B vitamins and that would not be beneficial at night. It'll keep you up for those help with energy and fish oil too. Vitamin D can be taken at different times. At night, generally a probiotic, magnesium and anything else that you would need for sleep.

Recover, Rest, or Heal

If you're active, stressed, doing a lot in general, or in higher output in life, then you need to recover to bounce back stronger. With nutrition, magnesium definitely helps with that recovery. Muscle recovery or relaxation of your whole body in general can help with that. You can build back up stronger. Another thing, vitamin C can help with immunity and so many other things that most of us probably know. But also, with adrenal health, cortisol production, and recovery. Zinc can also help with muscle recovery. And habits, lifestyle factors to the main thing we want with the word recovery is activating that parasympathetic nervous system. But winding down a little bit more, a simple deep breathing can also help with that. It could be a five-minute meditation, a 20-minute yoga class, and anti-inflammatory eating in general. Eating to reduce inflammation and antioxidants can help too. Mediterranean bass eating can help with inflammation. A lot of fish in general can really help. And yes, there's a lot to recover but super important.

The Needle Mover

In an ancient Chinese proverb, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second-best time is now”. It means that the best time to start with nutrition is when you're young and be able to get this in balance. But for some, that's not necessarily possible at this point. So, the next best time is to start now before we start to make things worse, or we get older and it becomes harder to overcome. People should look at the symptoms first like blood sugar swings, cortisol levels off, and notice what's going on with one’s baseline habits. “Am I drinking adequate water throughout the day? Am I consistent with my meals throughout the day? Do I have the basic multivitamin? Am I taking that consistently? What do my workout routines look like if you're training for something, or if you want more of a well-rounded, like walking strength, recovery-based kind of routine? Simply looking at all those habits related to the symptoms, and seeing honestly, what is a needle mover, the easiest way to start?

Links/Resources/Tools section:

• Blood Sugar Roller Coaster
• Melatonin
• Cortisol