If you find yourself yawning at your desk by midday or hitting snooze more times than you’d like to admit, you may wonder if there are ways to improve your energy.
We’re not talking about that 2 p.m. oat milk latte, which is probably draining your bank account and could be making it harder to sleep at night.
According to doctors, being a more energetic person may have less to do with what you drink or eat, and more to do with certain habits you need to ditch. Here are the biggest ways you might be sapping your energy — and what to do instead.
The Worst Habit For Energy Levels
The worst habit for energy levels might surprise you. According to Dr. Mary Valvano, a physician from BetterNowMD, it’s eating your biggest meal at the end of the day.
“The adage ‘eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and supper like a pauper’ is actually based in biology,” she said. “Cells in our body metabolize food differently based on the time of day. Eating the same meal at 8 a.m. versus 6 p.m. can affect our body’s ability to use it for energy.”
Eating a late meal, she explained ― especially very late at night ― can “impair our blood sugar levels and the ability to get optimal energy from the next day’s meals,” Valvano said.
By eating more at the beginning of the day versus the end, you may find that you may have a lot more energy throughout the day. That sounds like a pretty simple fix, right?
A big part of the reason eating a big meal at night is so problematic for energy levels is that it disrupts our sleep. According to Valvano, big, late-night meals mess with our body’s natural circadian rhythm. That makes it harder to get quality rest.
And Dr. Ruvini Wijetilaka, a board-certified internal medicine physician with Parsley Health, said that not getting enough sleep — especially deep sleep — will unquestionably drain your energy.
So if you’re in the habit of eating a large dinner and not getting the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per night (which many adults don’t), that’s a habit you need to break right now.
