Healthy Habits That Zap Your Energy
Pages in this Story:
- 1. You Sleep in on the Weekends
- 2. You eat a big breakfast.
- 3. You never snack between meals.
- 4. You hydrate during and after your workout.
- 5. To extend your cardio time, you skip the post-workout stretch.
1. You Sleep in on the Weekends
It's easy to blame an energy slump on bad habits, but what about those times when you do almost everything right -- yet you can barely stay awake? Some of the moves you think are good for you can actually make you more exhausted. But perk up: These simple tweaks will turn yawn inducers into stamina boosters.
You sleep in on weekends.
Your alarm goes off at 6 a.m. all week, so snoozing until nine on Saturday and Sunday sounds like a dream come true. The trouble is, this plan often backfires. You get up feeling groggy, which can last for hours -- a phenomenon called sleep inertia, says Russell Rosenberg, PhD, director of the Northside Hospital Sleep Medicine Institute in Atlanta. It's likely that when you rise at your normal time during the week, your body has moved into a lighter phase of sleep and you can awaken more quickly. But Rosenberg believes that too many extra z's may send you back into a deeper stage of sleep, so you wake up feeling sluggish rather than alert.
So how do you catch up on much-needed rest? "Spread it out over the weekend," Rosenberg advises. "To avoid grogginess, snooze 30 to 60 minutes later each day, and take no more than a 45-minute nap." Not only will you feel sharp, you'll also be much more likely to drift off at your normal time at night.
