Start With Your Own Body.
You've cleaned up how you eat. You've tried getting to bed earlier. You bought the supplement your best friend swears by. And you still can't make it through the afternoon without a second cup of coffee.
I've spent 30 years in wellness, and I've heard "I have no energy" more times than I can count. I've even said it myself at times. What I keep coming back to is how many people follow routines that were built for somebody else's body. A routine that works for your best friend, or for a woman on Instagram, was made around her life and her body. Not yours.
Your energy starts to come back when you stop copying and start paying attention to your own body. So that's where we're headed: the three things that build energy, and how to figure out what your body needs from each one.
Why do I have no energy when I'm doing everything right?
The women I talk with aren't sitting around doing nothing. They're trying hard. They just keep borrowing someone else's answer, like the routine a friend loves or the plan an influencer swears by.
It makes sense. When you're tired, you want a fix, and someone else's results look like proof. But her routine was built around her body, her schedule, and her sleep. When it doesn't work for you, it's easy to decide you did it wrong and go looking for the next one.
I'm not above any of this. I wrote a workbook on energy and I host a show about it, and I still have weeks where I let the basics slide. Knowing what works and doing it every day are two different things.
Your body isn't her body. The best information about what works for you is going to come from paying attention to you.
What builds energy: move, food, and pause
None of these three is a secret. Most of us already do them some of the time. The difference is doing them in a way that fits your body, and doing them consistently, so you've built up a reserve to draw on when life gets busy.
Move
A lot of us grew up treating exercise as something you earn or punish yourself with. I see movement differently. It's how you build a body that trusts itself in motion, and it's one of the most reliable ways to make more energy.
That sounds backward when you're already tired, but the research backs it up. In a University of Georgia study, inactive adults who felt tired all the time did low-intensity exercise, about the effort of an easy walk, for 20 minutes three times a week. After six weeks, their fatigue dropped by 65 percent.
Part of the reason is what your muscles do with fuel. When they contract, they pull sugar out of your blood and use it, which is why even a few minutes of easy walking after a meal can blunt the blood sugar spike that follows eating. So when I'm stuck at a blank screen or carrying tension from a tough conversation, I get up. A walk around the block does plenty.
Food
I eat food that loves me back. When I call a food good, I mean it leaves me feeling good in my body, not that a diet approved it. This has nothing to do with worth or willpower.
The reason I don't hand out food rules is that bodies respond to the same food in very different ways. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute followed 800 people through nearly 47,000 meals. People eating identical meals had very different blood sugar responses. For some, a banana sent their blood sugar higher than a cookie did. For others, it was the opposite.
That's how your friend's perfect lunch can leave you ready for a nap. So instead of a meal plan, I use one question. An hour after I eat, do I want a nap, or am I ready to create? The answer tells me something real about what my body does with that food.
Pause
Pause is the one most of us skip. We keep every promise we've made to other people and put ourselves at the end of the list. And when we do rest, it's usually a bubble bath or Netflix and popcorn. I love both. But recovery is something your body does, not something you buy.
Your nervous system has two main modes. One revs you up for action, the fight-or-flight side. The other, often called rest and digest, slows your heart rate, supports digestion, and gives your body the chance to repair. Chronic stress keeps you stuck in the first mode, which is one reason you can rest and still feel worn out.
My two doodles show me what good recovery looks like. They're flat out asleep on the patio, then chasing a squirrel at full speed (my husband says it sounds like horses galloping), then back on the couch, out cold, a few minutes later. All in when it's time to run, all the way out when it's time to rest. That's what I want for my own body.
How to find what your body needs: run your own N of 1
N of 1 is a research term for an experiment with one subject. Here, the subject is you. Instead of borrowing someone else's results, you try something small, pay attention to what happens, and let your own body tell you whether it works.
You don't need a program to start. Here's one idea for each of the three:
Move: Pick your biggest meal of the day and take a 10 to 20 minute walk after it. In one study of older adults, a 15-minute walk after meals did a better job of blunting the blood sugar spike than one longer walk at another time of day, and the walk after dinner, usually the biggest meal, had the strongest effect. Try it for a few days and notice how the rest of your day or evening feels.
Food: Let's be honest, we all love some foods that don't love us back. The goal isn't to never eat them. It's to choose more foods that do love us back than foods that don't. So pick a favorite meal you know has a few of those foods in it, change one or two things, and ask the nap-or-create question an hour later. If that's also the meal you walk after, even better. Notice what changes.
Pause: Pick a stretch of your day, like 10 minutes, and put your phone down. Then choose one: some light stretching and mobility work, a few minutes barefoot outside (yes, whatever the weather), or a chapter of an actual book. If falling asleep is hard for you, make it your wind-down at the end of the day, and catch the sunset if you can. Watching the light fade is a natural signal to your body that the day is done. Notice whether you come back more settled, or whether your sleep feels different that night.
Try one, or try all three. You decide what's worth your attention. Not me, and not the woman with the perfect morning routine on Instagram.
You can do every one of these with nothing but your own attention. Still, once women start noticing how their bodies respond, they usually ask me about wearables next. The one I use myself is my Oura Ring. It helps me understand what my body is telling me, so I can get better at speaking my body's language. It's helpful, but it's not a must-have, and nobody pays me to mention it. I don't wear it all the time, and my body still gets the final word.
Energy and presence: why this matters for the work you love
I believe we're all creators. The YouTuber and the knitter, the graphic designer, the mom who plates a beautiful dinner and snaps a photo for the family group text. Whatever you make, there's a piece of you in it.
When your energy runs low, it shows. Some days you have no energy to do anything, let alone the thing you love. An idea drops in and you're too tired to act on it.
Your presence takes the hit too. Presence is what people feel when you show up, at the dinner table, on a screen, or on a stage. I speak to audiences, and I know that without presence, I'm just a talking head. It's hard to be fully present on a second cup of coffee.
Move, food, and pause feed both. So when I put my body first, I don't just get more done. I show up as more of myself, in my work and with the people I love.
When to talk to your doctor
I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medical advice. If you've been exhausted most days for weeks, or rest isn't helping, talk to your doctor. Your doctor can tell you what to do. What I can help with is the everyday part: paying attention to how your body responds while you figure the rest out.
Where to start
If you want somewhere to begin, my workbook Energy + Presence: A body-first approach to doing the work you love walks through energy, presence, and the three things that feed them both: move, food, and pause. It's a free download. I made it as a companion to Ditch the Dogma Live, so we're all starting from the same page. [Download Energy + Presence]
This article grew out of the first episode of Ditch the Dogma Live. Watch the replay below, and grab the Field Notes [Download] from that episode for the practices and sources
And tell me: what's one thing you've been talking about doing but haven't started? Do it with me. I'll cheer you on.
