Latest / No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK / Why am I tired all the time? I'm doing everything right
Transcript
- 0:00@paulthenutritionist: Hello and welcome to No Forking Nonsense, the second most listened to nutrition podcast in The United Kingdom. And we've got one goal to answer your nutrition questions with no nonsense. To send your question in email podcastthenutritionistuk dot com. Give me your name, what your problem is, what your question is, a little bit about yourself and we'll get your questions answered. Let's get stuck in to today's question.
- 0:24Paul, I'm 34, I work from home as a graphic designer and I'm three for three on the things everyone says are healthy. Got a fridge full of protein yogurts, I batch cook, I walk 10,000 steps a day but I'm absolutely shattered by about two-three pm every day and I end up grazing my way through the afternoon to stay awake. I m not overweight but I feel sluggish and foggy and I can t work out why because on paper my diet looks fine. Is it my blood sugar, Should I be cutting out carbs or am I missing something obvious? I m starting to wonder if I m just one of those people who s permanently tired.
- 1:05That question s from Hannah in Bristol. Right, so let s sort this out because I promise you, if you are one of those people who is permanently tired, then there s something going on there and my first port of call is to explore that. But I m wondering whether you re actually an underfuelled person and that s very different and very fixable, because if you re permanently tired, as in like we ve tried absolutely everything and you re still absolutely enacted and there s probably something medical going on, then we should explore that. However, we're just going to disregard that and look at it purely from a kind of fueling perspective. Because as a nutritionist, if somebody comes to me and they are knackered all the time and this happens a lot, then there are certain kind of places we can go, if you like.
- 1:50So here is what I think is going on, I say I think because it s very hard to answer this question because like with many people, it depends and if you ask someone, I don know exactly what you are eating, for starters. So I m going to have to vaguely answer this question with a lot of presumptions here with the information that we have. Your energy isn t crashing necessarily because something is wrong with you, it s likely crashing because of how your day is built. You re working from home, so I put money on your breakfast and your lunch being probably lighter and a little bit grazier than you realise. A protein yoghurt here, maybe something at your desk here and there, maybe a protein bar, and on paper you are looking at it and you are thinking well this looks fine, but it may not actually be enough to carry you.
- 2:40Often what I find when people don't have much energy or they are finding that they are dipping in energy come two-three o'clock is one of the following things happens. Either and usually they will end up snacking later on. Usually the first thing is that they are not eating enough for breakfast, so they will just have a little protein yoghurt or they might have a small bowl of something and therefore they end up, obviously as the day goes on, finding themselves hungrier. Or what can happen is they are having too much carbohydrate first thing in the morning, they might have a bowl of porridge and few seeds on top of it, that's what I see a lot, I have porridge and seeds every morning. Well that's all well and good but again, where's the protein and we probably aren't having enough fibre here and what happens is, as I've said probably a million times now, every other episode if not every episode, is that when we have a very high carbohydrate breakfast, what inevitably happens is your blood sugar level is going to rise and then what happens is it falls and that's where we end up either snacking or come lunchtime, we end up craving more carbohydrate.
- 3:56Now what could be happening with you is you are essentially grazing, which isn t necessarily a weakness, but you are grazing to try and keep yourself awake, which is again really normal. So here's the first thing, I want you to stop reaching for the afternoon fix and start front loading your day. A lot of people feel, certainly in the week and when we are working from home, if you are not working from home, a lot of people really 'wow' during the week and a bare example of eating 'wow' is cutting out carbs. For some reason we feel like eating healthily is no carbs for breakfast, we just have protein and then lunch we have a salad. That's not enough because what's going to happen is you're going to end up, as the day goes on, getting hungrier and hungrier and then what will happen is, come the evening you will probably have a big dinner because you are absolutely starving and that's where the snacking comes in and if you have a large dinner, and I once had a client who was having 1,500 calories for dinner and therefore obviously he is not hungry for breakfast in the morning.
- 5:00So I just said to him, said tonight what I want you to do is to have a much smaller dinner, half the portion that you d usually have. Low and behold he woke up, had a decent breakfast, we ve completely transformed his energy, job done. I want you to start front loading your day, so a proper breakfast and a proper lunch, both built around a solid source of protein and some fibre and also a source of carbohydrates. You get the fuel in early and then the afternoon will stop falling off a cliff. You asked about blood sugar and I guess you are half right, because if your meals are relatively light on protein, fibre and fat and heavier on carbohydrate, then you are likely to get a spike and then a crash and that crash will feel exactly like the fog and the slump that you are describing.
