Hello!

Why am I so tired?

Part 1

This was a question I asked myself a lot.  While I can't give you definitive answers as to why you may be so tired, I can tell you what helped me and maybe that will spark your interest enough to continue your search for energy.

First things first, put your damn phone away!  You heard me!  Let me tell you what, this was the HARDEST thing for me.  Taking supplements, getting exercise, eating veggies, all helped, but one of the major things that helped me was getting away from the screen.

• I thought I was getting some relaxation time in while the kids were at school or after they were in bed, but I was actually getting sucked into another world where I didn't have to think or move for a while, also I was getting dopamine hit after dopamine hit.  If I was having a particularly stressful day or week the more I wanted to escape into fantasy land of TV.  That meant the later and later I stayed up wanting to destress by watching shows.  What did my body actually need?  SLEEP!
• Because I was watching shows I wasn't getting sleep.  Also, my brain was activated by the fun stuff I was watching plus all the fun stuff blue light does to the brain.  This made it so that falling asleep was difficult, so I took medicine to help me sleep.  The medicine that I took to help me sleep made me groggy, so I wasn't fully awake until later in the day.  When it took me longer to join the land of the living i realized how behind I was on my never ending to-do list.  Because I was behind on my to-do list I stayed up later to try and catch up, so I was stressed, so I watched shows or scrolled to relax and......you get where I'm going....talk about a snowball effect.  So, moral of the story is turn off your damn phone!
• I actually worked with my therapist to come up with a schedule where I could still get lost in my shows every day without effecting my work or sleep.  It sums up to this: 
  1. I watch a show on my phone while I workout at the gym.  If I'm having a yucky day and can't go to the gym I watch an hour in the morning.  Next, the kids get one hour of tablet time in the evening while I usually make dinner, now that is my tablet time too.  I now meal prep crockpot meals the best as I can soI get a full hour to watch my shows.  
  2. After the kids go to bed I read a fiction novel.  This is actually an idea I got from Dr. Tara Swart in an interview she did.  Fiction activates a different part of the brain and allows a level of escapism, which is why I love my shows so much, but reading a physical book or kindle doesn't have the blue light effect on the brain.
  3. Journal.  I used to be really big into journaling when I was single and didn't have kids.  You know, when I had all the time in the world to do whatever the heck I wanted.  I thought that to journal meant I had to write down all of the thoughts and emotions of the day and get it out.  Nope!  I mean, I can if I want to, but really now all I do for my journaling is a few things: what my day consisted of.  First I stared with a simple bullet point synopsis of my schedule for that day, then over time I added in things I wanted to see tends of like food and beverages I ate, temptations I had, etc.  After my schedule I do a quick gratitude dump.  Some nights it's just a couple of things like I'm grateful for my bed because I love to sleep, I'm grateful for food.  Then somedays gratitude comes spewing out of me like water from a fire hydrant.  The point is that no matter how hard the day is try to find gratitude for it.  This actually helps shift your brain from pessimism to optimism and helps produce more happy hormones like serotonin.  This in and of itself will help decrease the fatigue the following day.
  4. Pray or meditate.  I am a spiritual person, I'm also a religious person, so both apply to me.  Whether you believe in a divine power or the power of the universe it actually comes down to the same basic principal: putting your whole heart and soul desires out into the ether and believing you will be heard followed with silence where your mind and heart are still, allowing your clear, open mind to receive any answers or hints.
  5. Turn off the lights, make sure all distractions are off and go to sleep.  Unless you have a medical need, try not to take meds at bed that may make it harder to fall asleep on your own and make it harder to wake up on your own in the morning.