Do you feel tired all the time? Maybe you feel like no matter how much you sleep, you still don’t feel like doing anything? If so, you actually might be suffering from chronic fatigue.
One of the culprits that can cause this problem is a poor diet. It’s no secret that what you eat fuels your body and affects how you feel.
Chronic fatigue is what makes you long for a coffee right as you wake up. That’s not the only problem, it also makes you feel low on energy all the time.
It’s a complex problem that can’t be linked to any specific disease. The worst part is that it worsens as you carry out your daily activities.
6 Dietary Habits to Help You Treat Chronic Fatigue
The good news is that you don’t have to wrestle with the effects of chronic fatigue forever. By making a few dietary changes, you can get the energy that you need and we’ll tell you all about how you can do it in our post.
1. Stay hydrated
By drinking water, you won’t only combat chronic fatigue, but you’ll also help your body distribute essential molecules and other elements.
This includes the toxic and residue elimination process that can affect your internal organs as well as starting up your body’s metabolic processes. It’s no secret that being dehydrated can make you feel tired.
2. Keep a diet and emotion log
Another trick for fighting chronic fatigue is keeping a detailed record of the things that you’re eating and drinking. You should also keep a record of your mood at different times of the day.
Keeping a log has several objectives:
- Reviewing the foods that you’re eating can help you understand why you’re feeling low on energy. For an example, sugar can provide you with an energy spike, but it’ll make you crash later. Agave syrup, on the other hand, can give you energy without causing chronic fatigue.
- Understand which foods make you feel emotionally good or bad. Have you ever heard that chocolate helps your body release endorphins and makes you happy as a result? There are actually several foods that can affect your mood and it’s important to know how to recognize how they affect you. To help you better understand them, keeping an emotion log is vital.
By keeping a record, you might even find out that your fatigue is actually a symptom of irritable bowel syndrome.
3. Don’t eliminate foods from your diet without medical supervision
We know that fighting chronic fatigue isn’t easy, but you shouldn’t go about it by eliminating food groups from your diet. You should review your food and emotion records with a nutritionist.
After, you should work with him or her to create a diet plan that helps you test and see if there’s a certain food that’s causing your fatigue. By doing so, you can reduce your chances of suffering from any kind of nutritional deficiency.
Since all food groups provide you with benefit, you shouldn’t risk any kind of deficiency with medical advice.
4. Give yourself the chance to experiment with your diet
Try out foods that you don’t normally eat, but make sure that they’re known for being energy boosters. There are some combinations of carbohydrates, proteins and fats that work for fighting chronic fatigue.
The problem is that everybody reacts differently to different combinations, which means that there isn’t such a thing as a standard diet. You should also aim to try foods that you’ve never tried before. It might be hard to get used to new flavors at first but give yourself some time to get familiar with them.
5. Eat frequently in smaller portions
Eating this way will help you boost your energy when you feel tired or hungry. Stopping eating altogether will lead you to weight gain, which will turn into a vicious cycle of tiredness.
To avoid it, eat something every three or four hours. You can mix some fruit with a protein and a fat in order to make sure that you’re getting enough nutrients.
Some ideas are:
- 30 grams of cheese + 5 walnuts + 1 apple
- 2 slices of turkey meat + 10 almonds + 3 guavas
- Roast chicken + 3 tablespoons of sunflower seeds + ½ cup of cranberries
- 1 cup of yogurt + 5 walnuts + 6 strawberries
In addition to keeping you full of energy, these options are simple, economical and portable. What more could you want in a snack?
6. Avoid irritants
In the beginning of our post, we talked about needing a cup of coffee.
Even though coffee gives you the sensation of energy, it’s fleeting and will lead to a crash afterwards.
Make sure to avoid:
- Coffee. It stresses out your nervous system and creates energy peaks that worsen chronic fatigue after two of three hours. Instead of coffee, try aloe vera juice, green tea or a mint tea.
- Junk food. It’s what you crave when you get a little hungry. However, junk food raises your blood’s glucose levels and you’ll feel tired within minutes of eating. Furthermore, because junk food doesn’t nourish you in any way, you’ll also get hungry again in a matter of hours. You should opt for fresh foods such as fruits, salads or smoothies.
We have no doubt that these suggestions will help you feel much more prepared to carry out all of your daily activities. Remember that the better you eat, the better you’ll feel.
Via: EveryDayHealth | WebMD | Greatist
