How to Boost Your Energy

Exercise, healthy eating, laughter, and meditation may all help boost your energy. Start slowly and gradually build up your tolerance for exercise over time.

If you’re feeling down for the count, there are many ways to boost your energy and increase the amount of activity you can easily handle during the day.

Any advice on boosting your energy has to start with exercise. Most of your body’s cells contain mitochondria, a cell’s power plant. These cellular components produce ATP (adenosine triphosphate), a chemical your body uses for energy.

As an exercise session starts and builds up, your brain signals for more ATP, an important energy molecule. Since ATP is stored in mitochondria, that brain signal increases production of both. More microscopic batteries in your body translate to more energy.

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How to boost energy naturally

If you’re out of shape, start slowly and gradually build up your  tolerance for exercise over time. Be patient. Brisk walking for at least 20 minutes, ideally every day, is a good way to start. Walking counts as cardio if you move at least fast enough to be slightly breathless if you talk. Pump your arms as well.

At the same time, take an inventory of your diet. Chances are you’re not eating enough of the foods that are known to help boost energy, such as yogurt, oatmeal, nuts, seeds, sweet potatoes (yams), and fish. Oatmeal and sweet potatoes are complex carbohydrates that release energy slowly.

Other possibilities include beans, lentils, and chickpeas. Very few Americans get enough fruit and vegetables in their daily diet. Eating more of them will help you be productive as well.

Eat less sugar, which gives you a brief energy spike, followed by a dip.

You may also be short of magnesium. Eat more whole grains and dark green, leafy vegetables.

Also pay attention to timing, aiming to eat and drink at regular intervals. Make sure you’re not dehydrated, which will bring on fatigue.

Manage your sleep. If you have insomnia, you paradoxically may need to restrict the time you spend in bed not sleeping. Review your sleep hygiene and correct any bad habits like reading email at midnight.

How to boost your energy through your mind

You may not usually think this way, but you can build up and maintain physical energy if you pay attention to your psychic energy. Take laughter. It may help your immune system, relieve pain, help you connect with others, and improve your self-esteem. All of this gives you more energy.

Your brain uses a great deal of your energy, and you need to recognize this and schedule mental downtime.

As essayist Tim Kreider wrote in The New York Times: “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.”

"The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done," he wrote.

Downtime can include yoga, Tai Chi, or meditation. You can also think of those activities as mental hygiene.

If you’re stressed, you may need help managing your emotions. Fatigue is one of the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Talking with someone you trust, joining a support group, or seeing a counsellor may give you more energy to tackle the problem.   

You may be overworked. Try to set priorities and let other people do tasks that are less important or particularly hard for you.

Take control of drug use

Legal recreational drugs like nicotine and alcohol and prescriptions like antidepressants can take a big toll on your energy.

You know smoking is bad for your health. It’s also bad for your productivity. The nicotine in tobacco is a stimulant that makes it hard to sleep, depriving you of the rest you need to tackle the day.

Don’t drink alcohol, a sedative, if you need to be energetic in the hours that follow.

If you depend on coffee to get moving in the morning, try to ease out of that habit. Your cortisol, the stress hormone, naturally increases when you wake up. Adding caffeine, a stimulant, at that time will make you overly stressed, possibly causing a spike in blood pressure.

Instead, drink water first thing and aim to get some sunlight. If you’d still like some caffeine — which you can get from coffee, black tea, or dark chocolate — wait until 9:30 to 11:30 am or 90 minutes after you arise.

On the other hand, stay away from so-called energy drinks, some of which have as much as 505 milligrams of caffeine per bottle. A typical cup of coffee has about 80 milligrams.

Antihistamines, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, beta blockers, muscle relaxants, opioid painkillers, and seizure medications can make you drowsy or tired. Talk to your doctor about other options. You may be able to take the drug before bed, for example.

Other recommendations include letting in some sun, simply going outside, altering your routine, singing loudly, doing something stimulating, and stretching. The common theme among these suggestions is change and controlling tension.

If you’ve maintained good habits but still feel exhausted, you may have an ongoing health problem. Women may develop thyroid dysfunction after childbirth or during perimenopause (a blood test will reveal this). Women with heavy periods may develop anemia.

Increasing your energy is a matter of applied thoughtfulness, if not work.

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