Are you feeling tired all the time? If you want to look good, feel good, increase your energy and lose weight without cutting out carbohydrates, putting your life on hold, or spending tons of time in the kitchen or the gym, you're in the right place. It all comes down to what you put in your body and I've got good news – Carbs are back on the menu. Now, I know that we get told so often to cut out carbohydrates. It's pretty much the first thing that everyone goes to, but we actually need carbohydrates to repair our hormonal system. In order to repair the adrenals, we need to give them carbohydrates. The adrenals will not relax until it has carbohydrates. It will not be able to use body fat for fuel, we won't be able to generate energy until the adrenals are happy. If you could see the to-do list of what the adrenals do all day, you would be amazed. They do a lot of things like give us energy, help us with concentration and focus, help us with burning carbohydrates, getting energy from our food, helping us to sleep, put calcium into our bones; they're very busy. We need to nourish the adrenals and the place to start is to eat more carbohydrates. With resetting your hormones, this is where I'm going to give you a little bit more, do a bit of a deeper dive here so you can really look at what this is like as a first stage to repairing your adrenals.
Carbohydrates will take the pressure off the adrenals, especially if you're feeling tired all the time. Reintroducing carbs will allow you to get energy from your food and to use body fat for energy. It will prevent sugar cravings and highs and lows during the day. We need to activate our adrenals in order to feel like our best self again.
So this is the starting place to double your energy in seven days, this is what I tell my clients to do. If you're already panicking about adding carbohydrates back on the menu, and I know some women are, stay tuned for a case study at the end!
My first tip? Eating within 20 minutes of waking. Super important, because the idea of breakfast is to break our fast. So many women don't do this, and that's common because we're busy. Our mornings are busy. We do all these other things except eat. We may exercise. We may get the kids ready. We may even start work really early. We don't eat maybe until we get into the office, or we don't eat for a couple of hours or an hour. It's too long and probably one of the main reasons why you're feeling tired all the time.
What's happening in that process is our sugar levels are dropping. Our body's already switched its fat burning mechanisms off, it's now reverting to burning your muscle for fuel. It's going to set you up highs and lows for the rest of the day. It's going to trigger anxiety and overwhelm. It's going to basically make you have more cravings during the day.
My number 1 tip for anyone feeling tired all the time
You must eat within 20 minutes of waking. It's an absolute golden rule that cannot be broken. This will completely change your energy for the rest of the day. Then, obviously, it depends what you have in the morning. I normally recommend a smoothie. I have a smoothie every day. I recommend it to my clients. It's not the only thing that you can have for breakfast, but it works well for busy women because we can just blend it up and go. A smoothie which has a good amount of protein, carbohydrates and has healthy fats in there as well so it keeps our sugar levels stable all day and prevents cravings, and it's also really good for brain fog as well. A lot of our brain fog is because our blood sugar levels are off balance.
Here's the recipe that I use for my M20 – morning smoothie
You could also have porridge. You can do eggs in the morning. You can do different mueslis, as long as they don't have sugar, honey, maple syrup and things like that.
Do not have coffee on an empty stomach. It's another common thing that I see in women. They will generally wake up and have a cup of coffee. Make sure you have your smoothie first because having that coffee is going to activate your stress response immediately. We want to do everything to reduce the stress on the body, so your adrenal/ stress system can heal. Having coffee first thing in the morning is going to activate and drain your adrenals even more and, again, cause stress for your body.
End your day right. We need to add carbohydrates to our meal at the end of the day. When you do this, you will have a really good night's sleep when you add carbohydrates to your dinner. Basically, if you're having dinner by about 7:00 pm and you're in bed before 10:00, add complex carbs to your dinner, things like pumpkin, sweet potato, beans like kidney beans or chickpeas, or lentils, or brown rice. Nothing refined. Nothing like white pasta. Adding the healthy carbohydrates, about a quarter of a cup to half a cup with your dinner, what it will do is keep your blood sugar levels stable, it will nourish the adrenals.
You'll have a really good night's sleep. Your adrenals will be repairing while you sleep. Your body will still be burning body fat while you're sleeping, and you'll wake up, and you'll feel refreshed and you'll feel rejuvenated. The body needs carbohydrates during that night time while we're sleeping in order to do everything that it needs to do. All the self-repair processes that happen while we're sleeping, the body needs carbs for that. If it doesn't get it, it goes back to our muscles and it breaks it down, and then we wake up tired. We wake up struggling to get out of bed. We wake up with overwhelm and anxiety. This is what I start my clients on in the first week to double their energy, and it absolutely works. I'm always getting texts from my clients in the first week saying, “I feel so much better already.” It's so simple, but it works.
