From talking to clients and people on socials it seems like we are in an energy crisis. Everyone wants more energy, consistent energy across the day or across the week.
None of us want to be crawling to the finish line (the weekend), but many people seem to think that the way to get that extra energy is to implement intricate, difficult routines and expensive tools and supplements.
Luckily, that is just wrong, and the real answer to sustained, high level energy comes down to a few simple adjustments.
In this episode we are going for an extra practical lesson to help you elevate your energy and keep it more consistent with 6 simple strategies that you can easily imbed into your life.
In this episode I share:
- Why it seems like we are in the midst of an ‘energy’ crisis
- The few elements to consider when discussing energy
- Why a sleep routine is paramount to setting yourself up for success the next day
- The important aspects to consider when it comes to sleep
- The 4 different stages of sleep
- How to monitor and manage your sleep
- The way to find bring consistency into the\inconsistency of life
- The rules and schedules to abide by to maintain consistent eating
- A key thing to consider when trying intermittent fasting
- The ways I see people use intermittent fasting incorrectly
- Why a high protein breakfast is important
- How to handle having a good breakfast if you don’t like eating breakfast
- How soon you should get sunlight into your eyes after waking up
- The importance of a brain break and what that should involve
Key Quotes
“Irregular sleep patterns can lead to social jetlag.
“One of the biggest downfalls I see with high performers is that they are very all or nothing with behaviours and their mindsets.”
“You can bank sleep, but you can’t catch up on sleep debt.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess (00:04.846)
Today I wanted to give you an extra practical episode to help you elevate your energy and keep it more consistent. Now these strategies that I’m going to step you through I use with most, if not all of my coaching clients. So today I wanted to give you something that you can walk away with and have confidence to apply with ease ASAP. Now the best thing about these strategies is that they are likely to be simple tweaks
to your current routine or something that you’re able to easily embed without much extra effort or energy.
The best thing about these strategies, they are likely to be simple little tweaks to what you’re already currently doing, or they’re going to require minimal energy or time to be able to embed. I believe a lot of them are really just about self-awareness and giving yourself the space to be intentional with them and also feel how you respond. Now, before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to mention the high performance profile quiz. This quiz has been designed
for motivated, driven and ambitious individuals to pinpoint their unique high-performance profile so they can walk away with tailored steps on what they need to work on to elevate their overall energy and their success. Now before we dive into the specifics of today’s conversation, I wanted to set the stage. When I survey clients, whether that’s on my socials, in workshops or speaking sessions
Jess (01:45.168)
and speaking with my clients one-on-one, it really seems like we are in the midst of an energy crisis. Everyone I speak to either wants more overall energy, wants more consistent energy across the day, or wants more consistent energy across the week, and they don’t wanna be crawling to the finish line, AKA the weekend, like they normally are. Now, this quest for additional energy
complex and most of the clients and people I speak with really think that it boils down to intricate difficult routines and expensive supplements but this is not the case. In reality the path to sustained high-level energy comes down to a few simple adjustments. This is what I like to call the marginal gains to your daily routine. Now the best thing about these marginal gains is that they
into transformative change as you layer them in and you continue with them consistently over a period of time. I want you to think about it this way, if you make small tweaks that you improve your energy by even 2% by the time, think of it this way, if you make small tweaks that each improve your energy by even a few percent by the time you’ve been able to layer in all six and consistently
you’ve potentially doubled your energy levels. It really is the little things that often make the biggest differences, and that’s what we’re focusing on here today. Now, today we’re going to be looking into six easy to embed habits or behaviors that can deliver real impact and gains in your overall energy. This comes in…
When we’re talking about energy, there’s a few elements to consider. It is your overall energy levels, as well as that consistency pace. It’s getting rid of that afternoon crash and burn, and it’s also having a more consistent energy level across the week. Now, one of the biggest downfalls I see with high performers is that they are very all or nothing with their behaviors and their mindsets. And so my number one piece of advice here today,
Jess (04:10.548)
often throughout the podcast is about being intentional and finding your consistency. Now next week I’ll be covering off specifically what you need to eat to perform and how to fuel your brain and get the most out of yourself but this week I wanted to explore a range of behaviors that you can optimize or embed to enhance your overall energy levels. So let’s get into the six simple strategies.
the six strategies. Up first I wanted to talk about a sleep routine. Now I believe a sleep routine is absolutely paramount to setting yourself up for success the next day. Sleep is such a huge factor when it comes to how we feel, perform and function. Sleep is our main form of recovery which we also call macro recovery and it’s absolutely essential when we’re considering both physical and
recovery. When we move through sleep, when it comes to sleep there’s a few really important aspects to consider and I will cover off sleep in a separate episode because it really does deserve its own.
