[00:00:37] Vesna: Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna. Today I'm gonna talk about. What I would fix if you came to me exhausted, what are the things that I would look at first? So if you came to me exhausted, the first thing I would understand is this, is that you're not just tired, you're overstretched you're busy, you're responsible. You can't just stop. You can't leave your life, you know, and pack up for six months and just focus on yourself, right? You have responsibilities, you have things that you need to do, so you need something that works with your life, right?
[00:01:07] One of the biggest. Issues that I see for women is that they don't look for the right support because they can't stop, right? They have to keep going. They have to keep running their businesses, looking after their families. There is a lot that they juggle, and I think a lot of the information out there is like, particularly when you are heading into burnout and that exhaustion is like, oh, you really need a break.
[00:01:27] You really need to step back and well, that is true. Sometimes we can't always do that. Right? And so I really wanna speak to that, right? If you know you can't. Walk away. But also the solution which you are currently doing is to just keep pushing through. Right. That I'll slow down later. I'll wait till this passes.
[00:01:45] That is also not going to work. 'cause that is going to push you into burnout. So you don't need advice that tells you to just slow down or quit your job or do less, right? That's definitely not gonna work for you. And you don't have a motivation problem, right? You are [00:02:00] motivated, you are disciplined, you're capable. You don't lack willpower, and you don't have a time problem, okay?
[00:02:06] You've got a lot on, but you're very efficient, you're very organized. You're very productive. So exhaustion isn't about. Not having enough time. Exhaustion is about capacity, having reduced capacity, so the more tired and stressed that we are, our capacity shrinks. So you think about those days that you get a lot done the same 24 hours in a day, but there's some days you get a lot more done and some days you get less.
[00:02:29] So capacity on one day is a lot more capacity on the other is a lot less. Okay? And when it's less, we start to feel stressed and urgent and flustered and anxious and overwhelmed.
[00:02:40] So, when I work with women, I wanna look at what is the biggest return they're going to get with the least, demand with the smallest actions. So what are the quickest wins they're going to get? Because I know that implementing some simple habits can really start to shift your energy in the way that you feel without being so disruptive to your life.
[00:02:58] Okay? Without feeling like another thing to do, without feeling overwhelmed, without feeling too much. So the first thing I would fix and I would address is regulating the nervous system. So when you look at where you are in this place, the reason why we become so exhausted is because of this, you know, high levels of stress over time and stress hormones, which change other hormones, which break down key systems in the body.
[00:03:21] They create. low energy or exhaustion, high stress and anxiety. They make our metabolism slow down so we start gaining weight. So until the nervous system is regulated, there's no way anything is going to get you moving, because when the nervous system is activated, your body thinks that you are immortal danger.
[00:03:43] And when our stress response thinks that it is designed naturally to forget about everything else in the body, not everything, right? We're still breathing and our heart's beating, but we're not digesting. Our hormones are not being balanced. Our fertility goes offline. Like there's things that are not [00:04:00] important when you're in mortal danger.
[00:04:02] And so it makes sense then to go, well, okay, let's get the body out of mortal danger so everything can get back online, otherwise. All of your energy and resources are being hijacked for the nervous system. So it hijacks your energy, it hijacks your sleep, your digestion increases anxiety, increases chances of depression, and it blocks your recovery.
[00:04:22] So I often will say that trying to throw supplements and extreme diets into the mix. Um, we're just trying one little habit or a breathing exercise. They're all great, but they're not going to regulate the nervous system, okay? And so therefore, it's like having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake, and you're not really moving anywhere, right?
[00:04:41] So you, you're trying to put all this good stuff in, but the nervous system is just locked on. Okay? And so that needs to be regulated and relaxed in order for your body to do at an extremely fast pace what it naturally does, which is. Go back to homeostasis, which is like heal itself.
[00:04:59] So one of the ways that I do this in my programs is really simple. No caffeine on an empty stomach Caffeine is going to drive up that stress response, particularly. That's the first thing that you do. You wake up in the morning, you beeline to the kitchen, and you have your coffee. That's definitely going to create a pattern for the day with a nerve system just.
[00:05:18] Stays locked on. The other thing that's really. bad for increasing cortisol levels or stress hormones, which then locks on the nervous system is looking at your phone as soon as you open your eyes in the morning. Okay? This is the worst thing that you can do because there's gonna be text messages on there, notifications, and bad news, right?
