Top 5 Tips to Energize Your Life
Special Excerpt from Stephen Adele's The 21-Day Ultimate Energy Plan
LIFE. IT CAN BE HARD.
We've all been there—overworked, stressed, mentally and physically burned out.
To the point where exhaustion reaches a peak.
Day in and day out, you feel like you've "hit the wall"—too tired to work out, dragging through the day, and continually exhausted even when you first wake up.
We're overdoing it. It's just a fact of life, and we need to live with it, right?
WRONG!
 " The 21-Day Ultimate Energy Plan is a set of simple but powerful ways to restore your energy and create a new zest for life. A plan that, if followed to the letter, will yield greater focus, increased happiness, and endless energy." Mental and physical exhaustion is the body's natural response to physical exertion, emotional stress, poor eating habits, or lack of sleep. Normally, we reach for a quick fix, depending on "fake" energy like coffee, soda, candy, sugared energy drinks, or pills like ephedrine.
The problem is, those stimulants provide a temporary boost—lasting an hour at best. Worse, after they wear off, your energy levels crash—leaving you even more exhausted.
You work hard, play hard, and take your life seriously, and as a result, you are continually exhausted. For many of us, life may look good on the outside—a respectable job, a decent family, a proud home life, and really nothing to complain about.
Yet, if you take a closer look at many of us, you will find that we are continually exhausted, struggling with our body weight, questioning how we feel about ourselves and our self-images, and just plain aren't having fun any more. (Not like when we had the endless energy of childhood.) We find we don't have the zest for our work… we've lost the juice to
participate in our hobbies... we're constantly low on energy and making our friends and family feel the same… and we're flat out too tired to do the things we love.
Interestingly, it is the internal drive and determination that made us who we are today
that's become our greatest obstacle. You see, the eating, sleeping, and living habits we've picked up along the way have become the seeds to our problems.
Simply put, the inside of us, which is being robbed by these poor habits, is a direct reflection of the outside of us and how we feel. The constant stress we undergo causes a cascade of negative effects in our bodies. Besides feeling burned out, your metabolism shuts down, as does your digestion and the absorption of nutrients. You feel run down, get headaches more often, feel depressed, and can't think quite as clearly.
It's time to rescue, revitalize, and rejuvenate yourself. You need a source of restoration. Something to relieve your daily exhaustion and give you a real boost of energy that will last. A way for you to get more out of life. To reach your full potential. A way to stop stress and to experience more joy, increased happiness, and boundless energy.
That's why I wrote The 21-Day Ultimate Energy Plan and why I'm sharing the top five energy-enhancing tips I've discovered here in this article.
Because I want to share with you a very effective system. One which has taken me years of trial and error to develop. This system is a set of simple but powerful ways to restore your energy and create a new zest for life. A plan that, if followed to the letter, will yield greater focus, increased happiness, and endless energy.
So here it goes: the top five energy-enhancing tips:
 "Taming your mind, by focusing your thoughts, will normalize your central nervous system and quickly restore your natural energy levels."  Energy Solution No. 1: Calm Your Nerves
"Burning the candles at both ends" is a popular expression used whenever you find someone who's relentless in their willingness to work long, hard, stressful hours. Unfortunately, if this someone is you, and you continue to live in this type of stressful situation long enough, several health problems are sure to arise.
First, your adrenals (which are a pair of kidney bean-shaped glands that lie on top of our
kidneys) become overactive and hyper-vigilant, and as a result, they begin to pump out
the "stress" hormone—adrenaline—irregularly.
Next, your sympathetic nervous system uses up its calming neurotransmitters in the brain. Eventually, all that is left is an exaggerated, unbuffered surge of sympathetic neurotransmitters, which leave your central nervous system in a constant state of "fight-or-flight."
Typically, once your body enters into this state, shallow breathing, pounding heartbeat, feelings of impending doom, and even chest pains and anxiety attacks tend to follow. What's happening? The scientific explanation is simple: your automatic nervous system no
longer gets the message to swing back to its parasympathetic ("normal") state to buffer the
adrenaline, leaving your body highly susceptible to complete physical and mental exhaustion.
