When I was chronically exhausted, I felt like I was missing my life.
I spaced out when I wanted to tune in with my children.
I felt exhausted when I wanted to feel connected with my husband.
I struggled with feeling fatigued when I wanted to focus on work.
I was beyond smoked when I wanted to be smoking my workouts.
I know how it feels to be a high-performing woman who struggles with being tired all the time. You do not have the energy to live, love, and achieve your full potential.
Doctors wanted to prescribe me medications that would improve my symptoms but would not fix the real cause of my low energy.
Finally, I got on the path to transformation, which included a thorough investigation of all of the reasons I was so darned tired. With this information, I was able to transform my lifestyle habits. I changed my self-care, my energy, my sense of peace, and ultimately, my life.
You are a high-performing woman on a mission to love and serve and achieve in big, meaningful ways.
You have got goals to get.
You need the energy to get them. And you certainly do not need energy drinks in your life to make you more tired.
Let’s explore some of the reasons why you are so tired.
Energy drinks contain: Caffeine
One afternoon, with shaking hands, I poured myself my fifth cup of coffee that day. My heart was racing, and my body was trembling, but I did not feel awake. I lost my brain in a fog of fatigue, and although as concerned as I was about how much caffeine I was consuming, I could not survive
without it.
I just wanted to feel awake. Surely one more cup would do the trick?
It did not.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but caffeine is a lie, my friend.
A caffeine deficiency is not the root cause of your low energy, and it isn’t going to fix it, either. It makes your low energy worse.
Caffeine puts stress on the body. Not only is coffee a diuretic that contributes to dehydration, but the tannins in coffee also keep your body from absorbing minerals, which are critical for your body to function properly.
When you drink coffee with a meal, it can speed your digestion, causing “gastric emptying,” which honestly does not sound awesome and can lead to inflammation and nutrient deficiency.
Caffeine is a stimulant that causes the liver to release glucose into the blood, contributing to blood sugar imbalance.
Further, taking any stimulant induces a low-grade stress response. The body perceives a stressor, so it releases cortisol.
Have you ever noticed that, after a stressful event has passed and you calm down, you feel tired afterward? That is what you are causing to happen in your body when you have caffeine. Once the stimulant and stress hormones return to normal levels, you will feel more tired. This cycle leads you right back to the coffee pot for a boost.
You may feel like caffeine is the only thing keeping you going right now. Caffeinated or energy drinks might seem like the only solution for you, but trust me, it is not. Energy drinks make you tired and more tired than you were before you take that sip. It may feel like energy drinks provide a lot of support for you. Believe me, sister, I feel you.
I am not suggesting that you should initiate your energy revolution by giving up caffeine. But maybe cut back. When you try cutting back, start to notice how your body feels energetically throughout the day. Notice the dips and rises in energy and how your body feels overall. Of course, change at first is always challenging, so take it step-by-step to make it easier for your body.
And as you learn more about what is causing your fatigue, and once you make some changes that heal the root-cause issues that are killing your vibe, you will not be dependent on caffeine anymore. å
Energy drinks contain: Sugar
When I was in high school, I used to give up sweets for periods every year. And while it was inconvenient, I never really missed them.
Fast-forward to adulthood, where the stress and overwhelm of being a single Mom in the Army had me clinging to any source of dopamine that was readily available. It meant including a stash of chocolate that I hid in my underwear drawer so that my kids would not find it.
I am a fan of enjoying an occasional treat on a
special occasion. When I had no energy, I thought that surviving the day was a special occasion that merited a sweet treat as a reward.
And that was part of the problem.
When you have low energy, you may think that sugar will give you an energy boost. And while that’s partially true, that boost is short-lived and puts stress on your body, which only makes you more tired.
Further, if you crave sugar, that could mean that you have other underlying issues. These could include insufficiency in your body’s stress response system or bacterial or fungal overgrowth in your gut. Both of which also cause low energy levels.
