How do you unleash your untapped mental energy to become mentally vibrant and cognitively alive?
Energy is a key component in the Kwik Brain motivation formula: Purpose x Energy x S3 (small, simple steps) = Motivation. Without energy, you’re going to have a much harder time finding the motivation to plow through difficult situations and accomplish all the things you want to do.
I’m very excited to have Dr. Michael Breus with us today to dive into this topic. Michael is a Clinical Psychologist, host of the podcast Sleep Success, and serves on the clinical advisory board of The Dr. Oz Show. He’s written several books, including The Power of When: Discover Your Chronotype—and Learn the Best Time to Eat Lunch, Ask for a Raise, Have Sex, Write a Novel, Take Your Meds, and More, and is here to talk about his newest book, Energize!: Go From Dragging Ass to Kicking It in 30 Days.
If you’re like many people, the stress of the last few years may have increased your brain fog and mental fatigue like never before. Listen in as Michael talks about the different types of energy, how you can track your energy levels, and make small adjustments throughout the day to unleash your maximum energy potential.
Show Notes
Measuring Energy
- There are several different forms of energy.
- It’s pretty easy to measure sleep—you attach electrodes to someone’s head and you can measure their sleep stages and cycles.
- But how do you measure energy?
- There are multiple category’s for energy: physical or moving energy, resting energy, eating energy, and emotional energy.
- Emotional energy encompasses mental acuity, how to do things more efficiently, and how to have more attention, focus, and read quicker.
- You can get good data in those categories.
- Some of those things can produce energy and some of those things can drag you down.
- One thing you can do to identify your energy levels is to assess it at five different times throughout the day.
- In the book Energize!, Michael uses the perceived exertion scale.
- It was created by Gunner Borg to measure exertion and energy during exercise.
- As you’re exercising, ask yourself how hard it was to complete the exercise and then rate that exertion from zero to ten.
- It’s a way for you to assess your energy levels.
The Importance of Movement
- Fatigue, exhaustion, and burn out are all very prevalent right now.
- When your stress levels rise, it affects your ability to focus and sleep, as well as other cognitive functions.
- That’s why Michael and his co-author Stacy Griffith—one of the founding instructors of Soul Cycle—developed an entire section of the book on breaks.
- Specifically, Stacy focused on moving and movement energy.
- You know the law of physics: a body in motion stays in motion; a body at rest stays at rest.
- So, you really don’t want to sit all day long.
- Unfortunately, many people are stuck on Zoom calls and sitting all day.
- You want to be up and moving around.
- Michael and Stacy took the concept of checking your energy five times a day and flipped it around.
- Now during those five times, instead of checking your energy, spend five minutes doing specific movements.
- The exercises are specific to your chronotype.
- Lion is the early bird, bear is in the middle, wolf is a night owl, and dolphin is the insomniac.
- They further combined it with the body types—ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph.
- Stacy matches exercise with body types to increase motivation and success rates.
- Michael and Stacy did a study where they took 5,000 people who had taken the Chrono quiz and asked them to do the body type quiz.
- It revealed a lot of new information about the chronotypes.
- If you’ve read The Power of When and learned about your chronotype, this is the next level by adding in movement.
- This helps you sustain energy throughout your day.
The 5 by 5 Program
- Stacy developed this program and it’s called 5 by 5—five exercises, five times a day for five minutes.
- To be clear, this isn’t a workout. These are designed to give you energy.
- The first one is called stretch.
- You do this first thing the morning. You want to stretch out all the stiffness and soreness you can get from sleeping.
- The next three movements are in different order depending on your chronotype.
- One of them is a shake.
- If you’ve ever seen a dog get up, you know the first thing they do is shake their body. They do this to stimulate their nervous system.
- You shake your hands, your arms, your feet, your legs—all of a sudden it changes your energy component.
- The third movement is bounce.
- This is literally bouncing, jumping jacks, skipping.
- What happens energetically is it changes your equilibrium and helps reset your nervous system.
- The fourth one is called build.
- This one involves the major muscle groups by doing push-ups, sit-ups, squats.
- Again, this isn’t to work up a sweat but to engage the musculature because if you’ve been sitting all day, you haven’t engaged your muscles.
- Think about how you feel when you do a push-up. You are focusing your energy on your physicality.
- The last one is called balance.
- You do mild yoga poses right before bed, like a tree pose, to help settle your brain down.
- You want to maintain your energy but not have too much energy that prevents you from sleeping.
- The exercises are further customized based on body type.
- For example, an endomorph may not do a 30 second cardio during build. You might do leg lifts to start so that you can achieve your movement goal.
- Achieving the goal is just as important as the movement because when you feel good, you get energy.
- That’s the emotional energy at work.
Your Body Type Matters
- Body type plays an important role in not just what exercises you do, but how you do the third component for energy—intermittent fasting.
- Ectomorphs are long and lean, mesomorphs are more V-shaped and muscular, and endomorph are on the thicker side.
- Body types have a lot to do with metabolism.
- Ectomorphs have a fast metabolism, mesomorphs have a medium metabolism, and endomorphs have a slower metabolism.
- Knowing your body type and chronotype can help you figure out when to fast and how long to fast.
- You can use intermittent fasting to change your weight as well as your energy levels.
- Intermittent fasting is eating during a certain feeding window.
- It helps with a process called autophagy, which is when your cells completely turn over, clean the junk out, and revitalize themselves giving more energy to your mitochondria.
- Ectomorphs should fast for 12 hours and feed for 12 hours.
- Mesomorphs should fast for 14 hours and feed for 10 hours.
- Endomorphs should fast for 16 hours and feed for 8 hours.
- This is one new piece of research Michael discovered while writing the book.
- Fasting based on body type and chronotype is a much more effective way to fast.
- Knowing how and when to fast is unlocking the keys to all day energy.
- You can choose whatever healthy diet suits your individual needs.
- You hear what to eat, but not how often to eat, how to work out but not when to work out, or the importance of sleep but not how to actually go to sleep.
- But those are key parts of the energy formula and Michael gives you not just the tactics, but he tells you exactly what to do. Get a copy of Energize! at www.energizemyself.com.
- Be sure to check out the unedited, extended episode on YouTube, here.
Share With Us
- Take a screenshot and tag us on social media (@thesleepdoctor & @JimKwik) share one thing you’re going to do to generate more energy
- I will gift five copies of the book to five lucky listeners.
- Be sure to get a copy of Energize!: Go From Dragging Ass to Kicking It in 30 Days, here.
- Visit www.energizemyself.com for extra bonus materials.
- If you want to learn more about sleep, listen to our previous podcasts with Michael here, here, and here.