- 5:50But, and this is important, the answer is never cutting out carbohydrates. Cutting carbohydrate usually makes the tiredness and the fog a lot worse. The answer is balancing those carbohydrates, so we put protein and fibre alongside your carbohydrates and that energy releases slowly and steadily instead of spiking and dropping. Here is the one almost everyone working from home misses, grazing never actually satisfies you. I am going to say that again, you grazing when you are working from home and you go into the kitchen with your hands on your hips because you are bored and you procrastinating and you are staring in the cupboards and you are looking in the fridge, that grazing, that little nibbling that you do in the afternoon is never going to make you fall and you end up staying tired and foggy for the whole time.
- 6:40Whereas three proper meals will beat that constant snacking for energy every single time. Ensuring that you are having a decent breakfast, a decent lunch, a decent dinner and a couple of snacks in between dependent on your goal, ensuring that all of them start with a source of protein, but we are also not avoiding carbohydrate and we are certainly not avoiding fibre, and probably most importantly, you are ensuring you are drinking at least two-three litres of water a day depending on your size. That there will stabilise your energy and I can guarantee you that. Then there s the stuff that isn even food, as I said. We need to talk about hydration, because foggy and sluggish is classic mild dehydration People at home just forget to drink all day.
- 7:28The amount of times I say to people how much water you drink in a day and they go I m having about three cups of tea and then I have a glass of water, I just forget. How do you forget? Get yourself a bottle of water from Amazon, that s my steel bottle of water, doesn t leave my side, and it s a litre and I will fill that out two, three, if I m in the gym and I m training, sometimes four times a day. You don need to do that but I want you to aim to have two litres of water a day minimum, then whatever other fluids are on top, really important. So your caffeine, a coffee at 8AM is probably not getting you to 2PM and if you have one in the afternoon to push through, it will probably wreck your sleep, and obviously poor sleep is going to feed straight back into tiredness.
- 8:12Daylight as well, get outside for that walk earlier in the day rather than later. You said you're doing 10,000 steps, want you to get up, go outside before you do anything. Okay, not before you do anything, I want you to have a big glass of water, then go for a little walk, then come home and have your coffee. That morning light does more for your afternoon energy than anyone gives you credit for. At the very least, certainly because it's summer right now in The UK, I want you to just stand in your garden and stare at the sun, just for ten minutes, before you do anything.
- 8:44Maybe drink your water while you're doing it. That's really important because that again is going to impact your energy levels. What we are trying to do here is we are trying to tick off the basics if you like, are trying to tick off those foundations and once we have tackled these things, then you will find that hopefully in time your energy increases. But before you cut a single carb out, Hannah, in this regard, here is your order of play. Get a proper protein and fibre breakfast and luncheon, do not avoid carbohydrates, drink more water than you think you need and get some daylight early and possibly sort your caffeine out.
- 9:22As I ve said before with caffeine, there are many benefits to drinking coffee and I am a coffee drinker but what I won t be doing is having coffee post 02:00 because it layers. If you do all of those things for a week, I would bet you that that 2PM slump will lift on its own. You're not broken, you're not lazy and you're definitely not permanently tired, you are just probably not fuelling the day properly yet, so if you fix that, then it's likely that your energy flows. If you try all of those things for the next month and nothing changes, I want you to reach out to me because there's other things that can be going on and I'll look at your foods and we'll see what you're eating and we'll see if we can get to the bottom of it. At the very least, as a nutritionist, I would like to write a letter to your GP and say these are the things that we've tried, I'm recommending a full blood panel, we'll get that full blood panel, I can review it, and then we're off to the races.
- 10:19So I hope that's helped you Hannah, and I hope that's helped anyone else who's listening. If you would like your questions, answers on this here podcast, email podcastthenutritionistuk dot com that's podcastthenutritionistuk dot com and I shall speak to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of No Forking Nonsense. If you would like to get your question on a future episode, email podcastnutritionistuk dot com. If you would like a free meal maker resource, click the top link in the description and don't forget to follow me on Instagram paulthenutritionist.
- 10:57Chat to you next week.