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WHY YOU'RE TIRED ALL THE TIME (IT'S NOT LAZINESS) · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @paulthenutritionist: Welcome to no forking nonsense. The podcast that slices through the nonsense and serves you straight talking nutrition advice that actually works. I'm Paul, a registered nutritionist and your host. And every episode, I'll be debunking diet myths, breaking down confusing food advice and giving you practical science back tips to help you eat better, feel better and get your hedge back. There'll be no fads.
• 0:24
  Before we get started on this episode, I just wanted to say if you want five days of completely free coaching from me, a registered leading nutritionist, for free straight in your inbox, go to tinyurl.com/kickstarter26 and you will get five days of completely free coaching straight in your inbox just by clicking that link. So if you have enjoyed anything that I have ever said, go to tinyurl.com/kickstarter26. Let's get into the episode. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Forking Nonsense and today we are talking about something that impacts probably all of us, either directly because you are this person or perhaps your partner, people you live with, your family, kids, whatever and it's about tiredness. But specifically I want to talk about exhaustion and we've all felt it and it's something that I have experienced with many, many clients who I've worked with.
• 1:23
  Exhaustion, that chronic bone deep can't get out of bed even after eight hours exhaustion. The interesting thing is that most people think that it's pretty normal to wake up and still feel tired. They think that everyone feels like this and they think that it's just part of being an adult. I get older so of course I'm going to be tired or perhaps they think it's because they're busier and it's not. Today I'm going to explain why you're so tired, what s actually causing it and most importantly how to fix it without turning to caffeine and having 20 coffees a day or taking a three week holiday that you can t actually afford.
• 2:01
  Let s get into it. So what is exhaustion? First let me be very clear about what we're talking about here. I'm not talking about being a bit tired after a long day, I'm talking about waking up already exhausted, needing three alarms to get out of bed, then clicking the snooze button, that 3PM crash that feels like someone's turned your brain off, being too tired to exercise even though you know that you probably should, falling asleep on the sofa at eight 09:00 but then lying awake at midnight, That is not normal tiredness, that's your body telling you something that you need to listen to. And here's what most people do, they blame themselves.
• 2:38
  They think of a lady, they think that they need more discipline, then they try to push through, they drink more coffee because caffeine is the answer, they set earlier alarms, they force themselves to the gym even though they feel like death and none of it works because exhaustion is not a willpower problem, it is absolutely biology. So your body is incredibly complex and it runs on you fuelling yourself properly and recovering. And when you are chronically exhausted it s because one or both of those things is broken, either you are not giving the body the fuel that it needs or you are not giving it the recovery that it needs, or usually both. So what we are going do now is we going to break down the actual causes. And the first cause is quite common, believe it or not, it is that you are not eating enough or perhaps eating the wrong types of things, but not eating enough is a big one and it's the one thing that surprises most people.
• 3:36
  Most people who come to me exhausted are also trying to lose weight and they're eating somewhere between, I don't know, 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day and they think that they're being healthy, they think of their discipline, they're eating salads for lunch, they're skipping breakfast and they're having a light dinner Monday to Friday and all they're doing is absolutely destroying their metabolism in the process and here's what happens when you chronically under eat, your body's really smart so it's been dealing with famine for millions of years. So when you suddenly start eating way less than your body actually needs, your body doesn't think 're on a diet, it just thinks that you're starving and it does exactly what it's designed to do it slows everything down to conserve energy. Your metabolism drops, your thyroid function decreases, your body starts breaking down muscle for fuel because muscle is expensive to maintain, your C quality tanks because your cortisol which is your stress hormone is all over the place, you feel like shit, your mood's on the floor, you get brain fog and you feel absolutely exhausted all the time because your body is literally running on fumes.
• 4:42
  There's a really, really good study, and I was researching this episode, from the Minasote starvation experiment. It was in the 1940s and what they did is they took healthy men and they put them on a semi starvation diet of about 1,400, I think maybe 1,400 to 1,600 calories, I can't remember, and within weeks these men became obsessed with food. They were exhausted, they were irritable, they were depressed, they were fighting, their metabolism was on the floor, in fact their metabolic rate dropped by 40% and this wasn't even extreme restriction. 1,600 calories is more than a lot of people eat when they're being quote unquote good. So if you're exhausted and you're eating less than 2,000 calories a day, and that is a very vague number by the way, but that's probably your problem right there.