[00:05:38] If you've got any news apps on your phone, it's never good. So really leave that till later. Allow your body to kind of start waking up. Without being frightened, you know, without being shocked. So leave that, get an alarm. Something else if you need to wake you up, keep the phone away, not in arm's reach.
[00:05:57] And you know, doing [00:06:00] something as simple as that, having your breakfast first, coffee later, not grabbing your phone, that will already start to. Relax the nervous system, reduce those cortisol levels so that they're normal in the morning. So cortisol is naturally meant to rise. That gives you energy, gets you outta bed, gets you going, but it's those peaks, right?
[00:06:18] That when it goes up, you start to feel, oh gosh, I'm already under pressure. Stress, rush, rush, rush, urgent, you mental bandwidth shrinks your capacity shrinks, your hormones are up, and you're just kind of operating at that pace, which while it feels like things are happening. It's really the least productive state that we can be in, right?
[00:06:36] And so just a few simple tweaks like that can start to change that stress hormone profile in the morning. The next thing I would look at is restoring mitochondrial energy. So with high stress over time, the mitochondria, which are the cells that produce our energy, so we have trillions of them, right?
[00:06:51] They're our superpower. They produce loss of energy, but with stress, they go into hibernation mode. So our. Energy production drops, we feel more tired. We've got a lot to do, so we try to push ourselves. That creates more stress because we don't have the energy to naturally and easily and effortlessly execute on those tasks, right?
[00:07:11] So we have less energy, less resilience. Our stress tolerance drops. We become more stressed and anxious, and we don't have that mental energy or mental clarity. So chronic stress will affect mitochondrial function, so you start to feel tired and your stress tolerance drops. And so one of the most simplest ways to start restoring the mitochondria are so we are looking, again, we're still downregulating or regulating the nervous system, but we wanna put good nutrition into the body, like a healthy breakfast, having healthy meals throughout the day.
[00:07:41] And again. The trends out there, the diet are extreme, right. Fasting and carnivore and keto, like they are all great for different phases. Not all of them, but You know, they can be helpful in different phases of life, but where you are right now,
[00:07:58] you really need to flood the [00:08:00] body with nutrition.
[00:08:01] Okay. And so you need to make sure that you have a healthy breakfast with proteins, with carbohydrates, which help to again, relax the nervous system, get in the mitochondria back online. And also something very simple is. Going for a walk in the morning as the sun is coming up. So just going for a sunrise walk and that way you'd intentionally get the sunlight into the eyes, which starts to reset the circadian rhythm, which is really important for the mitochondria.
[00:08:27] Okay, so light is important to restore mitochondria, the cells that produce an endless amount of energy for us.
[00:08:36] then I work on restoring other key systems that are a part of resilience and high performance and, you know, increasing capacity and bandwidth. And so we're looking at blood sugar level regulations, regulating the HPA axis or the stress response system, gut health, liver health, thyroid health, all of that.
[00:08:55] But what I wanna go into a little bit more is about mental bandwidth this is where you'll get the. The biggest gains because when we look at stress, we look at our life and our demands and our responsibilities, and we're like, stress is coming from my life, but It's what happens. Yes, there's certainly things that are very demanding in our life and very challenging in business and in life and in health and in family.
[00:09:20] But it's how we handle, like, how we perceive that, what we do with that information internally, right? Do we catastrophize? Do we worry? Do we find it hard to let go? Do we overanalyze? Like all of that stuff that's happening in our head is what's actually driving more stress in the body. So the quickest gains that we can have is by easing that up.
[00:09:41] So increasing our mental bandwidth. So mental bandwidth looks like, so when we have high mental bandwidth, it's those days where you just feel like you can just get so much done. You just feel like you've got so much time. At the end of the day, you're like ticking things off your list. You're like, wow, I've just had such a [00:10:00] productive day.
[00:10:00] You didn't feel urgent. I didn't feel rushed. Had time for a conversation, had time for a bit of a laugh. You're driving home, you're feeling pretty relaxed in the car traffic. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's not a big deal. Right? So really those high bandwidth days is where you have massive amounts of capacity to get everything done without feeling stressed.