And turning to sugared foods, coffee, carbohydrate-laden snacks, prescription drugs, or
other stimulants will only make matters worse. At this stage, finding ways to release emotions and discover outlets to calm your central nervous system is vitally important.
Coincidentally, the human body is not like other operating systems—unlike a machine made of hard steel and mechanical parts, the human body is a delicate system that cannot go full-speed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year—even if you desperately want it to.
Therefore, to get ourselves off the "hamster wheel" and slow down our vicious working
cycles, we need to learn how to focus on simple, time-efficient ways to calm the central nervous system—before it's too late and we completely burn out.
When you calm your central nervous system, you will:
- Restore emotional stability;
- Feel relatively safer and more secure;
- Stop obsessing, worrying, and feeling anxious;
- Overall, generally feel happier and better adjusted.
You may not necessarily be having panic attacks (yet!), but you may recognize yourself as someone who loves the adrenaline-rush lifestyle or works 60, 70, 80 hours or more a
week. If this is you, then the most effective way to tame your "burned out" nerves is to learn how to "meditate."
Since most driven people run screaming from the room at the mere mention of meditation, I like to refer to this practice as "clearing your head" and think of it more as an exercise in mental relaxation. It's about finding a time each day to put the brakes on your fast-paced life.
You don't have to sit on a pile of nails, wearing a turban, and chanting for an hour a day
while staring at a candle. The truth is, you can practice relaxation and clear your head literally anywhere at anytime.
Taming your mind, by focusing your thoughts, will normalize your central nervous system and quickly restore your natural energy levels.
You can practice these simple techniques in a quiet room of your home, your office, or even in your car. The key is to find a time, each day, which you can commit at least two minutes to.
 "Eating five to six meals a days will supply your body with the 'chemical energy' to literally burn bodyfat and become healthier and more energetic." Energy Solution No. 2: Eat...All Day Long
From burgers to Chinese to pizza to barbeque to chili dogs to deli sandwiches... trying to decide what to eat every day typically sends most people straight to the nearest fast-food restaurant rather than making thoughtful choices.
For millions of people, each day starts and ends the same: wake up, skip breakfast, and go for a cup of coffee instead; drive to work (drinking another cup of coffee); sit at a desk, snacking on chips, sodas, and likely drinking more coffee; take a quick lunch break at the nearby fast-food palace; snack on the cookies coworkers brought in to the company's kitchen; drive home, sipping on a soda; sit in front of the TV with a bag of chips or a Ho-ho; eat a carbohydrate-filled dinner; and off to bed later on, but not before snacking on something sweet like ice cream or a bowl of cereal.
Following a daily "eating" schedule similar to this is the surest way to increased weight (at least ten pounds a year according to statistics); diminished energy levels throughout the day; severe to mild depression; heart disease; diabetes; and possibly even certain forms of cancer.
The problem is, for most people, feeding themselves healthy, balanced meals is simply not a daily priority. Whether or not you eat like this, or you don't eat that much at all, the scientific truth is your body is continually striving to maintain balanced blood sugar levels. When you skip meals or don't eat a balanced meal at least every three hours, your blood sugar levels drop. (If your blood sugar were to fall too low for too long, you would slip into a coma.) When you eat the wrong foods—trans-fatty or high-sugared foods, for example—your blood sugar levels skyrocket.
Following this path plays havoc on your mental and physical state of well-being as well as causing general feelings of fatigue. Plus, if your blood sugar remained too high for too long (for too many years), you'd likely eventually develop Type II diabetes (like several hundreds of thousands of people do each year).
