Energy Fluctuations: learning to adapt your behaviour to stay on track with your health goals

Due to the complexity of individual lifestyles, as well as both internal and external environments, we can often find ourselves struggling to understand how we can create balance in everything we do. Rather, we follow patterns of extremes and inflexibility, over or under exerting ourselves in many areas of our lives.

The psychological components of this can vary from person to person depending on what they have experienced and become conditioned to believe their reality to be. These beliefs navigate their behaviour and actions.

You may think of energy fluctuations as a basic matter, and that our energy fluctuates only due to how much sleep we get, what we eat and how we move.

However, what if it was a bit more complicated, in that how we think and feel about our individual lives, and our lives as a society, has a massive impact.

Then let’s not forget the complications of health status (i.e., if your stress levels are through the roof or you have a condition you are working through or managing). And then there is also your life stage (e.g., relationship changes, becoming parents, middle age, retirement, and menopause for women to name a few). With all these variables in your life it can be frustrating when your best laid intentions don’t go according to plan.

Imagine, you finally drum up the motivation to make nutrition and fitness changes, you go to the trouble of getting help, you get a plan or your write your own one, you have your goals, and you are excited, ready to take action. You get going for a week, you are feeling fantastic, and then, you hit an energy lull. And because on that day it wasn’t in your plan to be low on energy, instead you were meant to be powering through a HIIT training on a calorie deficit; in your mind you have fallen off the wagon. Failed. Motivation drops, and the next few days become harder. A pattern starts to form, and you think ‘why should I bother anyway?’.

This can be what we call the “all or nothing” mindset. Going all in (such as giving 110% in a project) and not doing anything (such as having a restful self-loving Sunday) have their places in our lives, it is just deciding what is the best decision for the scenario at the time. This requires working on a balance and contentment mindset, which is not to be confused with failure or resignation (as in giving up). Contentment is a state of happiness and satisfaction, so when we are relating this to your goals it would be finding adjustments and flexibility that works in with your health plan, rather than derailing it.

In this case the wiser approach would be to be more flexible, seeing a lull in energy as a sign from the body that there needs to be some time for introspection, to assess why you might be feeling that way and what you can do to keep on your track with your goals, whilst working with the body.

Here are some action points to consider:

1.       Work on the self-awareness of your body. This involves assessing if your energy lull is an outright resistance to a certain action or situation, or whether you do really feel physically fatigued.

Once you start to take more notice of your own body patterns you will start to discover that you will be able to tell the difference when your body is fatigued, or if your resistance is causing a lack of motivation which in turn leaves you flat.

Physical fatigue can be addressed with nutrients, stress management, disease management (if you have a health condition), activity levels and sleep management.

Resistance to take action needs to be more addressed with our thoughts and emotions, this requires you to dig a little deeper to discover what is creating a lack of motivation for you with that particular situation or activity.

2.       Develop your main goal plan and then have several other plan pathways depending on how you feel. This allows you to create flexibility and options for when you need to adjust your plan on the day (still all orientated and focusing on the greater goal or purpose).

For example, your main ideal plan pathway for your physical activity may look like:

Monday: 5km run

Tuesday: HIIT

Wednesday: lower body resistance training heavy

Thursday: upper body resistance training heavy

Friday: HIIT

Saturday: 4km run

Sunday: rest day

You may go through a stressful period at work with a project and you are on a strict diet from your personal trainer. You have been going for several weeks now on your plan and then, suddenly come this Tuesday you hit an energy lull. So instead, your week may look like this:

Monday: 5km run

Tuesday: stretching and body weight mobility session

Wednesday: lower body, body weight session

Thursday: stretching and mobility session for upper body

Friday: Yoga session

Saturday: some cardio, maybe a nature hike instead of running.

Sunday: 8km walk

Here you are still moving and working on the same areas as your main plan, but you have created more of a recovery and rejuvenating activity plan as to not overwork your already stretched energy levels, but to instead create more balance in the body whilst still working towards your health goals.

As this is a large concept with many variables (like many things to do with health), these ideas will help get you thinking about how you could be working your health plans to work in the best interest for your performance, energy, health, and goal achievements.

If you are struggling and feel you could need some help and guidance with your health plans, then please feel free to contact me.