- Breathe Through Your Nose
Breathing is something so innate and unconscious you probably don’t even realize that you’re doing it wrong right now as you read this sentence. Many of you are reading this with your mouth open, even slightly, taking in a majority of your oxygen this way.
The issue is that when you’re mouth breathing, you’re generally and almost exclusively taking shallow breaths. Shallow breaths don’t allow much oxygen in, and much carbon dioxide out. These two things are crucial to energy, especially when you’re only getting so much per breath.
Breathing through your nose allows for more oxygen uptake and more disposal of carbon dioxide. Feeling tired? Take a couple of deep breathes through your nose right now and push every bit of air out of your lungs on your exhale. Feel better? Good.
- Fasting
You’ve heard it before, especially from me. But even at a base level, doesn’t it make sense that if the body has food to digest, you won’t have as much energy? Digestion takes a lot of energy in the body, and when you’re not doing that the body can do other things like make sure you feel energized.
A lot of it isn’t even fasting necessarily. I love this example. 5 hour energy. Heard of it? Their slogan is “when that 2:30pm feeling hits, 5 hour energy”, paraphrasing of course. Well, what the hell is a 2:30pm feeling, why is it at 2:30pm and why do I feel tired?
For most of us, 2:30pm is just when the standard American-diet lunch you had hits, and for most of us, that’s A LOT of carbs. Carbs are very known for having a lethargic effect on the body and brain when overconsumed. Many people during lunch will have easily 50g-150g of carbs, and for many people the higher end of that spectrum is an entire days worth of carbs. (Keep in mind you’re likely sitting down not exercising, so you’re not using those carbs for activity either).
It’s the exact same reason you get tired at Thanksgiving, and it has nothing to do with the chemical properties of a turkey. It’s the 4 rolls with butter and jelly you ate, along with 3lbs of stuffing, 8 deviled eggs (if you’re me), 2 cookies, 1 brownie and slice of pumpkin pie that made you tired.
Anyone I’ve ever met that follows Intermittent Fasting(IF)/Fasting in any sense, feels really high energy during that fast or “Non-feeding window”. And it makes tons of sense! Your body is primed with nothing to digest and nothing to do but recover from your previous day and give you tons of energy for the day. Have you ever been really hungry, and oddly focused/energized? That’s what it’s like after being adapted to fasting.
- Sunlight!… Or Vitamin D Supplementing
We are human beings. In case you forgot. And even though that sounds stupid I’ll bet you did. You live life like most concrete jungle people. We go, go, go. We don’t stop to think what our body needs, what our brain needs, or what we actually consciously need.
Sunlight is one of them. The most natural way to get energy, start your day, and to get a sexy tan! Sunlight has a scientific backing on increasing energy, as the UV light it produces meshes with our internal clock and bodily processes giving us a little bit of that needed good feeling. What it gives somehow, is Vitamin D. Vitamin D is by far the most important supplement and is also actually somehow a hormone or close to it. (Per Dr. Ronda Patrick, Nutritional Scientist. Listen to all of her JRE podcast appearances for this break down).
For those of us living in hell, errrr cold places where the sun doesn’t shine for parts of the year, Vitamin D supplementation.
In fact it’s almost the only supplement I take, and I take it year round regardless of how much sun I get. I’ve had noticeable energy increases but I’ve also played around a lot with adding sunlight to my morning routine whenever I possibly can. In the summer I’ll typically read outside in my underwear (What a life it is to not care what people think of you) and I will feel immensely better, energized and ready for my day when I get a good amount of sunlight!
B3FIT 