When it comes to sleep, we need to consider both the quantity as well as the quality. Now I will do a deep dive on sleep in another episode, but I really just wanted to introduce the idea of a sleep routine here today.
When it comes to sleep, consistency is paramount. And the thing with sleep is you can bank sleep, as in you can break it up and you can bank it each day, but you can’t catch up on sleep debt. So if you’re in a sleep debt for days, weeks, months, or years, that’s not something you can catch up, but you can be more strategic with how you accumulate your total amount of sleep. Now, that’s considering the quantity piece. When it comes to quality,
Jess (06:12.438)
When it comes to quality, we move through sleep cycles and we toggle between a few different stages each night.
In total there are four different stages of sleep and there are three that we spend the majority of our time in each night With the first one just being really a transition phase The three main phases of sleep are light sleep deep sleep and REM sleep Now our light sleep we spend about 50% of our time in this phase Our deep sleep we spend 20 to 25% of our time
there and a minimum of about one and a half hours and our REM sleep we ideally want to be spending about two hours there each night. Now I know what you’re thinking, how do we know how long we are in these different sleep phases? And that’s a great question.
If you have wearables like an aura ring or woot that can help give you that information. But outside of that we’re not really able to collect that data. We can go off how we feel, but if you are someone interested in this space that may be something that you do want to consider. I personally have an aura ring myself which I have found to be very interesting just from an awareness and a behavior piece and I have a lot of clients that I recommend and that we use that
their behavior. The other thing is…
Jess (07:46.339)
Um.
When it comes to the quality of your sleep, this helps piece information together. There really is nothing worse than going to sleep, being tired, and then not being able to sleep. Now, this is where the sleep routine comes in. Just as you would do a warmup before you go to the gym and lift weights and you prepare your body to do that workout, a sleep routine is really preparing you to go to sleep by winding down. Now, the composition of what you do
in your sleep routine can very much vary from person to person, but there are a few considerations that you may want to have. One is your exposure to light. Now you’ve heard about blue light, screens, TVs, phones, all of that. That is an element of light. But when we’re talking about falling asleep, we want to be promoting melatonin production, which is our sleep hormone. Now the thing with melatonin production is that all light blocks melatonin production.
want to consider how lit the rooms and the house are. So in that one to two hours before bed if we can start to dim the lights and if we can start to reduce our time from screens so we’re putting all screens away at least an hour before we go to bed. Some other things you may wish to include in your sleep routine might be dimming the temperature of the room as our body temperature does drop when we go to sleep. We can also do this by having a hot shower or a bath to
which happens there is once we get out, our core body temperature then drops as well. Now the number one factor which can prevent people from going to sleep are an inability to turn off our thoughts. That’s where implementing something like reading a book, nothing too educational or inspirational, just a really easy read preferably from a hard copy book. You may also want to do some journaling, this can be a great time to do some gratitude journaling, you know a few things that
Jess (09:49.948)
If they’re not for you, maybe you might want to listen to a meditation or some white noise. Now, I don’t want you to think I’m saying you need to go and do all of those things, but they may just give you some ideas to think over. The last thing I’ll touch on here is sleep loves consistency. So as much as possible, if we can go to bed and wake up at a really similar time each day, and yes, that includes weekends, that’s really going to start to set you up.
for success. So number one for me when it comes to optimizing your energy is to implement a sleep routine. Now the second point I want to touch on is something I call finding the consistency in the inconsistency. Now this is about you having an understanding of what your ideal framework looks like. This will include how many times a day you eat, so meals and snacks, and it will also
Now, the thing about this is to feel your best and to maximise your energy, we need to have an understanding about what we actually do to achieve that. And once we understand that, it’s really then just about applying a realistic strategy into our lives. Now, this is where I suggest my clients use a Tetris-like approach. So for example, I may have a client who they thrive off three meals and two snacks.