[00:10:19] The low bandwidth days are the exact opposite. It feels like you've got so much to do in such a short time. It's urgent. There's pressure. You gotta get your coffee in the morning. The woman's taking too long to make your coffee. You're driving through the traffic. You're like, oh my gosh, the traffic today is insane.
[00:10:36] you just feel like you're in the back. Right. You're not as productive because you're not actually getting much done because you don't have that mental bandwidth or capacity. Right. So it shrinks. So we get urgency, we get stress, we get anxiety. We get pressure, we get overwhelmed. We like spinning our wheels, but we're not really getting as much done.
[00:10:53] The high bandwidth days is when we get a lot done. The low bandwidth days? No, it just feels like there's a lot more on those days because it's, we have a smaller container. Okay, hopefully that makes sense. So obviously we wanna get to those days of really high bandwidth, which is a natural state. Mental bandwidth collapses when your system is under chronic stress.
[00:11:14] Psychological stress, but also physiological stress. So missing meals, eating too much sugar. Fried foods take away not adding the right nutrition to your body. Blood sugar level fluctuations will really mess with mental bandwidth. So really, you know, taking care of your nutrition is gonna be a really big key because what you eat matters for your mental bandwidth, right?
[00:11:37] So because our blood glucose levels, because our brain feeds on glucose. What you are balancing. Your nutrition with during the day. So, you know, proteins, carbs, and healthy fats, how often you're eating, what you're eating, um, the sources, right? The source of your carbohydrates or the source of your protein, like the quality of your food is really gonna [00:12:00] matter for your blood sugar levels, and it's really going to matter for your brain.
[00:12:03] It's gonna matter for your mental bandwidth, your concentration, your mental energy. And so that's the difference between you know, these anxiety states with, as our sugar levels drop, we get into these kind of, it feels like anxiety, And we just don't have that mental bandwidth. Okay? So therefore, we're not operating at our highest potential.
[00:12:23] So nutrition matters, extreme kind of trendy diets, and not for this place, right? You really need to flood the body with nutrition and then sleep. Sleep to increase your mental bandwidth. So don't sacrifice on this one. Like be really regimented and strict on this one. You know, the power of eight before 10 is what I often talk about, like getting eight hours, going to bed by before 10:00 PM.
[00:12:46] That's the key, right? Those, those times are the key windows of deep sleep that are going to help to process your emotions. It helps to reset your brain, so you start with a clean slate in the morning. So much more happens inside the body, but if you are not getting that proper sleep, that is just not happening, right?
[00:13:04] You're gonna wake up and there's still mental noise, and you're still feeling under pressure, right? So it hasn't cleaned the slate overnight. So really, really important. So, you know, making sure that you are looking for the right nutritional advice. You're not going for these trends, and you're getting that sleep to increase your mental bandwidth.
[00:13:22] It's gonna make a hell of a difference to the way that you feel very, very quickly. Mm-hmm.
[00:13:26] And then the final thing, I'll just say like we do, I do focus on repairing key systems, but initially what you are going to feel from just those habits that I mentioned and what to focus on, you're gonna start to feel that your energy's increasing, you feeling less stress, there's less anxiety. You feel like you've got more capacity to get more done.
[00:13:44] There's a sense of, I can do this right? I'm on top of this now and I'm not feeling so overwhelmed by it. What's the next thing? And so then we have to do the deeper work to repair those systems that are controlling your energy and stress tolerance, right? So just increasing your [00:14:00] capacity all over to handle everything that you have on your plate and not just handle it, but really kind of take you to that next level.
[00:14:07] Like really increasing your performance. So whatever you've got on your plate, you can get through it without feeling completely exhausted and burnt out. Oh, without feeling just spent at the end of the day, right? You know, having energy at the end of the day as well.
[00:14:21] So this is you, you're feeling at that stage and you're like, I don't know what to do first. I would start on those habits that I talked about, you know, no caffeine on an empty stomach, getting some sunlight in the morning, having a healthy breakfast. Having a healthy breakfast within 20 minutes of rising.
[00:14:35] So breakfast before caffeine. Don't look at your phone. Very simple things. Okay, but stacked on top of each other will make a difference. So I'd love you to leave me a comment below, like what, have you already tried to fix your exhaustion? Have you tried extreme diets and fasting or supplements in order to shift it?
[00:14:53] And it hasn't? And what would be the first habit that you would try from here?
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