While you may not always be interested in taking time to eat, you can rest assured your
brain is very concerned with having its tightly regulated supply of fuel (in the form of glucose), which comes from food. When you do not eat, your body assumes you are in a time of famine and sends a "red alert" to your adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol hormones. (It's worth mentioning that at this same time, an alert is sent to the body's metabolism as well, slowing it down and making it harder to burn calories and thus making it more difficult to lose weight.) Adrenaline then releases emergency energy stores from sugar stored in your liver and muscle, and the cortisol hormone proceeds to break down your muscle mass to turn it into sugar for fuel. Now, your body has a surge of sugar floating around.
The influx of excess sugar into your bloodstream triggers the secretion of a hormone
called insulin, which immediately performs its primary function to shuttle and store this sugar away. Unfortunately, unless other places are in need of it, the likelihood is that it goes directly into the fat cells to be stored. And as long as you go without eating, your brain will continue to send the "red alerts," releasing this adrenaline -> cortisol -> insulin cycle of breaking down and storing away sugar. Each day your body goes through this same blood-sugar roller coaster ride.
Eventually, this vicious cycle is responsible for feelings of lethargy, depression, sugar cravings, and can even lead to diabetes, heart disease, weight gain, and muscle-mass loss.
Eating is a profound solution to this energy crisis because it balances your blood sugar and
regulates your insulin and other hormones. If you regularly skip meals, restrict food intake (to lose weight), or eat a diet high in processed, junk, or "fake" foods, you'll feel an immediate and dramatic improvement in your overall health and vitality, a subsequent drop in bodyfat, and a startling shift in prolonged energy levels simply by switching to a diet of real, whole-food, balanced meals—about every three hours, while you are awake.
Making the commitment to eat regular, balanced meals which consist of proteins, complex (low-glycemic) carbohydrates, "good" fats, and colorful vegetables will be the most important solution for improving your mental and physical state you can make.
When you eat well-balanced meals more often, you will:
- Restore and balance blood-sugar levels
- Banish food cravings
- Lose weight, permanently
- Replenish glycogen levels, for prolonged energy
Eating five to six meals a days will supply your body with the "chemical energy" to literally burn bodyfat and become healthier and more energetic. To make it simple to eat a balanced diet of proteins, complex carbohydrates, fats, and vegetables, the following lists of foods are an easy guide to use, whenever you prepare a meal (simply choose a portion—about the size of a deck of cards—from each category):
- PROTEINS (fish, chicken, eggs, lean beef or bison, turkey)
- COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES (brown rice, potato, sweet potato, oats, whole-wheat pasta, whole-wheat bread, fruit, beans)
- VEGETABLES (broccoli, carrots, salad, spinach, cauliflower, peas, green beans, corn, tomatoes)
"Good" FATS (avocado, sunflower oil, olive oil, sunflower seeds, peanut butter)
NO-NO's (white flour, sugar/dextrose/fructose, hydrogenated oils)—more on this is discussed in The 21-Day Ultimate Energy Plan.
If, however, you find you don't always have time on your side, yet you need to eat, you can try using a protein supplement or meal-replacement nutrition shake. These powders are
convenient and provide your body with all of the essential nutrients of a whole-food meal without all of the hassle of shopping for, preparing, cooking, eating, and cleaning up after a regular meal. Think of meal-replacement/protein shakes as fast food for the 21st century. They are extremely convenient (you can mix one up in less than a minute!) and work exceptionally well to fulfill your daily nutritional needs.
My favorite meal replacement/protein shake is called Eat-Smart®. I helped create Eat-Smart, and it's as delicious as it is nutritious. Eat-Smart contains healthy, whole-food ingredients and absolutely no bad stuff like fructose, maltodextrin, hydrogenated oils, or aspartame. The best part might well be that you can choose from "dessert-like" flavors that taste like Cookies & Cream, Strawberry Cheesecake, and Double Vanilla Ice Cream. My favorite is Strawberry Cheesecake. (If you'd like to learn more about Eat-Smart, please visit isatoritech.com.)
If you decide to try it, email me and tell me which one is your favorite favor. You can reach
me at Stephen@RealSolutionsMag.com.