• 5:37
  Your body just doesn't have enough fuel to run properly and actually the other thing and the reason why you're probably not losing weight in addition to that is that it's very hard to maintain 2,000 colours for a sustained period of time and we've done an episode before about binge and restrict cycle and it's very likely that you're being good for maybe five days and then the weekend comes and it goes shit. But here is the kicker, when you're undereating during the day, you almost always overeat in the evening and that's because your body is absolutely desperate for energy, you get to about eight, 09:00 and you're suddenly ravenous and then you likely eat as much as you can in the cupboard and then you feel guilty and you restrict again the next day and the cycle just continues, or as I said you'll get to the weekend and again the cycle will continue. The fix is really simple but it feels counter intuitive and it's you need to eat more, not less, more. Specifically, you need to eat enough during the day so that you're not starving by dinner time and that means a good breakfast, that means a proper lunch with a good source of protein and carbs, that means not being scared of food.
• 6:49
  I have clients who come to me eating 1,400 calories and feeling like death and then when I gradually and this is the other thing, you can't just throw someone on 2,000 calories when they've been eating 1,400 calories. But if I put them on, eventually get them up to 2,200 calories, within a week their energy is back. They sleep better, they train better, their mood improves, their libido comes back which nobody talks about, they start to lose weight properly because their metabolism isn't suppressed anymore. Eating more to feel better and lose weight sounds absolutely mental but it works because your body literally needs fuel to function and your body also loves consistency. So if you're eating 1,300 calories five days a week and then the evening comes or the weekend comes and then you eat double that, your body hates that.
• 7:46
  So it's really important that we're as consistent as possible. Another cause, your blood sugar is a complete roller coaster. This one ties directly into the first cause because it s worth calling out separately, just because it s so common. If you re skipping meals, eating mostly carbs with no protein or going hours without eating, your blood sugar is swinging wildly up and down like a roller coaster and every time it crashes you feel absolutely exhausted. So here's how it works, you wake up, you skip breakfast or you have something like toast or cereal without any protein or hardly any fibre and your blood sugar spikes, then it crashes around 10:11AM.
• 8:26
  You feel shaky, feel irritable, can't concentrate, you grab a coffee and maybe a biscuit, blood sugar spikes again. Then it crashes at one or two and you finally eat lunch, but it's just a salad or maybe a sandwich with again not much protein. Another spike, another crash. By 3PM you're absolutely exhausted, your body is on its arse so you need more sugar. So you grab chocolate or crisps, get in that lovely little spike again, then guess what?
• 8:55
  Crashes. By the time you get aim, you're ravenous and you end up eating everything and then you feel like shit because you feel like you failed yourself. That is not a normal day. And that is your blood sugar just being what's the famous roller coaster? I'm meant to see part four H, I can't think of one but it is literally your blood sugar being a roller coaster.
• 9:15
  And every single crash makes you feel exhausted because your brain runs on glucose, and when your blood sugar drops your brain literally doesn't have enough fuel. So the fix is stabilising your blood sugar. And you do that with three things: protein, fat and eating regularly and fibre as well, but we'll part that for now. Protein and fat and fibre will slow down the absorption of carbohydrate. So instead of your blood sugar spike and crashing, it rises gently and stays stable and that means you don't get that kind of up and down blood sugar rise and fall and you won't get that 3PM crash.
• 9:51
  Don't get the 10AM shakes, don't feel like you need to nap under your desk. Practically that means that every meal you eat should have a good source of protein in them. So breakfast isn't just toast, it's toast with eggs or lunch isn't just salad, it's salad with chicken and some rice or potatoes. Snacks aren't just fruit, it's fruit with some yoghurt or nuts. You need to eat as consistently as possible when it comes to protein, a good fist of protein every time you eat is ideal.
• 10:22
  Usually about twenty-twenty five gs minimum, ideally for meals thirty-forty gs. And you also need to eat regularly, not all day grazing but proper meals every three-four hours so your blood sugar never has a chance to crash. I had a client recently who was convinced that she had chronic fatigue. Turned out she was just skipping breakfast, having a tiny lunch and binge eating at night. So what we did is we stabilised her blood sugar by adding protein to every meal and eating consistently.
• 10:50
  Within a week she felt like a different person. None of that chronic fatigue syndrome, just blood sugar chaos, which just created this kind of roller coaster that was just killing her for years and we just fixed it. Cause number three: you are not sleeping properly. Now I don't want to get into a whole sleep podcast because you know I could do that and I have done that, and I recommend if you're asleep as shit, go back I think this time last month. It is really obvious, but most people don't realise how catastrophically bad sleep affects everything.
• 11:23
  One night of bad sleep will impact your hunger hormones remember we spoke about those before ghrelin, which is the iron hunger hormone, leptin, which is the iron full hormone. But it decreases your leptin, which is the iron full hormone, and it makes you crave sugar and carbs and tanks your willpower. One night, I'm off bad sleep and you're absolutely on your arse. Now imagine you've been sleeping badly for months or years, your body is in this constant state of stress and most people who are exhausted all the time aren't sleeping well as well and it's all encompassing, right? But you just don't connect the dots and they think that exhaustion is causing the bad sleep.
