Feeling Tired? Here are 5 Simple Habits to Help You Supercharge Your Energy

Sometimes, our body can be frustrating.

So much of life is visible, tangible, quantitative. You can see it, know where you’re at, and what you need to do to make it better (whether you do it or not is another story).

Physical energy can be this way. Overtime, family health issues, or a deadline can all drain us of our reserves. These are all obvious and it doesn’t take much effort to see that they’re the reason for our drop in energy in these scenarios.

But certain fluctuations in the body are harder to notice. Slighter changes in mood, attention, energy and the ability to focus can all be difficult to spot. And drawing a connection to what caused the change? Forget about it.

Fortunately, whether what’s making you more tired lately is obvious or not, there’s a lot you can do about it to make the situation better.

Here are five simple habits you can adopt to help you supercharge your energy.

1. Buy a dedicated water bottle

Drinking your daily recommended amount of water is probably something you already knew could increase your energy. But let’s be honest...are you actually doing it?

The problem, I’ve found, is that it’s easy to forget about. We have a million other things to remember, how am I going to remember to drink eight or more glasses of water each day in addition to everything else?

The solution to this is to buy a bottle or canteen that you use exclusively for water and carry around each day. It’s easy to get into the habit to keep it with you and, within a short period of time, drinking water throughout the day becomes automatic. Plus, in most major stores such as Target and Walmart you can typically find a large 32-ounce bottle.

That’s useful because 32 ounces is four cups, meaning that if you’re consuming the typical eight cup daily recommendation (you might need more depending on your body size and activity level), you only have to fill up the bottle twice each day (once in the middle of the day and once before you go to bed, let’s say). This makes it really simple and easy to keep the habit going.

2. Eat chia seeds

In many ways, when it comes to keeping the body balanced, chia seeds are a near-perfect food.

Chia seeds are low in carbs while having a balanced amount of protein, good fats, and fiber. This ideal balance means chia seeds will help keep your blood sugar balanced, curbing cravings and the resulting overeating that can leave you feeling sluggish.

There are a lot of ways you can consume chia seeds, but if you want a two-for-one super bang special, just add chia seeds to your water regularly. They’re pretty fun to drink (they feel kind of squishy) and are tasteless, so it’s the perfect way to get them into your diet.

3. Juice it up

Juicing isn’t just a magical way to get kids to eat their veggies, it’s also one of the best and simplest ways of boosting your energy consistently. Plus, you get a huge health boon as a bonus.

Juicing is effective because the body doesn’t have to digest the veggies first before it can convert it to energy. You get that energy almost immediately. Not to mention how long it would take you to eat an entire glass full of vegetable juice in its solid form.

Plus, you can actually make veggie juice taste great by adding some apple, orange, grape, or an assortment of other fruits to the mix, so it’s much easier to convince yourself to consume that equivalent portion size regularly.

4. Adopt a short nightly ritual

Improving the quality of your sleep is one of the single best and easiest things you can do to supercharge your energy because it supports the primary system for replenishing that energy.

There’s a lot of information out there about improving the quality of your sleep and several different things you can do. However, the simplest and arguably easiest is to adopt one nightly ritual that helps your mind and body power down after a long day.

You want the ritual to be something that is mentally stimulating but doesn’t require strenuous mental work on your end and allows your body to stay relatively still for a length of time.

A few ideas are:

• Meditation
• A mindful drawing book
• A mindful body scan
• Reading (fiction is suggested, allows you to get lost in another world)

5. Start tracking your carbohydrate intake

Carbs are important because they’re the primary way we provide energy for our body. When we consume carbohydrates, the body breaks them down into sugar and they’re used for energy.

However, too many carbs causes our body to go into hoard mode and store the excess sugar, which eventually turns into fat. This buildup can make us feel time more easily than usual.

To combat this, use something like a simple carbohydrate calculator and track your intake for a week. See if you’re consuming too much compared to your recommended intake and make adjustments from there.