 "...while you might believe you don't have enough energy in the morning or after your work day is over and are so exhausted and tired you don't feel like working out, you really don't have enough energy simply because you don't exercise." Energy Solution No. 3: Exercise More
When it comes to working out, does this sound like something you would say… I've tried exercising in the morning, but I seldom feel like I have enough energy to make it through my workout. And if I wait until later in the day, after a stressful day at work, I'm just
plain beat and too tired to work out. How come I never feel like I have enough energy to exercise...?
If you feel like this, you are not alone. In fact, you are like the hundreds of thousands of other people who feel this way every day.
The interesting thing is that your reluctance to exercise is a great example of the perceived problem—your lack of energy to exercise—being the ultimate solution itself.
See, the truth is, while you might believe you don't have enough energy in the morning or after your work day is over and are so exhausted and tired you don't feel like working out, you really don't have enough energy simply because you don't exercise.
It's been scientifically proven that incorporating an exercise program into our lives actually gives us more energy. It doesn't take it away, like many people are led to believe. It's been well documented, through hundreds of scientific studies, that exercise, specifically resistance exercise like weight training, reduces stress, improves body composition (e.g., fat loss and muscle gain), improves mood and overall feelings of happiness, and increases energy.
And as you know, when we have an abundance of energy, we get more done in the day (which should include working out!), and it's been proven to improve our performance in the workplace.
At the very least, even moderate levels of exercise can help improve the quality of sleep—so we wake up with a renewed sense of fresh, positive energy, ready to take on the day ahead with more enthusiasm.
For me, I've found there's no better way to start the day than with some vigorous exercise. At 5:15 a.m., I wake up and head downstairs to my home gym or drive to my nearby fitness center to train with weights for 30 to 40 minutes and then I perform cardiovascular exercise for an additional 30 minutes.
By the time I get to the office, by 7:00 a.m., I'm fully awake and alive—not drowsy and waiting for another cup of coffee to kick in (like so many millions of other Americans do).
Exercise is my absolute favorite way to start the morning: it provides an instant "lift" to my mental state, and when I'm done, I feel healthy and invigorated.
Why? Because it's been proven that whenever you work out, your body releases a cascade of chemicals called endorphins and dopamine. Endorphins are internal opiates that reduce the sensation of pain and heighten pleasurable emotions. Dopamine is an excitatory, "feel-good" neurotransmitter.
Most people, including me, absolutely love the feeling they get when endorphins and dopamine are released in the brain. It's a "natural high" that makes them feel more alert, positive, and energetic… and it can do the same for you!
When you exercise more often, you will:
- Improve your physical appearance;
- Achieve greater clarity of mind;
- Enjoy deep, restful sleep;
- Detoxify the body;
- Increase energy, vitality, and a sense of well-being.
The bottom line: exercise, combined with proper nutrition, plays a vital role in our energy levels, and if followed with some sense of ritual, at least three times a week (research has recently indicated preferably six days) will allow you to always live life at peak energy levels.
Simply put, exercise is the ultimate energizer.
 "One of the most simple but powerful things you can do to add more energy to your life is simply to drink more water." Energy Solution No. 4: Cleanse Your Body
One of the most simple but powerful things you can do to add more energy to your life is simply to drink more water.
Seriously, whether you work a sedentary job (e.g., sitting at a desk all day) or are continually on-the-go... whether you work out one day a week, three days a week, or every day, water is vitally important to sustain your body's most basic physical and mental requirements.
The truth is that water is involved in initiating a cascade of over 30,000 processes within the body every waking moment of your life. Water is essential for everything from digestion to breathing to thinking clearly to enhanced energy levels to workout performance.
Here are the facts about water you might want to consider (including the amount your body requires, daily, just to "live"):
- On average, you'll lose two cups (16 oz) of fluid through normal perspiration.
(Surprisingly, this does not include the added water loss resulting from perspiration
during any weight-training sessions, intense cardiovascular exercises, or sporting
activities.)
- Another two cups (now making a total of 32 oz) are exhaled as water vapor during
your normal breathing.
- Together, your intestines and kidneys use about six cups a day.
