I hear the phrase “I want to feel better” so often! It’s probably the most common phrase when I ask women why they are contacting me. Wanting to feel better means something different to each woman. Many women want less pain, many want less anxiety, and many want more energy. To each woman though, they don’t feel 100% and just want to feel better. I find for many symptoms, lack of energy is a byproduct, so for this article, I am going to focus on the women that want to feel better by gaining more energy.
How to Improve Your Energy in Middle Age
Have you ever watched a child play and thought you wished you had half their energy? Do you find the older you get, the less energy you seem to have? You may even be struggling to find the energy necessary to live your life, parent your children, do your work, and/or enjoy the beautiful life you’ve built.
Energy most likely isn’t the only health challenge you’re facing, but it’s a critical component for tackling other issues in a productive and lasting way. When you don’t have energy, you probably feel irritable and anxious more easily, make health and lifestyle choices you aren’t proud of, and are more prone to the effects of autoimmune disease and chronic pain. Reclaiming your life seems to move further and further away, compounding frustration and despair.
There is a path to wellness and well-being, and it starts with addressing your fatigue. As a root cause dietitian, I like to get to the root cause of the problem for each woman. Fatigue is started and compounded by so many different issues, there is never one single cause. Fatigue is the effect of multiple imbalances. Finding those imbalances and intentionally changing your lifestyle to create balance will improve energy levels.
Fatigue Management Activities
When I work with clients, there are several specific areas I focus on for everyone. Because I am a dietitian through and through, the diet is usually the first area of focus. Regulating the nervous system is a very close second (and sometimes even comes first depending on the person). When helping women improve energy specifically, I then address sleep and energy output.
I’m so glad you’ve continued reading because below are several steps you can take to improve your energy each day:
Nutrition for Chronic Fatigue
Balancing your intake is the first step to take. This just means building your plate each day in a way that provides more vitamins, minerals and fiber while getting adequate protein and not too much of what you don’t need. An easy way to build your plate is to make half of it non-starchy vegetables, one-fourth a protein source, and one-fourth a starch source. The non-starchy vegetables provide lots of vitamins and minerals and plenty of fiber. The protein will provide sustained energy. And the reduced amount of starch will provide you with the energy you need but not make you sluggish because you’ve eaten more than you need.
Nervous system regulation
The autonomic nervous system is your body’s control center. It is responsible for how your body responds and reacts to events and also regulates the systems in your body you don’t have to think about (circulatory, respiratory, digestive). The two parts of the autonomic nervous system I want you to know about are the sympathetic/fight or flight and parasympathetic/rest and digest. When the sympathetic part is on, the parasympathetic is off and some systems controlled by it don’t have priority and don’t function well (ex: digestion slows). With our society and amount of stress placed on us, the sympathetic part can continue to stay on. But God gave us a way to manually turn it off and turn on the rest and digest mode…breathwork. By taking deep belly breaths, you are able to manually change the function of the nervous system, therefore allowing you to actually rest.
Sleep
It seems so simple that if you are fatigued, you need to sleep better. But what if you’re more sleepy and tired in the afternoon and more awake when it’s actually time to sleep? Easy steps to take are to shut off all electronics 1 hour before bedtime, do something non-stimulating before bed like reading a book, drink some sleepy time tea, and exercise at least 30 minutes each day to tire your body.
If you have found this helpful, please share it with a friend that you know needs more energy. For more in depth tips, you can send them to my website and tell them to grab my Energy Elixir by signing up for emails.
