2 Tips to Increase Your Energy so You Get More Things Done
Right now, as you’re reading this very sentence, you have about 2,000 calories worth of blood sugar making its way through your bloodstream.
The challenge is that it’s a limited amount of energy.
If you were to do some intense exercise right now, you might find that your blood sugar gets low. Or if you ended up in a very serious conversation, or had to make big decisions, or use your brain in any deep capacity really, that uses tons of calories. As a result, you might find yourself with low energy.
What happens when you have low energy?
Do you sometimes find that your mood fluctuates?
Do you occasionally find yourself saying “Why are you saying that?”
We’ve all been there.
When you have low energy, it’s tough to make good decisions. It’s tough to be as good of a human being as you can be.
Here’s where the real trouble is, if you’re relying on your blood sugar, that blood sugar energy goes up and down pretty dramatically.
Let’s talk about the way the body uses energy…
As much as you have those 2,000 calories of energy stored in your blood, you also have something like 200,000 calories stored on your body as fat (anybody at any level of weight). If you’re carrying a little extra weight, then you have even more.
Think about that. 2,000 calories is just about enough energy to run a marathon — just about, but not quite enough. Well then think, if you have 200,000 calories, what can you achieve?
Before I show you how to unlock that energy, I want you to think about what you could get done with that extra boost. What are some things you’re not getting done because you’re out of energy?
Is there a book you want to write, a business you want to start, a hobby you want to undertake?
Think about this, because the more you know why it is you want to do something, the easier it becomes to actually do that thing.
Next, let’s talk about how this extra energy works…
When you eat, there are certain types of foods that come into your body as sugar. They’re mostly carbohydrate foods. So when you eat carbohydrate foods — everything from a candy bar to a carrot — your body takes that and puts it into your blood as blood sugar. This makes it short term energy. It’s available to you now. Then when your blood is full of sugar, and you can’t take anymore, your body takes the sugar and stores it in your liver and in your muscles as something called glycogen. This is just a fancy way of saying “stored energy”.
When your glycogen banks are completely full, you then start storing fat. You’re storing that fat because our ancestors had to survive droughts and winters and the uncertainty of when they’d even eat again, so the fat was there to protect them in case they ever ran out of food.
Nowadays, it’s not so likely that we’ll run out of food. The truth is that most of us don’t need to be worried about food supply. But regardless, your body is very good at protecting you against droughts and winters by storing fat.
It’s very easy to burn your blood sugar, it’s your primary fuel. It’s fairly easy to burn your glycogen. But it’s not so easy to burn your fat.
One of the reasons is this: if you are burning your blood sugar, then you burn off let’s say 500 calories. Your body’s thinking, “Oh, we’re running out of blood sugar. Where are we going to get more energy from?”. It now has two choices. It can take energy from the food you’re eating, or it can take energy from your glycogen stores, right? The trouble is, if it gets it from the food you’re eating, then it won’t take it from the glycogen stores. And if you never use up your glycogen stores, you cannot burn your fat.
Are you seeing how magical this is?
You might think from what you read above that now I’m going to tell you to stop eating. That’s simply not the case! What I’m going to suggest to you is that if you, from time to time, cut your sugar intake dramatically, then your body will run out of a cheap fuel source. And as it runs out of that cheap fuel source, it will become necessary for your body to release the glycogen stores. If you release the glycogen stores, then your body can move into fat burning.
There are two great things about this:
- It’s consistent, slow-burning, and overall just wonderful.
The people that you’ve heard of who are running ultra marathons, wouldn’t you like to have the kind of energy that could do that? What kind of parent could you be with that kind of energy? What kind of husband or wife? What kind of friend? What kind of business owner? If you had this consistent, gorgeous flow of energy, what could that look like for you?
2. As you start to burn your fat stores, you start to release weight.
That’s how it works. Now, you don’t do that by going on a crash fast, and you don’t do that by starving yourself. Trust me, that does not work at all. If you starve yourself, your body will say, “Don’t release any fat, we’re starving at the moment, we have to keep it all”.
Instead, eat very well and cut down on the garbage cheap sugars. Those sugars come in and they go straight into your bloodstream.
Here are some aerobic exercises you can do to increase that energy.
This means that you’re getting air with oxygen, and when that oxygen comes in, it helps you burn. So when you can’t breathe during a workout, that’s the type of workout you want to stay away from in this stage.
Try any of these aerobic exercises:
- Go out for a nice walk
- Do some stairs
- Go out for a jog
- Do a bike ride
- Go for a swim
- Try a hike
All these types of things will burn gorgeous energy from you. You don’t have to join a gym for this, it could be as simple as taking the stairs instead of the escalator, or parking in the furthest spot from the front door. Get creative and it’ll seem like less work.
There’s one more thing I want to share with you, especially if you’ve ever struggled with weight:
It is not your fault. I cannot stress that enough. It is not your fault. You should not feel bad about it.
You might be thinking, “Of course it’s my fault. I ate too much. I didn’t do enough exercise.”
Well, do you know who told you that? Soft drink companies. They invented the idea that you should go and exercise your calories off so that people would not be afraid to buy their calories.
Please understand, if you’re carrying a little bit of extra weight, it is not your fault.
The food industry is not on your side. They put copious amounts of sugar in food because it stimulates your appetite and makes you hungry. Think about that. They are designing food that is meant to get you to eat more. It’s not your fault. And frankly, the food industry is more dangerous and more manipulative than the tobacco industry ever was.
Big Tobacco took something that you did not need and tried to hook us on it. Ah, bad on them. Food takes something you do need and makes noxious versions of it and tries to addict you to the bad quality stuff to boost their own profitability. Which do you think is worse?
Now think a little bit about your body for a moment. I’m sorry, I know it’s a sensitive topic, but how do you feel about it? Because I love your body. Your body is how you get around, it takes care of you. Your body is the transportation system for your experiences throughout life.
I know there are some people out there who are really struggling with body image, and I want to explain one of the reasons why.
Even when you don’t see something, your subconscious sees it. Even when you don’t see something, it’s out there and you can still see it on some level.
You’re walking around in the world going through shopping malls, airports, those kinds of places, and you’re seeing genetically unlikely women that are then made up by an artist, a professional painter, a makeup artist, then they’re photographed by a magician. Then a technical guru from the video game industry digitally alters the photograph, so that that woman isn’t even close to what she resembles in the real world.
Now our daughters, and our sisters, and our mothers and our aunts, and our grandmothers are seeing these images consciously and unconsciously and thinking that that’s what is beautiful.
Beautiful is a behavior.
Please understand that if you’re struggling a little bit with weight, it’s not your fault. It is recoverable. It’s something that can be turned around. It’s not your fault. But now maybe it’s your responsibility.
And if you work on unleashing this energy that’s inside your body, don’t do it to lose weight, do it to improve your energy and your quality of life.
If you’re looking to redefine your life in 2021 then make sure to sign up for my 3 video series below to discover how you can make the new year, your best year.