Let’s say they’re active before work, three meals and two snacks is what works for them. Now traditionally that would be breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, but this person has a hybrid work environment. Some days they’re at home, some days they’re in the office, some days they have international calls. There are a lot of variables there. So this is where finding the consistency
Jess (11:48.528)
they may shuffle their meals and snacks around to suit their schedule. If they’re up early, that may adjust things. If they have a lunchtime meeting or a meeting around lunchtime that might run over and rather than going too long without eating and pushing their lunch back to 2 p.m., so when they finally eat, they’re starving and then they struggle to get on top of their appetite for the rest of the day, what they may like to do is then move that afternoon snack forward right before the meat.
so then that lunch is pushed back, but it has less of an impact on how they feel. This is why it is absolutely essential that you need to have an understanding about what your ideal framework is, and then once you know what that is, we can work backwards. So the really key thing here, particularly when we look at your meals and snacks, is about stabilizing your appetite and stabilizing your blood sugar levels. They are two really big players
to maximising your overall energy levels. So what we wanna be aiming for here, which brings me to point three, is to have guardrails on our day where we’re looking to consume something every three to four hours. So we’ve got our framework, we’re gonna play Tetris and we’re gonna move things around, but we also know what are the rules? When are we looking to eat? What’s too long? What’s too little? Now, there’s a whole range of different
out there and I definitely agree different strategies can work for different people but with the types of clients I work with who are really interested in maximizing their performance who consider themselves high-performing or want to adopt high-performing behaviors these types of people thrive from knowing what is going to help them achieve that. Now this is where the guardrails come into play so guardrails when it comes to your
every three to four hours is how frequently you’re eating. Once we start dipping into five or six hours, that’s where we can start to have other consequences. We can either become really hungry and then over-consume, our energy levels can drop, we can start to have sugar cravings and then we’re reaching for sweets. That three to four hours is a really good amount of time that sets the majority of people up for stable appetite, stable energy and stable blood sugar levels.
Jess (14:18.668)
Now, for most people, breakfast to lunch is generally around that 3-4 hour mark, but
lunch to dinner is really where that bigger gap happens. And I very rarely see people strategically having a really intentional afternoon snack that’s going to satisfy them, sustain them, and fuel them. So I’d really recommend you go back and listen to episode one where we talk about snacking for success. That will really support you here. Now, the last thing I wanna touch on with the guardrails
as I know that is a trend a lot of people are subscribing to or experimenting with. My view on intermittent fasting is it is an advanced tool that can elicit a positive response in a highly trained dialed-in operator. So if you know what your framework is and you know what feeling your best actually looks like, then you can apply an advanced tool like intermittent fasting and you can gauge if that’s something that supports you.
How I see intermittent fasting getting used is by people often with poor behaviors that are looking to just minimize their energy intake or Potentially use it as an excuse to justify some poor behaviors Now I feel a little bit harsh calling that out But that is what I see in the real world And I think that’s where we really need to check in on what matters most to us if we’re looking to maximize our energy levels We need to think is what I’m doing here actually supporting that
Or am I crashing and burning? Am I craving the sugar? Am I feeling not very productive in the afternoon? And that’s when we need to trial some new different strategies, which hopefully is what today’s episode might be presenting you with. Now, my fourth strategy I wanna touch on, which I will mention this so often because there’s so many impactful and positive outcomes when you start to have a high protein breakfast.
Jess (16:26.364)
is tell you the time your breakfast needs to be so you don’t have to have it within an hour of waking up or anything like that. So this is where that person who may struggle to have breakfast may just end up having a slightly earlier lunch or a later breakfast. So let’s get less bogged down in that time right now and just higher level we’re thinking about the principle. Which is that very first meal of the day we want to be a high protein breakfast.
