Few people feel energized throughout an entire day. Sure, there are plenty of those “morning people” that drive everyone nuts and even more of the late-night party type who can sleep past noon on any given day. What is really rare nowadays is people who can wake up early and remain energized and mentally alert all day, and then repeat that every day.
The reason it is rare is because it is hard. It often takes a lot of discipline to get into the right schedule and to live the way that one must live to feel that way all day. For those that have the discipline, here are the four best ways to keep yourself alert for not just party of a day, but all of it.
Understand Food
Most people never get past a basic understanding of the food pyramid. Your supposed to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and not a lot of sugar and that is about it. There is so much more to food, and especially to utilizing food to stay energized throughout the day.
Donuts, sugary cereal, and pretty much any food high in refined sugar can reduce your energy. If you choose to eat these types of foods for breakfast you will be tired and exhausted all the way until lunch, which can be a long way away. Foods that are high in protein tend to do the opposite. Some examples are nuts, eggs, lean meats, and yogurt. These will not only leave you feeling better immediately after eating, but will digest much slower in your body and release the energy in a much more stable manner. This will inevitably lead to a day with much more energy. Here is a more inclusive list of foods that can do increase long-term energy.
Sleep
One couldn’t discuss energy without discussing sleep. There are a lot of misconceptions about sleep out there. A lot of people think that the key is to simply get eight hours of sleep and you will be rested. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There are plenty of people that get more than eight hours of sleep a night who still feel unrested the next day. There are plenty of others who wake up extremely early and barely scrape seven hours of sleep, and yet feel rested all day. The difference is quality.
People actually have different stages of sleep. There is light sleep, REM sleep, and deep sleep. If you can cut down the amount of hours you spend in light sleep, and increase the other two, you can get less overall sleep but still feel more rested the next day. There are quite a few ways to do this. One of the big ones is ensuring a comfortable bed. Every time you move around or try to get comfortable you bring yourself back to a light sleep.
Memory foam is one way that people have chosen to increase sleep quality. If you have never heard of memory foam, there is a pretty good memory foam mattress guide here. Essentially memory foam is a mattress that can customize itself to the user, ensuring a better quality sleep experience.
Exercise
No one likes to hear that they need to exercise more, but exercise benefits virtually every part of someone’s life. It has been proven dozens of times that exercise increases energy and efficiency throughout the day. It is extremely important and also extremely underutilized. Just thirty minutes of exercise in the morning can lead to hours saved throughout the day via increased energy, focus, and efficiency. Make the investment and reap the rewards.
Power Nap
People are much more willing to try this out than exercise. A power nap is just a 15-20 minute snooze right in the middle of the day. While it may not seem as if that much sleep could make a difference, power naps have been proven to make significant differences in energy levels through the rest of the day. There is actually a science behind it.
Power naps can help in quite a few categories including increased creativity, as well as greater capacity for love, efficiency, and more. Just as with exercise, a small investment of 20 minutes of time can yield much greater results.
Try these because they work! Most just require a bit of discipline—the discipline to wake up ten minutes earlier to make a better breakfast or thirty minutes earlier to exercise. Once you start getting into the habit, you won’t want to go back.
Featured photo credit: Zac Durant via unsplash.com
