So how do you get yourself to show up?\u00a0 If your goal is compelling enough—and by “compelling,” I mean it’s an obsession<\/em>—then what it comes down to is energy.<\/p>\n It’s a strange thing, this energy.\u00a0 Anyone who has ever stuck with a fitness plan knows that once you’re a few weeks in, you have way more energy throughout the day than you did before you started exercising.\u00a0 Counterintuitive, considering exercise expends<\/em> energy.<\/p>\n Similar for food: From a caloric standpoint, a McSupersized extra value meal should provide you with plenty of fuel to use.\u00a0 But how do you feel after you eat one of those?\u00a0 Unless you’re starving, less is more when it comes to food.<\/p>\n Same for sleeping: Logging in 12-hour sessions seems like it should ready you for the day, but usually it leaves you dragging.\u00a0 Unless you’re sleep deprived, it’s worth seeing what happens when you sleep just a little less.<\/p>\n So the big three rules most of us already know: Eat less, exercise more, and don’t go nuts with the sleep.<\/p>\n They’re science-based.\u00a0 Yet they’re controversial.<\/p>\n Why?\u00a0 I suspect it’s because of people who overstate their importance.\u00a0 In my experience, none of these factors have the impact that the big three do.\u00a0 So when someone takes one and builds (and sells) an entire health plan around them, the result is a bunch of hype, a diet that doesn’t deliver, and our writing it off as a fad.<\/p>\n But this stuff shouldn’t be totally ignored.\u00a0 If energy is your goal, every one of these aspects is worth considering.\u00a0 Pick a few, try them for a few days or weeks, and judge for yourself.\u00a0 I doubt any of them will kill you, and you might just find you have some extra energy for ass-kicking after work or early in the morning.<\/p>\n 1. When you drink water (or any liquid).<\/strong><\/p>\n Healthy people drink a lot of water, as well they should.\u00a0 But consider when<\/em> you’re drinking that water: If you’re drinking it with your meal, you could be impairing your digestion.<\/p>\n Not only does water dilute the gastric juices required to digest food, it also exits the stomach after just a few minutes, taking those juices with it and making digestion difficult.\u00a0 And since digestion accounts for 5 to 15 percent<\/a> of your energy expenditure, that’s something you should care about.<\/p>\n A half hour fluid-free buffer on either side of your meals is a good place to start.\u00a0 It’s strange at first, but you get used to it.<\/p>\n 2. How you combine your foods.<\/strong><\/p>\n There are diets based entirely on this principle, and I think that’s overkill, especially when the scientific tests of its efficacy are mixed.\u00a0 But the biggest tenet, which says that carbohydrate-rich foods should not be mixed with protein-rich foods, makes sense to me.\u00a0 The enzymes required to digest each nutrient tend to neutralize each other, again making digestion harder and slower than it should be.<\/p>\n So what does a meal look like, if it’s not a “square” meal of protein and carbs?\u00a0 Try a big pile of non-starchy vegetables (salad, perhaps), and either a protein- or carbohydrate-rich food, but not both.<\/p>\n (Side note: The Wikipedia entry on food combining<\/a> has an interesting paragraph about how some cultural rituals around eating may have evolved to maximize energy.)<\/p>\n 3. Breathing.<\/strong><\/p>\n We multitask, we achieve, we stress, we worry.\u00a0 And so often during all of this, we forget to breathe<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nobody breathes anymore.\u00a0 At least, not the way we’re designed to, from very deep within our bodies.\u00a0 The result is more stress, less breathing, and more stress.\u00a0 (As an athlete, however, you’re at a huge advantage.\u00a0 Your daily training encourages deeper breathing.)<\/p>\n Give your cells some oxygen.\u00a0 Take a few minutes every day and just breathe.\u00a0 If you need something to occupy your mind, try breathing exercises<\/a>.<\/p>\n 4. How acidic your body is.<\/strong><\/p>\n The idea behind the alkaline diet is that our modern lifestyle produces an acidic environment in the body.\u00a0 In this acidic environment, disease thrives, the body stores fat and leeches minerals from bones in an attempt to become alkaline, and relative hell breaks loose.<\/p>\n Is the acid\/alkaline balance worth building an entire diet around?\u00a0 In my opinion and limited experience with it, no.\u00a0 But I find most of the arguments compelling.\u00a0 And it’s not only quacks who are promoting it: In Thrive<\/em>, Brendan Brazier<\/a> advocates paying attention to acidity and alkalinity to what I consider a healthy extent—not obsessing over it, but not denying that it’s a factor in our health and energy levels.\u00a0 (For more of Brendan’s thoughts on energy, check out the second interview<\/a> I did with him.)<\/p>\n 5. Not just what you eat, but how you eat.<\/strong><\/p>\n Eat at the table.\u00a0 Turn off the television and talk while you eat.\u00a0 Eat slowly.\u00a0 Chew your food.<\/em><\/p>\n We hear it so much, it’s starting to become nagging.\u00a0 But really, do you do this stuff?\u00a0 I don’t (enough).\u00a0 Eating slowly and relaxed happens to go beautifully with not chugging water to wash down every bite before it’s chewed, and with breathing as well.<\/p>\n 6. Whether you burn fat or sugar for fuel.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is one that I can totally get behind.\u00a0 I’ve noticed a major improvement in my endurance since I phased out most sugar on the mornings of my long runs, up until the very end when you need a boost to get to the finish.<\/p>\n I first learned this from Greg McMillan<\/a> (see his approach to training your body to burn fat).\u00a0 Then I heard Stu Mittleman<\/a> talk about it.\u00a0 These guys are talking about endurance running, but the same goes for the rest of your life.\u00a0 Your body stores far more energy in the form of fat than it can sugar.\u00a0 (Not an insult; this is true whether you have a cottage-cheese ass or washboard abs.)<\/p>\n So if you can train your body to burn fat at low intensities for a long time before it switches to sugar, you can go on with ass-kicking for hours before you shut down.\u00a0 If instead, you rely on sugar, as most people do, even at pretty low intensities, the fuel burns out quickly.\u00a0 If you’re running, you’ll bonk when your body shuts down to save some to keep your brain operating.\u00a0 To a lesser extent, the same goes for the rest of what you do during the day.<\/p>\n The way I see it, very few of us have the physiology background to really say whether this all is legit.\u00a0 We’re left with three options: You can buy in completely and blindly, you can call it all bullshit, or you can do what I like to do.\u00a0 Which is to try it.\u00a0 As long as it won’t kill me, I’m pretty much game if there’s the chance it’ll take my energy to the next level.\u00a0 What about you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let’s face it: Kicking ass in life takes energy. You can have all good intentions of running your first marathon, completing an Ironman, starting a business, or being an awesome mom or dad to your kids.\u00a0 But if the energy isn’t there, you’ll be fighting a losing battle once the initial surge of excitement wears […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"3](\"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/iStock_000012300237XSmall.jpg\")
Doing life-changing stuff isn’t as hard as most people make it out to be.\u00a0 But it absolutely requires showing up.\u00a0 That might mean getting up when it’s still dark out to get your run in.\u00a0 Or burning the midnight oil while your family sleeps.\u00a0 (As Gary Vee<\/a> says, “7 PM to 2 AM is gametime.”)<\/p>\nThe more you use, the more you have<\/h3>\n
But there are other factors that could affect your energy.<\/h3>\n
6 Factors that Could Affect Your Energy<\/h3>\n
Brilliant? Hogwash?<\/h3>\n