5 tips to increase your energy & motivation

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Video transcription:

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I'm going to be giving five tips to help increase your energy and motivation so that you can thrive in life and just feel better because if our energy and motivation aren't there, it's hard to do anything else.

Do you feel like your motivation and energy are low?

That you're just wondering if you can actually increase that naturally without taking a supplement or drinking a bunch of coffee.

So I'm gonna be giving you five tips to help do that so that you can get more done in your day. So, if you don't know me, my name is Michele Riechman and I have my doctorate in physical therapy. I'm a personal trainer, a health coach and a yoga teacher. So I help moms who have put themselves on the back burner finally lose 20 plus pounds, get in shape, fit back into their clothes and fix their metabolism without dieting so that they can increase their energy and feel.

Start with just one tip

So as I go through this and I'm giving you five different tips, I want you to start just one pick, just one to start with. So if you're thinking you can do all these, then yeah, that would be great.

Most likely you're not gonna do it. So if you start with just one and you can stick to that, then you'll be more likely to be successful with that. You can always come back and add a different one in, or maybe that one didn't work for you and then try something different. So you're gonna have to experiment a little bit here and that's like with anything in life, you need to try things out and find what works for you because what works for one person is not necessarily going to work for you.

1. Eat balanced meals

All right. So the first one is having a balanced meal. So, this is really huge for stabilizing your blood sugars. And this really helps with those energy spikes and dips. So typically to help stabilize your blood sugars, you're gonna wanna have some protein in that meal and maybe a little fat. So that helps to keep your energy more even.

So if you have a lot of processed food or high starch carbohydrates, and especially ones that are processed and don't have other nutrients in them, those are gonna spike your blood sugar and then you're gonna crash. So to keep your energy levels more stable, you have to balance what you are eating. By having some protein, some healthy fat in it.

So this is really huge in your energy. And this also really helps with losing weight and keeping your metabolism in check. So again, that's having a protein and maybe a healthy fat with each meal, making sure you're minimizing processed foods, the things that will spike your blood sugar.

2. Stay hydrated

All right. So next is staying hydrated. So think about when you haven't drank enough, you start to become sluggish. Maybe you get a headache and then a headache doesn't make you feel great. And your brain just doesn't function well when you're not getting enough water. So this is huge on energy. And which plays into your motivation.

So try drinking sips throughout the day so that you're staying hydrated. A good place to get started is drinking about half your body weight in ounces. So if you're 150 pounds, that's about 75 ounces. And this is just a starting point. So you might find that if you're sweaty or you're doing more movement, that you're gonna need a little bit more.

So take that as a starting point and adjust it and test it out. So if your starting point is 75 ounces, say. Maybe one day you had 50 ounces, write down how you felt, how did your energy feel? How does your body function that day? Then maybe another day you have a hundred ounces, and notice how you felt and experiment with it and do it for a few days.

Cuz there could be other factors and see how it makes you feel. How does your energy feel? How does your body function? An important thing with drinking water that gets hard with a lot of people is just remembering. So you wanna have cues to help you remember. So this could be one, just getting your cup out and having that out in the morning.

Maybe you have a reminder on your phone that goes off to drink a water, or maybe you have it with another cue. So maybe you have your water by your phone and every time you go on your phone, you're gonna drink a cup of water or maybe before writing an email. So see if you can find stuff that you are doing in your day pretty frequently, where you could add drinking water onto that habit.

So you're connecting this habit. You already have established picking up your phone and adding something on. So every time I pick up my phone, I'm gonna drink some water and that can just be a great way to help you to remember, to actually do it. And also trackers are great at motivating. So having a water tracker up can also help.

3. Get movement in every hour

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All right. So number three is get movement in about every hour. So when I am talking about movement, I'm talking about moving your body. So that means just getting up, walking around, maybe that's cleaning, so it's not exercising. So your muscle shouldn't be burning. You shouldn't be out of breath. It's just movement.

So our bodies were designed and meant to move. They weren't designed to sit all day and that's where we get achy, where we get sluggish and we just don't have the energy to do anything. So a good goal is every hour, but if you can't do that, maybe start every two hours. So start where you are. And again, this could be a quick walk.

It could be just around your house. It could be around your table, stretching. So just moving that body, stretching the arms up, picking a couple of things to do, backbends are great. So even just like reaching up and back bending is a great way. And those backbends tend to be a little more energizing.

You could even get up and do 10 squats or 10 wall pushups. You could call a friend and walk and talk. So adding this movement in, it is really great for increasing your energy and stopping you from being so sluggish. And this is also great for your metabolism again, because our bodies are meant to move.

