Drink 1-2 serves of caffeinated beverages per day:

Drinking no more than 2 serves of caffeinated beverages per day will help improve the quality of your sleep, how long you stay asleep and how energized you wake up. And you need to have your last fix of caffeine before 12pm lunchtime. Even if you think coffee isn’t affecting you, it is affecting you in ways you don’t realise.

No, waking up at 3:00am is not normal or healthy, even if it’s to go to the toilet. That is your body telling you it is stressed. Your bladder is big enough to hold onto fluid until the morning.

It is also not right that you take more than 15 minutes to fall asleep. If this is the case for you, you may be having too much caffeine.

Eat food:

Eating adequate food in each meal, and meals throughout the day instead of snacks, helps regulate your blood sugar. It helps reduce sugar cravings and overeating.

Excess sugar consumption may give you a quick burst of initial energy, but it also gives you a serious crash once the high drops. This sudden spike and drop has serious consequences on your adrenal glands, impacting your energy levels.

Drink sufficient of water:

When your body has sufficient hydration you have improved blood flow and normal blood pressure. You can then circulate adequate levels of oxygen and nutrients to all the cells in the body. Oxygen and nutrients, lead to elevated energy levels.

Soak up some sunshine:

Sunlight signals to the brain to produce more serotonin, our happy hormone. Increased levels of serotonin increases your energy throughout your body.

Exercise:

It sounds contradictory that something that causes you to exert yourself can boost your energy, but it does!

Exercises increases your serotonin, boosts your metabolism, improves blood flow and normalizes blood pressure. As with water, the increase blood flow increases nutrients and oxygen distribution, increasing your energy levels.

Get to bed by at least 7 hours before you need to wake up:

Figure out what time you need to wake up, count back 7 hours (preferably 8) and set an alarm for that time. That is your bedtime. That way you will receive at least 7 hours of sleep before you have to wake up.

Create a routine:

Like babies, all of us need routine for optimal health. Having the same bedtime and the same wake up time each day (yes including weekends, with the occasional exception), sets you up for consistency and a boost in energy stores.

Have a wind down ritual:

You possibly expect to fall asleep straight after elevating your heart rate and adrenaline levels with an action movie, or social media, or plodding away at your computer for work. You need to create some time between ‘excited’ and ‘relaxed’. Just like we don’t encourage kids to get overexcited before bedtime, so too we should avoid over exciting ourselves.

At least half an hour before bed, turn off all electronics, and do something relaxing like read a book, have a bath, meditate, do some breathing exercises or write in a gratitude journal. Besides relaxing you, turning off electronics will also reduce the exposure to the blue light they omit, which impacts the quality of your sleep.

– Coach Terri