• 12:02
  Actually it's just this kind of vicious cycle because bad sleep makes you exhausted, exhaustion makes you eat badly, not obviously exercise and eating badly and not exercising makes you sleep worse and it just goes round and round and round and it's this complete cycle. So let's talk about reasons why you're not sleeping but we'll keep it to kind of three reasons. First one, you're going to bed too late and you're scrolling on your phone till midnight. Blue light from screens, bright lights, all this aggressive information that you don't need. It will suppress your meditonium, which is your sleep hormone that makes you sleepy.
• 12:36
  So even if you're tired, you just won't fall asleep properly. Your cortisol is too high. So if your cortisol, which is stress hormone, if that's too high and it is supposed to be high in the morning to wake you up and low in the evening to let you sleep but if you're chronically stressed or under eating or over training your cortisol stays elevated at night so you're tired but you feel that kind of weird wired feeling So you can't switch off, your brain's racing even though you're absolutely exhausted. Thirdly, you are not eating enough carbohydrates. This one surprises people but carbs are not the enemy.
• 13:10
  Carbs help produce serotonin which converts to melatonin at night and if you're on a low carb diet or you're restricting carbs in the evening, you're literally making it harder for your body to produce the hormones that you need to sleep. The fix is really good sleep hygiene, which sounds really boring but it works. Done a podcast on it, get a list to it, but go to bed same time every night, look at your mornings, don't press the sneeze alarm, don't pick up your phone within half an hour, don't drink caffeine within half an hour. Even at weekends, remember your body loved routine, no screens for thirty minutes. On waking or thirty minutes before bed, read a book, have a bath, do something boring, eat your room cool and dark, don't have a TV in there, your body loves sleeping in a cool environment, so about 17 degrees, eat cards with your evening meals, so rice, potato, pasta, whatever you need, it's going to help you sleep.
• 14:00
  And if you're waking up at 3AM wide awake, that's usually a blood sugar crash, so you need to eat more during the day, and especially at dinner. Sleep is the foundation of everything. If we could put sleep into a pill, it will cure most illnesses and ailments and certainly improve our mental health. Because if you're not sleeping, nothing else works. Not your training, not your diet, not your energy, nothing.
• 14:22
  So it's really important that we get on top of that. The other cause of why you're exhausted, you're over training. So this one catches a lot of people out there, they're exhausted, they're trying to lose weight, they think the answer is to do more, they're doing HIIT classes five times a week, they're running, they're lifting weights, they're smashing themselves every single session and they just feel worse for it. So exercise is stress, remember, it's good stress but it's still stress and your body can only handle so much stress before it just breaks. So if you're under eating, not sleeping, stressed at work and then doing a high intensity exercise class or running or whatever, four or five times a week you're not building fitness, you're just fucking yourself up.
• 15:03
  Your body needs recovery to adapt to training and that's when you get fitter and stronger in the recovery, not the workout. The workout is just stimulus, the recovery is where the magic happens. But if you're not eating to fuel your training, you're not seeping to recover and if you're piling stress on top of stress, your body never gets a chance to recover so you just get more exhausted. There's a condition called overtraining syndrome and it is where you train so much without adequate recovery that your body basically shuts down. So you end up tired all the time, your performance drops, you get injured easily and you can't sleep properly even though you're exhausted.
• 15:40
  Your immune system will be on its arse and it's just savage. And the worst part is the people who end up over trained are usually the most dedicated, so they're the ones who never skip a workout, who push through when they feel terrible, who think that rest stays for the weak people but rest is literally what you need to progress. If you're exhausted and you're training hard, the answer isn't to do more training, it's to be smarter. It's fewer sessions, lower intensity, maybe a deload week, more walking, more sleep. I have clients come to me doing six workouts a week, feeling like death and I say to them, listen, we've got to drop the output and they feel much better.
• 16:21
  FormBear, they actually do less junk volumes to junk volumes where you just lift them but you're not making any progress, it's just a waste of everyone's time. They start losing weight because their body finally has a chance to recover. Your body does not know the difference between being chased by a lion and being stressed and doing a HIT class, so both trigger the same response. If you're doing that five days a week, if you imagine being chased by a lion five days a week while undereat and undersleeping, your body thinks that you're basically being chased by a lion every day, so imagine that. Okay, cause number five, being deficient in key nutrients.
