5 Natural Ways to Boost Your Morning Energy

Your alarm has gone off, but you can barely find the fortitude to turn it off, let alone get out of bed. You might figure morning energy is just something you’re born with. To the contrary, you can boost your energy without putting your body in trouble. These are five natural ways to boost your morning energy.

Good Breakfast

If you’ve got a full night’s rest of seven to nine hours of sleep, that’s a long time to go without food. Your body needs nutritional fuel to help give it some morning energy. Quality breakfasts combine different nutrients into wholesome, easy-to-make meals. Complex carbohydrates give a great energy boost. Some of the best sources of these include whole-wheat bread, steel cut oats, and quinoa. You could make eggs-in-the-nest, where you fry an egg in the center of a piece of bread. You could mix some frozen fruit in your oatmeal. You could make a scramble with tofu, peppers, onions, and quinoa. Try to mix things up so that your breakfast doesn’t become stale. Meal prep also helps. Get your ingredients diced and stored so that you can throw them into a pan right away. A solid breakfast can also help keep you from overindulging at lunchtime. Your best choice of beverage is a tall glass of water, especially given how dehydrated we become while asleep.

Tea

Coffee might get all the attention as far as hot morning drinks are concerned, but don’t discount tea. While tea’s caffeine content is less than coffee’s, it’s still effective. Plus, the caffeine in tea trickles through you at a much more gradual rate. This is in contrast to coffee, which can feel like it’s giving you a sudden jolt, followed by energy depletion. You can find all sorts of caffeinated teas. Some of the most popular include green tea and black tea. You can use white tea if you want a caffeine spike but don’t want to feel quite as wired. Other benefits of tea include antioxidants, intestinal therapy, and stress reduction.

Exercise

The very act of moving even one step forward can provide a mild energy boost. Should you really want to get moving, then you need to do it yourself. Morning exercise doesn’t need to be some kind of exhausting endeavor. Start with some stretches to prevent soreness and strain. Then, do some jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups, running in place, and squats. Give yourself about a minute for each exercise. Stop if you feel any sort of discomfort or weariness. When you’re done, head into the shower so you can rinse off any sweat and give yourself even more energy. If you’re very serious about working out, you might start going to the gym before work. It’s less crowded at this time, and you can give yourself an excuse to get out of the house earlier.

Meditation

Your energy can be depleted by having so many things to keep track of. You might be thinking about all of the things that await you, and feel drained right away. Even if they’re things that you’re looking forward to, such as getting dinner with a friend, you can feel tired. Meditation doesn’t solve your or magnify your problems. It just puts you in the moment, which is something we all need to do a better job of. How often do you find yourself lamenting the time you spent worrying over nothing instead of actually appreciating what you can do? The only path to peace comes through bringing ourselves into the moment and just letting it be. You can count your breath or keep your focus on a still object. There are sure to be distracting thoughts, but distractions don’t have to be a liability. Accept them as easily as you do moments of clarity. Then, notice just how much more energy you have.

Get More Sleep

You could do all of the above things and still feel pretty wiped. Why? It’s probably to do with how sleep you’re getting (likely answer: not much). A consistent sleep schedule is such an obvious solution to a lack of morning energy. However, the obvious solutions aren’t always the followed ones. You can’t expect to spend work night’s going out and putting off sleep and not feel the consequences. Keep yourself in-check by going to sleep right when you need to. Keep yourself away from caffeine after about 2 p.m. and put away your phone and computer a few hours before bed. You want to be able to wake up and feel totally ready to take on the day.
You want energy in the morning because it makes your days far more productive. You can start your day with a bang and keep that momentum going. Then, when night falls, you’ll be tired in a timely manner, ready to start it over again the next day. A more-energized you is likely to be a happier you, and these natural boosts are the right way to go about it.