- That brings your total daily water usage to an entire 10 cups just to sustain life.
Now, if you're still wondering whether water is really all that important…then I suggest you mull these facts over for a minute and ask yourself that question again!
Several important studies have clearly shown a decrease in daily water consumption leads to general fatigue and headaches. This is because a slight deficiency of water causes a disruption in the body's electrolytes (such as sodium, potassium, and chloride) and, therefore, has a direct positive or negative effect on our brain functions and energy levels.
Surprisingly, most people make the mistake of drinking water only when they're thirsty. This is a big mistake.
See, thirst is a sign your body is already slightly dehydrated! The importance of being properly hydrated—that means drinking water at all times during the day, not just when you're thirsty or perspiring—cannot be overlooked.
Even a slightly dehydrated body—a mere four percent decrease in water loss—can lead to significant deficits in your ability to think clearly, as well as your physical performance and overall energy levels.
When you drink more water throughout the day, you will:
- Avoid dehydration, which leads to a lack of performance, lethargy, and headaches;
- Increase workout performance;
- Improve digestion of food;
- Boost metabolism (and burn calories);
- Think more clearly.
To avoid dehydration and the negative ailments that accompany it, and ensure you are
optimizing your muscles' contractive output, the most recent scientific evidence shows that we should consume at least eight to 10 tall glasses of water every day… especially during and after our workouts!
So, if you want to live life to the fullest, you need to drink up.
 "Studies have also shown that by enhancing the connection between the chemical messengers in the brain, by using key amino acids found in Energize, you can better regulate your overall mood and sense of well-being." Energy Solution No. 5: Supplement Your Diet
Vitamins, minerals, and amino acids are the catalysts for virtually all cellular activity within your body. Their importance cannot be understated. Without the right levels of these vital nutrients, our bodies' cellular functioning (the ability to walk, talk, lift a weight, and breathe) would not operate adequately. Whenever we lack any of these essential nutrients, it becomes nearly impossible to keep our energy levels sustained long enough to perform even the most basic functions of life.
Basically, this is what happens to those who simply come home from work, too tired to do anything but plop in front of the TV. Eventually, allowing the body to function in this deprived state causes premature aging or, to be more scientifically correct, cellular degeneration—which, as the name implies, leads to an early death.
In truth, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids are to human life as sunlight is to most plants. Add in water, and you create the "perfect" environment for optimal growth. Yet one without the other will surely lead to depletion and eventual disease.
Since the human body is incapable of creating most of its own vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, they have to be supplied from an external source—which in the past was primarily from fruits, vegetables, grains, and various meats.
However, over the last 100 years, farmland around the world has been over-cultivated, and the soil has been depleted of the vital nutrients it once contained. Add to this our daily hectic schedules, combined with a "less than perfect" diet—due to a nation addicted to fast foods and processed snacks—and you'll find the "typical" person comes up at barely half of the vitamins and minerals required to sustain the most fundamental functions of cellular life.
Unfortunately, the truth is, even if you harvested food from a garden in your backyard, ate six "perfectly" balanced meals a day, and kept your diet free from fast foods, you could still fall short on your vitamin, mineral, and amino acid needs because our food supply has become inadequate.
For this reason, supplementation can play a critical role. Nutritional supplements fill in what is missing from our diets yet are required by our bodies. While nothing can substitute for good nutrition, make no mistake about it, supplementing your diet with specific vitamins, minerals, and amino acids can protect, rebuild, replenish, and detoxify the body, thereby allowing it to perform optimally and prevent cellular depletion.
That's why, in a minimal effort, it's very important to take a multivitamin/mineral formula. A once- or twice-daily formula can typically provide your body with the essential nutrients it requires.
One formula in particular I like using, and would highly recommend, is the Mega-Men® multivitamin/mineral brand. It's made by GNC, and I've found it's of the highest quality and has worked well for me for many, many years. There is also a formula, made by GNC, for women, called Women's Ultra-Mega®.
