10 Reasons You Are Always Tired and How to Fix It
Experiencing crashes in energy or feeling tired and sluggish sucks, right?
There are plenty of symptoms, reasons, and causes of this. The purpose of this article is to focus on these reasons, as well as to give you some tools and technology to prevent tiredness.
The outcome will provide more balanced moods, increased energy, and optimal mental performance.
Part of feeling focused and energized includes living a healthy lifestyle and eating nutritiously. You must be able to not only distinguish between the healthy and unhealthy food, but also practice discipline to sustain this over long periods of time.
A few common leading causes to mental fog and exhaustion include:
1. Skipping breakfast
Have you ever been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Well, every meal is important, but yes research has proven that what is called “front-loading” calories promotes satiety and long-term nutritious value. If you skip breakfast, you deny your body and brain the fuel it needs for a full day of mileage.
When you skip breakfast, it is more likely that your body will feel the effects of this lack of fuel.
2. Not getting enough sleep
During high quality sleep, your body restores many functions it calls on during daily life such as temperature regulations, stronger immune system, muscular strength, proactive brain waves, steady hormones, and a good appetite. All of these factors play a role in how much energy you have.
Get enough sleep at night or take power naps to help increase energy!
3. Lack of a balanced breakfast
Many common morning foods are high in carbohydrates such as biscuits, cereal, pancakes, etc. These are great for ramping up energy before a workout, but if you are headed into a big day at the office, or just a long day in general, these foods may leave you with a mid-morning crash due to the spiking and falling of insulin levels.
Adding protein first thing in the morning helps refuel muscles after a night’s rest and adds a slow digesting factor. Therefore, a great breakfast option would be some eggs, nuts, peanut butter, meat, fruits, avocado, oatmeal, or other healthy options.
Aim to get 20–30 grams of protein for breakfast along with 200 or so carbohydrates (maybe more/less depending on your calorie intake based on your weight gain/loss goal).
This balanced meal will promote decreased appetite, limit cravings, and promote long-term insulin control, all of which stabilize weight control and energy levels.
4. Not exercising
Exercise can improve energy levels by strengthening circulation and the heart muscles. Exercise is a great way to improve energy levels because when your body becomes active, internal organisms like metabolism and blood flow increase.
Have you felt already fatigued and don’t feel like working out? Strengthen your discipline muscles and do it anyway! The best exercises to overcome fatigue are aerobic exercises, due to the increase of oxygen in the blood and the boosts of energy levels.
Feeling tired is not a reason to avoid the gym; it is a reason to go to the gym.
5. Not enough fuel for workout
Athletes who skip, or under-consume, fuel before and during workouts set themselves up for lengthened gains and recovery. Not fueling before limits the performance outflow your body can produce.
Get proper nutrition before the workout and drink lots of water (my method is to consume half my body weight in ounces, per day) and that will transition into feeling more energy throughout the remainder of the day.
6. You skip recovery
By skipping this very important recovery snack, your body is left craving nourishment and not only will your long-term recovery suffer, but so will your levels of energy diminish. Not fueling after workouts may put you into a calorie deficit which would then lead to excessive cravings and create a tendency to eat the wrong things later.
Some people don’t eat enough and some people eat too much for their activity levels. Finding the appropriate calorie count may take trial and error, or you can contact a specialist.
7. Not eating nutritious foods
Typically, schedules allow for an early breakfast, noon lunch, and evening dinner. Most of us can easily go from breakfast to lunch (especially if we eat an adequate breakfast). However, that lunch-to-dinner stretch is too much to handle. Add some snacks in between to fill in this gap and help create spikes in energy.
Snack foods I use are bananas, apples, and other fruit, protein bars, hard boiled eggs, peanuts, or other combinations of protein and complex carbohydrates.
A great way to track your nutrient intake is with tracking applications like MyFitnessPal.
8. Lack of hydration
I am sure you have heard that our bodies are around 60% water. Hydration has a major effect on energy levels and brain function. Your brain is strongly influenced by hydration status. Studies show that even mild dehydration (1–3% of body weight) can impair many aspects of the brain.
Proper hydration will prevent headaches, relieve constipation, help with weight loss, increase physical performance, decrease fatigue, and increase energy and brain function.
Dehydration will have you feeling drained and fatigued.
Have a drink of water.
9. Lack of self-discipline
This one is more introspective and a little more difficult to confront.
When you lack discipline in life, say for example you drink every night and wake up hung over, you consume illegal drugs, you don’t get enough sleep, you do unethical activities, etc., you ultimately are creating a sense of self-disappointment. In turn, you lose motivation and when you lose motivation, you lose energy and creativity. Overcoming this requires practice and the strengthening of your discipline muscles.
Perhaps you lack the discipline to educate yourself even. When you lack discipline you will most likely lack action. The formula is: Knowledge leads to confidence, confidence leads to motivation, and motivation inspires action.
Prolonged action requires commitment and commitment creates creativity.
10. Lack of purpose
Lastly, and most importantly, is purpose. Purpose fuels passion and passion fuels energy. Ultimately, your purpose is the driving force behind why you do what you do and the energy that is provided. While finding your own purpose is not any easy or instant thing, here are some tips to help.
1. Approach success as your duty
2. Approach success as an ethical duty, not just a financial one
3. Be the most ethical and honest person you know
4. Learn to trust, discipline, love, and help yourself so that you can help others
5. Write out your higher purpose, not just money, by asking yourself why over and over
6. Don’t settle for good when you can be great
7. Get around great people
8. Be deaf and able to distinguish false information
9. Never call yourself names or tell yourself you cant
10. Help others
While there are many more reasons you could be tired all of the time, this list should help you more ably identify why you might feel tired and provide solutions to solve this problem.
I will leave you with this: Discomfort is an indicator that you are going in the right direction. Successful people learn to become comfortable being uncomfortable and they do the 1% of things 99% of people refuse to do. Unsuccessful people seek comfort in every area of life.
Be great!
