Struggling with fatigue? Here are the five best ways to get rid of fatigue and boost your body's energy systems naturally.
What is fatigue?
Fatigue is a feeling of constant exhaustion, brought on by poor lifestyle choices, medical conditions, or even stress. Those who've experienced fatigue will share that it often leaves them feeling lethargic, increasingly irritable, sometimes dizzy, and usually too tired to even think. If you're someone who struggles with these symptoms and doesn't know how to eradicate them, consider making the following changes to your daily routine so you can finally kick the energy-draining monster to the curb:
1. Start or end your day with a workout.
Exercise supplies your body with the oxygen necessary to support energy production, enabling your body to perform the necessary bodily functions like digestion, breathing, daily movement, and organ function better. Therefore, when you exercise, you boost the oxygen supply to your body's cells, improving energy production, which will likely eradicate your fatigue.
2. Get enough sleep.
Lack of sleep is one of the major reasons why people often find themselves fatigued during the day. If you regularly find yourself sleeping for fewer hours than you actually need, you may accumulate sleep debt. The problem with accumulating sleep debt is that leading a hectic lifestyle filled with many obligations (like studying after a long day of working) can lead to adverse health effects. If you're unfamiliar with sleep debt, it is the total amount of hours of sleep you lose per sleep cycle (i.e. per 24 hours).
Remember that sleep allows your body to store energy. When you get enough sleep, your body does not need to tap into its energy stores to provide you with energy for daily function. However, lack of adequate sleep prevents your body from saving energy and instead uses your energy stores to sustain you during your waking period. By draining out your energy stores, you're left fatigued instead of refreshed.
While individual sleep requirements may differ, adults require about 7 hours of sleep every 24 hours, so be sure to get your sleep in not only to combat fatigue but to protect your overall health.
3. Reduce your caffeine intake.
While caffeine has become a staple in our lives to help sweeten our day or even give us an extra kick of energy, too much caffeine, or even consuming it at the wrong time, may cause fatigue. Coffee promotes the release of hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which usually make you feel energized, but can sometimes have the opposite effect. Reducing the cups or size of coffee you drink daily and drinking it no later than 1PM can help reverse the effects that coffee has on your energy levels.
4. Wake up a little earlier and ditch the midday nap.
Try waking a little earlier than usual, which can help give you mental clarity and an extra energy boost, and ditch the midday nap by finding a mildly strenuous activity to do instead, like fast-paced walking or dancing. Sometimes all your body needs is to be sufficiently exhausted after a long day, coupled with a great night's rest to restart your energy system.
5. Eat well and avoid skipping meals.
There are a lot of benefits to getting all your macro and micronutrients in, including nourishing your body so that it can power itself for its many daily functions.
You may not be getting enough nutrients because you're limiting your calorie intake for weight loss or because you don't eat a large variety of foods, which may lead you to be fatigued. While this may be normal for some (in the sense that it does occur quite a bit), it is still important to find a balance between eating less than what you're normally used to, and working out regularly so that your body is still able to function properly. You can do this by increasing your protein intake to combat the reduction of calories and resulting energy drop, while still enabling you to increase your workouts as you need to, to encourage steady (and healthy) weight loss.
Another great benefit to eating well and not skipping meals is a properly functioning metabolism, which can help provide you with more energy (by sufficiently helping convert food to nutrients for energy production, regulating energy expenditure, etc.), aid with losing or maintaining weight, improve sleep quality, as well as encourage regular bowel movements.
As you can see, fatigue isn't always an elusive issue that has complicated solutions— you can usually track the reasons for your fatigue to your lifestyle or habits, whether old or new. If, however, you have underlying health conditions, have recently started a course of medication or you've tried the above solutions and are still seeing no end to your fatigue, consult a medical professional to rule out the possibility of illness-related or medication-related fatigue.
If you've tried adjusting your habits to combat fatigue, how is it going? Are you seeing favourable results? Let us know in the comments.