20 to 40 grams of protein, which in real world, real food terms is three to four eggs, a scoop of protein powder, 100 grams of smoked salmon, a cup of soy milk and also some soy yogurt or a pouch or two of the high protein yogurt. So we can start with those types of foods. You choose what you like, but what you wanna do is consistently have a high protein breakfast each morning. Once you implement that,
you’ll try it, you’ll persist with it, you’ll develop the habit and I can guarantee you in the afternoon your energy levels will be so much more stable or you won’t be craving those sweet sugary foods which regularly happens. Please, please, please give it a try, give me the feedback, it is a huge game changer to your overall energy levels.
My fifth tip for today is about getting a sunlight on your eyes in the first 30 minutes of the day. Now this is really important for helping to reset your circadian rhythm. Exposure of natural light in the morning helps to reset your internal body clock.
This makes it easier to wake up feeling refreshed and it also helps you maintain consistent energy levels throughout the day. One of the most important reasons for this is sunlight exposure blocks melatonin production. So morning sunlight signals to the brain to halt the production of melatonin, which is that hormone responsible for sleep. This helps you wake up more effectively and also to feel more alert, therefore helping boost your overall energy levels.
Jess (18:37.744)
Notice when I talked about sleep routine, I said we want to reduce that light exposure because it blocks melatonin and at night we want to produce that, whereas in the morning it is the opposite. So getting sunlight, ideally from outside, being in nature if possible, on our eyes, on our face, first thing in the morning, within 30 minutes of waking up, is so helpful for helping you reset that circadian rhythm.
Now, I wanted to just touch on the whole consistency with sleep side of things. Irregular sleep patterns can lead to something known as social jet lag. So if you’re someone who under sleeps, oversleeps, sleeps at all different time points, you might have that feeling where you’re feeling a little bit disorientated, quite groggy, some similar effects to what it feels like when you get off a long haul flight.
Jess (19:37.624)
it’s time as well as duration, it can increase those, I guess, side effects. So as I said it’s known as social jet lag, it’s really something for you to consider if you’re one of these people with really inconsistent sleep patterns. Where possible, I’d put that as your focus point to try and standardize that. You know within 30 to 60 minutes is the extent of that range that we want to focus on. And my very last strategy for today is something that I have
into my routine this year and it has been an absolute game changer. And that is take regular brain breaks. Now, we do wanna be moving every 30 to 60 minutes, so at least standing up from our desk, moving about, shaking, standing up from our desk, moving about, getting some oxygen around our body. But the brain break is something that we wanna implement about every 90 minutes. And this is a double positive because it allows you to get up, take time away from your screen,
better manage your overall energy levels. Now energy management becomes a really strategic exercise when we’re thinking about cognitive renewal. Our brains operate optimally during focus periods that last approximately 90 minutes. After this our cognitive resources begin to deplete and this can lead to mental fatigue and also reduced focus and performance. So by taking a brain break
energy recovery as well as helping replenish cognitive resources so you can maintain high levels of focus and effectiveness throughout the day. This helps us not ride that energy and that focus roller coaster as much and it’s a really powerful tool. So if you can deliberately incorporate these brain breaks and look they can either be in the form of you taking time outside in
Jess (21:37.264)
that’s not possible, that might also be a brief meditation or breath work practice, any of those things work as a brain break. And that’s absolutely key for managing your overall cognitive, absolutely essential for managing your cognitive energy. So in summary, the six strategies that you can, the six simple strategies that you can implement or optimize to double your energy
Introduce a sleep routine. Find consistency in the inconsistency with your day. Know what that framework is for your meals and give yourself permission to move them around as Tetris. High protein breakfast. Please give it a try, choose an option that works for you and let me know. Get sunlight on your eyes within the first 30 minutes.
and make sure that you are having a brain break. So there’s six of my top strategies. I regularly run workshops to corporates on this exact topic. I was in Melbourne just the other week doing a session on boosting energy for optimal performance. And we dive deep on this topic here today and a few other strategies. So on that note, thank you for joining me today. If something here is particularly spoken to you, please reach out, let me know.
to start introducing some brain breaks, take a little quick snap of me just once because we want to get away from our screens and tag me in them. I’d love to see what you’re doing for your brain breaks. If you’re keen to have me speak to your team or business, I offer a range of workshops and speaking services. You can check out my website or you can download my speaker kit in the show notes. Until next episode, keep staying at the top team.