When you consume sugar, your pancreas produces the hormone insulin, which breaks down the sugar into energy used by your cells. Refined sugar induces a strong insulin response, which “burns” the sugar quickly, causing a quick sugar high followed by a sugar crash.
This low-blood sugar, or hypoglycemic state, is stressful on your body and causes cortisol to release into your bloodstream.
This process leads to sugar cravings, which may cause you to repeat the cycle: sugar consumption, insulin release, hypoglycemia, cortisol release, sugar craving.
Repetition of the same cycle subjects the body to chronic stress, which can have devastating long-term health effects – one of which is chronic exhaustion.
You can transform your energy by cutting sugar out of your diet. These sugary energy drinks make you more tired than energized. Energy and caffeinated drinks contain a lot of sugar to give you a sugar rush, which feels like energy. If you struggle with emotional eating and sugar addiction, check out an article that may help with that: https://strengthandshieldcoaching.com/why-do-we-crave-when-were-stressed/
Energy drinks give you: Chronic dehydration
You are high-performing and health-minded, which means you have probably heard the advice to drink half your body weight in ounces of water every day and to look for your urine to be mostly clear as a sign that you’re properly hydrated.
But you are high-performing, which means you are probably also busy.
Busy women, even ones who know they should be drinking more water, do not always have time or do not always remember to drink more water.
That being said, chronic dehydration – even mild dehydration – can cause you to feel tired. And on top of that, energy drinks can make you tired and dehydrated. Energy drinks contain caffeine which is a diuretic. Diuretics cause an increase in the production of water and salt expelled from the body as urine. Further dehydrating your body and causing you to feel more tired.
Not being well hydrated causes your blood to be thicker, which causes your heart to need to work harder to move blood around. This causes blood circulation to be less efficient and can keep your body from functioning normally. If you are chronically dehydrated, you subject yourself to the cumulative effects of less efficient blood circulation, feeling tired all the time.
It’s unlikely that mild, chronic dehydration on its own has caused you to feel as tired as you are. But it may be one factor of many that are contributing to your fatigue.
Drinks that can make you more tired: Alcohol
I am sorry to tell you this, girlfriend. Alcohol makes you tired.
You are chronically exhausted. And probably chronically stressed. I feel you.
Stress and overwhelm were factors that contributed to my being tired all the time. I often relieved stress with a drink. Or three. Between the stress and the physiological effects of the alcohol, I felt like I would never physically feel anything other than tired.
Alcohol is a diuretic that contributes to dehydration, which makes you tired. It also puts stress on your liver, which makes you tired.
Alcohol depletes Vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, B12, and K. It also depletes copper, magnesium, potassium, and zinc. It decreases zinc absorption and increases urinary zinc excretion. Since zinc is necessary for the production of the stomach acid that starts the process of breaking down food, this can lead to muscle cramping, poor digestion, nutrient deficiency, and fatigue.
Alcohol also raises blood sugar and can exacerbate a yeast infection, which can be in your gut without your recognition. Yeast overgrowth in the gut will cause fatigue and sugar cravings, among other things.
When you struggle with exhaustion and constantly feel tired, eliminating alcohol can help.
It doesn’t mean that you never have a celebratory or social alcoholic beverage again, but rather that you cut alcohol out of your life while you’re investigating and healing the underlying issues that are causing your chronic fatigue.
Changing your habits will help change your energy
I know how it feels to be a high-performing woman who struggles with being tired all the time. You just don’t have the energy to live, love, and achieve your full potential. And you do not have to choose caffeinated or energy drinks to keep you going. Energy drinks make you tired in the long run. You will crash, and you will burn out quicker than if you did not drink in the first place.
Finally, I got on the path to transformation, which included a thorough investigation of all of the reasons I was so darned tired. With this information, I transformed my lifestyle habits, self-care, energy, sense of peace, and ultimately, my life.
You’ve got goals to get.
You need the energy to get them.
With investigation and a willingness to make some changes, optimal is possible.