• 17:00
  So this one I guess one that often gets missed because it s not obvious, you could be eating what looks like a healthy diet and still deficient in nutrients that your body needs to produce energy. The big ones are iron, B vitamins especially B12, vitamin D and magnesium. Iron is absolutely essential for carrying oxygen in your blood. If you're learning about iron, your cells aren't getting enough oxygen. That makes you feel absolutely knackered, so women are obviously particularly at risk because of menstrual blood loss.
• 17:28
  But men can also be deficient too, especially if they don't eat enough red meat, so if you're a vegetarian. B vitamins, particularly B12 and folate are critical for energy production and they're involved in converting food into energy in your cells and if you're deficient, your body literally can't make enough energy properly. I recently had a client actually who was convinced he was burned out and we couldn't get to the bottom of it, so I sent him for a blood test, turns out his B12 had been tanked and then he ended up getting some B12 injections. Within weeks, energy was back. Vitamin D is underrated, impacts your mood, your immune function, muscle function, energy and most people in The UK are deficient because we just don't get enough sunlight.
• 18:16
  So if you're low in vitamin D and you feel sluggish and tired, that could be why. And I've said in the last podcast, the one before last, the one on supplements, a little bit more about vitamin D. And I also spoke about magnesium which is involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions in your body, including energy. So it also helps you sleep because it calms your nervous system. Most people don't get enough because modern diets allow magnesium rich foods like leafy greens, nuts, seeds, whole grains and the fix is either eat more of these foods or supplement strategically.
• 18:57
  For iron that's red meat, spinach, lentils, for B vitamins that's meat again, fish, eggs, dairy. For vitamin D it's very hard but oily fish, fortified foods and as I say supplementing. And then for magnesium leafy greens, nut seeds, whole grains and sometimes dark chocolate. But if you're genuinely exhausted and you've been that way for months and you don't think it's a food problem, potentially look at getting a blood test. I can, as a nutritionist, request a full blood panel from your GP, but simple blood test, it might show exactly what's wrong.
• 19:36
  So what to do about it? So you've listened to all of that and you're thinking okay Paul, what do I do? Here's an action plan for you, step one: if you enact all the time, if you're feeling like there are times where you just can't get out of bed, you fall asleep on the sofa, you're being snappy at your partner and your kids and you just can't be able to do anything, Step one is eat more. If you're eating less than, as I said, arbitrary number but 2,000 calories a day and you're exhausted, that's your problem. Add 300 to 500 calories slowly, focus on protein and carbs, Eat breakfast, eat your proper lunch, stop being scared of food.
• 20:12
  That s your first step. Two: Look your blood sugar so add protein every meal. Eat every three-four hours. Stop skipping meals, special breakfast and stop living off coffee. Step three: Fix your sleep.
• 20:24
  Same bedtime, no screens before bed, keep your room cool, no TVs in the bedroom, eat carbs with dinner, prioritise seven hours sleep. Step four, train less. If you're doing five to six workouts a week and you're on your arse and your training's not going too well and you're not making progress, drop it to three. Focus on walking and easy movements on the other days, just give your body chance to recover. Step five, get blood tests.
• 20:49
  So check your iron, B12, folate, vitamin D, if anything is low we can fix that. To be honest, listen, you don't need to do all this perfectly, you just need to do it better than you're probably doing it now. If you can have breakfast, get one more hour of sleep, drop one workout, you will feel dramatically within weeks. All of this by the way, disregard it all if you're not drinking enough water. Two, three litres of water every day, that'll probably increase your energy tenfold if you're not doing it already.
• 21:21
  But remember your body wants to have energy, it's designed to have energy but you have to give it what it needs which is fuel, recovery, time and fluids. So that's it, that's why you are tired all the time, I'd say it's oxalate, it's usually because you're either not eating enough, you're not sleeping enough, you're not hydrated which is the first thing I should have said here. You're training too much, you're deficient in certain nutrients which is again really common or usually it's a combination of all of them. But the good news is, it is fixable, but you have to fix it. You can't willpower your way out of exhaustion, you have to address the root cause.
• 22:03
  So if you found this helpful, share it with someone who needs to hear it but if you want free five days of coaching, go to tinyurl.comkickstarter26 that is tinyurl.com/kickstarter26 or click the show notes below and you can get five days of completely free coaching for free, five days from me and it will absolutely tram tour me. I have had so many messages of people telling me that. So any questions let me know and thank you for listening and I shall speak to you next time. That s it for this episode of No Forking Nonsense where the fluff gets binned and the facts get served. If you found this helpful share it with someone who could do some clarity from an expert.
• 22:50
  That's me, by the way. And make sure you hit follow so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you want more straight talking, no nonsense nutrition advice, come and find me on Instagram at Paul the Nutritionist. Until next time, eat smart, feel human again and stop falling for the forking nonsense. See you next time.