Do you have FOOD RULES?
For those people who have a lot of food rules that are Paleo, or cut out carbs a long time ago, one of my clients, Michelle, she had her food rules. When I told her she needed to eat carbohydrates, she was like, “No. I'm not adding carbs back into my diet.” I had to get her to trust me on this one, and it was a success. She had basically come in with chronic symptoms, with gut problems, and adrenal fatigue, anxiety, and weight that she couldn't shift. All of that disappeared. She's absolutely converted. She's got a lot more energy. She lost 4.5kilos. Her mood is more stable. She feels calmer and happier like she can handle anything that comes along. So I know that if you have your own food rules, I hope that you will just try this anyway.
CASE STUDY – Busy Executive with ‘strict food rules’ heals from adrenal fatigue and stops feeling tired all the time – by adding carbohydrates
Another one of my clients was doing the right thing. She was eating pretty well. She was meditating twice a day and had meditated for years. Still felt tired, still felt irritable. Was snapping at her kids. She runs her own company. She was using alcohol as a crutch at night, and was drinking every night to wind down because of the day that she'd had. We made these simple tweaks to her diet. We put her on the adrenal reset plan, putting the carbohydrates back in and repairing those key systems. She had quite a big difference in her symptoms. First four days in she doubled her energy, and that was just the first week. In the end, she had a lot more energy. She felt a lot more available to her work, to her kids, to her family. She had a lot more boundaries. She was a lot more present she said. She lost 5 kilos, her mood was more stable, and she didn't have any more PMS which she said was a miracle.
For those of you in business, self-care can increase your bottom line. Another one of my clients, Clare, basically didn't know what self-care was. She always put her business in front of herself. She didn't like to really cook. She wasn't going to spend all night in the kitchen. Through very simple tweaks she was able to do things that were nourishing her body, following some self-care routines that were taking care of her, and through this process, she said she had a lot more clarity, a lot more creativity, as well as a lot more focus. She was able to get through a lot more in her business. She wasn't getting so flustered and overwhelmed. And she ended up having the best month in her business ever since she had her business. It was a really big a-ha moment for her that when she takes care of herself that it impacts her business, too.
When our system is repaired, if we've got excess body fat the body will detect it, it will start to increase the metabolism, and it will reduce your appetite. That's the body's mechanism of getting you to burn fat and lose weight. You don't need to be living without carbohydrates. In fact, we need to add carbohydrates back into your diet in order to heal your body. Don't be living in the gym. I have people who come with adrenal fatigue because they exercise way too much. It's putting way too much stress on the body. Instead of getting to where you want to get to, you're getting further back into your symptoms. There's a delicate balance.
Given everything you do in a day, it’s normal to feel exhausted and overwhelmed, right? Actually, the more we do, the more we can do when we’re healthy. Exhaustion, overwhelm, brain fog or anxiety comes when there is an imbalance. When your schedule is packed you have to cut some corners and those corners end up being your wellbeing. You stop taking care of yourself. It happens so innocently you don’t realise. My intention is that when you try these very easy shifts that you will be inspired to make yourself a priority.
Here's some extra reading about your hormones and how you can fix yours –
Burnout Symptoms – Nothing I'm Doing is Working!
I know that we've covered a lot. I know that it's been a lot of information to take in. And I'm not sure what brought you here, whether you're here because you want more energy, you want your spark back, but you feel like you don't have the time or the discipline to do it. Or maybe you feel like you've tried the right things, and you're not seeing the results. Or because you don't want to look or feel like this or worse five years from now. So the obvious question is, how do you make all of this work so you can feel better and on top of things quickly?
I always say we have choices. There are two options.
OPTION 1: You can do it, as I say, the confusing and overwhelming way, which is the way I did it many years ago, which is researching, trialling and testing different things and feeling frustrated.
OPTION 2: Or you can follow a simple and strategic way where you get fast results to your best self, so you can feel and reach your highest potential.
I guess you know which way I want you to go. I want you to go the simple and strategic way. If you do, then I'd love to invite you to sign up for my next online workshop (it's free).