This helps to keep, our metabolism up because we're using our body

4. Exercise most days

Okay, my next one, we're gonna bump that up a notch and talk about exercise. So exercise is where your muscles are burning or your heart rate is up. So I have movement where your body is just moving. You're doing those normal activities of daily living and exercise is where you are really working those muscles or increasing your heart rate.

So you can, again, keep it simple, start with five or 10 minutes. If that's where you're at. You don't have to make it complicated. You don't have to make it long. So I usually prefer to do strength training, yoga, or even a hiit. So something that's really gonna work those muscles and build your muscle mass.

But if you love cardio, you can do cardio in a short burst. And just really experiment with what makes you feel good. And how do you feel after you exercise? So, working out in the morning is always great, but I know not everybody's not motivated in. the morning, so you can sort of test that out. So maybe you try three mornings where you work out for 15 minutes and notice how that's spilled over into your daily life.

Did it actually energize you or were you just angry that you had to work out and that's not working for you and maybe you need to move it to the afternoon or early evening. So again, you need to experiment and you need to be consistent. I have a free five-day exercise challenge. That's just 15 minutes a day.

It is meant for beginners and you can just start exercising in small chunks every day and then build up to getting into that consistent routine. All right.

5. Charge your willpower battery

So it is something that needs to be charged up because when our willpower is not strong, we're not gonna have the motivation to make healthy choices. So think about when you are stressed, you're not gonna be making good choices. You are probably going to grab those cookies or grab those other things that aren't healthy for you.

So when our battery is drained and we're feeling really stressed, we just go back into those common habits. So if we're used to at night, just snacking on a bag of chips and our batteries are drained, that's what we're gonna do. Instead, if our battery is full, we will make better choices.

Maybe I'll have some almonds. Maybe I won't eat anything. So when that battery is full, you can start to make better decisions and have the motivation to do. So when we are overworked, when we're overwhelmed, even when we overexercise or over diet, when we get bad news, those all drain our batteries. And if you're a mom, your kids probably drain your batteries or a messy house.

So you have all these other things that can really drain your battery. So I want you to think about what charges your battery. So for me going outside and just being outside, charging my battery, just going for a gentle walk outside. So this is typically, sometimes I do walk for exercise, but a lot of times I'll just go for a walk around the block and I’ll do it slower.

So I'm not really increasing my heart rate, but I'm just getting outside. I'm just enjoying the movement. And that is a good thing to charge my battery up. So journaling, I also like to do yoga and get that deep breathing and that movement all in one charges, my battery exercise, or for me also talking with a friend every once in a while, hopping on the phone or going for a walk and talking with someone.

So you want things that allow for rest and recovery in your life. So I want you to maybe Jot dwon a few things that help to charge your battery. And really think of that. Like when you feel like you're struggling with motivation and you're like, I just don't have the willpower to do this, go back to that.

Your willpower is a battery and your battery's not charged up. So what do you need to do to charge up that battery? So you do have the motivation to make those better choices. And another thing you can do is little willpower workouts. So this is just practicing small chunks of where you want to exert some more willpower.

So let's say that when you go out to eat with friends, you always get a big dessert and you eat that. So maybe the next time you go out, you're going to just have three bites of that dessert when you're with friends and you just slowly work up. So whatever area you're looking for a little more willpower and just think of it as a mini workout.

And when you're successful with those small chunks that's gonna build your motivation and that's going to allow you to do other things. So when you're successful with this little thing, you get the motivation to try this bigger thing.

So I hope that makes sense. So to summarize those, we have to pick a balanced meal, so making sure you're having some protein and healthy fats and you really stabilizing those blood sugar. So you're not having the big spikes, two staying hydrated, making sure you're drinking enough water. Number three getting movement in every hour.

So again, this is not exercise. This is just getting up and moving your body. Number three is getting some actual exercise in. So getting your heart rate up, working those muscles. Cause when you do that, that energy goes up. You feel good. And number five is charging up that will power battery to help increase that motivation.

Choose one that will have the most impact & that you will do

So, again, start with just one and experiment. And when you start with one, I want you to think about what is going to have the most impact and is doable. So it has to have those two things. So it has to be something that you're actually gonna do. So if you think, working out in the morning's gonna have the most impact, but you're only 50% sure you're gonna do it.

Go to a different one, start somewhere else. So find something that's gonna have the biggest impact, but also that is doable for you.

Those are two huge factors when you're making a decision really about anything in.

-Coach Michele