Ways to Naturally Boost Your Energy Levels
In our fast-paced and often sleep-deprived lifestyles, maintaining high energy levels can be challenging. Between balancing work, family, friends and planning for your wedding day, it's no surprise that many of us are faced with the all-out energy drain.
What can be harder to deal with is a low-grade energy drain, that experience when no matter how interesting that movie, or how appealing that clothes sale, you simply cannot psych yourself to get up and go. If this sounds familiar, the good news is that there is a way out! Here are a few natural ways to boost your energy levels.
Have Breakfast
Not having breakfast means you are setting your body up for lower energy levels, resulting in the need to compensate for this meal with bigger meals throughout the day, or by drinking energy drinks or excessive coffee.
Avoid Energy Drinks
Energy drinks provide extremely high, unnatural boosts of energy, which result in your body crashing after their effect has faded. Allowing your body to depend on them means that as time goes by, you are setting your energy levels for greater “crashes” and increasing fatigue levels.
Exercise Regularly
When you are tired, exercising seems to be a contradictory suggestion to increase your energy level. Right? Wrong! Working out actually decreases stress hormones and increases endorphins, which are the body’s natural ‘feel good’ chemicals that will boost your mood and energy. Regular exercise forces your body to get stronger; creating a more efficient system that will keep giving you more energy.
Have Small and Frequent Meals
Don’t wait until your blood sugar drops and you start feeling hungry and fatigued to eat, because that is when you will grab the next fatty, high in sugar snack that comes your way. The result is a short-lived energy boost that will leave you even more tired and hungry. Eating small meals consisting of lean protein and complex carbs every couple of hours will keep your blood sugar stable.
Take Up Yoga
Yoga involves a lot of stretching, which apart from keeping your muscles in a healthy state also keeps the brain’s arteries unclogged. Maintaining free movement of oxygenated blood to the brain and throughout the body gives you added vitality!
Get Enough Sleep
Not giving your body 7-8 hours of quality sleep deprives your body from the time it needs to recover from your daily activities. Lack of sleep causes lowered strength and energy levels, cardiovascular capacity and bad moods.
Drink Lots of Water
If your body is short on water, one of the first signs to show that is fatigue. If you consistently drink less than 8 cups of water a day, you may be sluggish all the time.