Additionally, there are certain amino acids which can aid the brain in "chemical energy"—known as neurotransmitters. Essentially, when your neurotransmitters stop "talking" to one another, the result is you're left feeling zapped, burned out, and lethargic. In many cases, it can even lead to mild to severe depression. Evidenced by the millions of Americans who turn to pharmaceutical drugs like Prozac® and Zoloft®, many people experience these types of symptoms.
Unfortunately, rather than attempting to explore the possibility of supplementing their
diets with specific amino acids such as L-tyrosine or taurine, which have been shown in
scientific studies to "assist" neurotransmitters to function more optimally, they have resorted to drugs.
Studies have also shown that by enhancing the connection between the chemical messengers in the brain, by using these amino acids, you can better regulate your overall mood and sense of well-being. Because vitamins, minerals, and amino acids work synergistically in the metabolic and enzymatic systems of our bodies, we need to take them in certain amounts and in specific combinations.
For that reason, here are the nutrients I recommend; the combination in which to take
them; and the specific ratio needed to work with your body's natural ability to produce safe,
long-lasting energy. The specific nutrients and amounts are found in a proprietary supplement formula called Energize™.
When you supply your body with the precise combinations of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids found in Energize, you will:
- Improve immunity and cellular regeneration;
- Be more mentally alert and focused;
- Feel better and have a more positive outlook on life;
- Zap typical "midday burnout" (no more "hitting the wall"!);
- "Turn on" your brain's neurotransmitters and improve your overall mood;
- Adapt to stress more easily.
For more information about Energize or for ordering information (if you haven't tried it yet but would like to), please visit www.isatoritech.com or call us at 1-866-688-7679.
 "Within one week, you should start feel an abundance of energy every day, more confidence, and the ability to positively influence others around you." The Energy Solution—Put it Together: Cultivate Self-Fulfillment in
Energy by following YOUR Plan
Now that you have these top five tips to make the simple yet powerful changes in your energy, my hope is it will be much easier for you to see how you can change your life.
Within one week, you should start feel an abundance of energy every day, more confidence, and the ability to positively influence others around you. Throughout this article, I've shared with you the solutions that can turn around even the most burned out person and revitalize your energy, without turning your life upside down.
There is, however, one additional important energy solution I purposely withheld. The ultimate energizer in life is finding your purpose. Without a purpose, the pressures and painfulness of life can lead virtually any person to give up hope.
With a purpose, you can easily rise above whatever life throws your way. Simply because you know that your life has a purpose that is above any challenging event or obstacle and that you are
important not only to yourself but to all those you come in contact with.
For me, I tend to see my life as being a constant effort to learn as much as I can to help
other people live better, healthier lives. In the process, I am also trying to develop my own
habits, so I can also enjoy most of life's pleasures while taking good care of my mental and physical health, as well as my family's.
I don't need to tell you that life is tough. Often outright difficult. Sometimes unfair and even cruel. I am not suggesting you have to pretend that your life is not at all difficult and that this Energy Plan will turn your life around for the better forever.
What I hope you are able to realize by creating more energy in your life is that life's challenges do not need to lead us to feeling hopeless. They shouldn't.
If you know and understand your purpose, your life will be filled with more energy, happiness, and a true sense of meaning. And when you take better care of yourself, your sense of meaning and purpose in life increases. When you follow these simple solutions, you will live a more energetic, positive, and rewarding life… and there will be other people around you who will want you to help them do the same.
In closing… I would like to personally thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share my insights and energy with you. My hope is, in some way, these exercises are able to make a difference in your life. Keep in mind, though, strengthening your energy is a lot like building a muscle—you must practice the same exercises, consistently, and over time, the muscle will strengthen.
The more you practice the energy exercises, the stronger and more positive your energy
levels will develop. Soon, you'll find yourself living a life with an abundance of energy and
limitless boundaries.
I encourage you to email me, anytime you want, and let me know how you are doing. You can reach me at: Stephen@RealSOLUTIONSmag.com.
I can't wait to hear from you!
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