Why do we settle for feeling okay in our bodies when we can feel phenomenal and be at our peak health, energy, and performance? It is not out of reach and it does not require a lot of time or resources to bring our body into a state of its best health. What is happening though is the demands of our days and the stress we experience sometimes on a long term basis is taking a toll on our well being, energy and our performance.
So as a health and peak performance coach, I am going to provide you with some health tips here to take your body to its optimal state where you will feel fantastic! No more settling, struggling, or surviving with just getting by and making do because you deserve to feel great in your body. Lucky for you, I just finished a 2.5 day fitness conference so I am feeling pretty fired up and ready to kick some serious behind into action. Are you ready and willing? Let’s go!
Peak Health Tips for Your Body
My goal here will be to give you the top health tips to feel great in your body, but also educate you on what our bodies need and how it will help take you to your peak health state. Now your part in this before we proceed is to promise you will not read it and say, “Yeah, yeah, I know”, and then not take action because knowledge is only powerful when it is acted upon. Unfortunately you are entirely responsible for the action piece, but I will be cheering you on!
After just being reminded how important a commitment contract is by Sergeant Ken at the conference, your commitment to the tips that follow would sound like this, “Yes, I will! Yes, I commit. I am going to take action on these.” Now that we have that squared away, we can proceed.
Move Your Body Daily for Peak Energy and Health
- Move Your Body Daily: If you want to feel better, be at peak health, have great energy, and improve your stamina for peak performance, it requires moving your body daily and three specific movement goals. Our body requires cardiovascular conditioning where our heart rate is elevated, strength training, and flexibility or mobility in our muscles and joints. You can choose any form of exercise you enjoy best to obtain these three movement goals.
The most important takeaway here for those sitting at work all day, is to move your body for at least 45 minutes daily which can include walking to work, climbing stairs, and everyday chores. However on a minimum of 3 days and ideally 5 days as set forth by the national health standards, we need to be engaging in cardiovascular exercise that takes our heart rate to a specific target zone five days of the week or a combined exercise goal of 150 minutes each week. That breaks down to 30 minutes of movement 5 days a week.
The strength and flexibility movement goals do not have as strict of guidelines, but they contribute greatly to how good you feel in your body. Strength is required for bone health, to improves hormonal balance, increase metabolism or weight management, function in our daily activities and hobbies, and to have more power and improved performance. Yes, it will also absolutely increase your energy because you become more efficient moving with ease and it enhances our physiological systems. 2 to 3 days a week of strength exercises will give you great benefits, results, and make you feel terrific!
Flexibility and mobility on the other hand is what eases tension, tight muscles, stress, overuse, poor posture, and limitations that arise due to overuse of muscles. Mobility or stretching exercises could be done as a morning routine where you take 10 minutes to loosen your body as a jump start to feeling flexible for the day or simply add it to your regular workouts or as a midday break from sitting at your desk.
Manage Stress with Mindfulness, Breath Work, and Rest
2. Manage Your Energy with Stress Reduction Techniques: The energy crisis and fatigue everyone is feeling is from putting our body under prolonged stress, doing too much, and not having appropriate rest and recovery that is essential for our bodies. Many chronic conditions, illness, and disease is caused from stress. One of the most powerful things you can learn to improve your energy and health is how to bring your body out of its stress state and into its natural state of calm.
I know, I know everyone fears that if they step out of their momentum and the fast paced, jam packed schedule they have, that they will lose high performance or it will all fall a part. Well, let me ask you this, “How’s that working for you so far?” Is your energy, body, performance where you want it to be and at its peak?
Here is the secret, drum roll please, we perform at our highest functioning level when our body is rested, in a relaxed state, and recharged. So if you are truly after high performance, which does not equate to doing more or doing it all yourself, then learn how to elicit a relaxed body state out of stress and manage your energy.
Our body’s natural state is when our parasympathetic nervous system is the main activated neural system, but where most of us are in our waking hours is with an engaged sympathetic nervous system which is our ‘fight and flight’ response. This state kept ‘on’ all day or all week or even for long periods of time, is what is causing fatigue, decreased energy, illness, disease, and burnout. The fabulous news is that we can train our bodies and our minds to elicit the parasympathetic nervous system response.
One of the incredible tools I use with leaders, entrepreneurs, in corporate group training, and for schools, is the Heart Math heart coherence technique. It is a scientifically proven method that is easy to do and facilitates the relaxed state of the body which leads us to not only greater health and stress management, but also peak performance. I also incorporate and recommend Blue Mind, nature bathing, breath work, and mindfulness practices.
One of the best ways to implement these methods is with rest and recovery cycles throughout your day. You can manage, track, and receive biofeedback on where your body is at in any given moment. Never underestimate the power of your breathing to begin and bring your body into a state of calm, out of stress, and to its optimal health environment where you are able to perform at your peak.
Fuel Your Body for Energy and Heal Your Gut
3. Fuel Your Body and Heal Your Gut for Energy:
Optimizing your health to be at its peak requires fuel that will energize both our bodies and brain, but we also need to tend to the health of your gut. There is so much evidence being revealed now that the center of all our health stems from our gut and we can impact our gut health with the foods we eat. There are some simple solutions to improve your gut health right away. Infusing your diet with some prebiotic or probiotic food or supplement choices will enhance your microbiome which is basically best explained as the environment or existence of good bacteria in your gut.
If you want more energy and to have peak health, it is important to fuel your body for energy. A few simple tips you could implement right away is making sure you do not go too long without eating as your sugar levels drop when this happens which causes an energy dip. Ideally, you should be eating every 3 to 4 hours. It is also common to reach for sugar when you are feeling tired, but this will give you a short lived sugar rush with a then unwelcome sugar crash worse than how you felt before. Lastly, protein is a great blood sugar stabilizer, a food choice that will give you satiety which can leave you feeling full or curb cravings, and it sustains our energy!
As part of your peak energy health and performance coaching, we look at your fuel choices, habits, and energy production to assess solutions tailored to you.
The Mind Body Connection for Peak Health and Performance
4. The Power of Your Mind and Emotions on Health and Performance
What does your mind and emotions have to do with your health, energy, and performance? Everything! For those of you who follow my podcast or know about Peak Energy 4 Performance, you know that we have 4 key energy sources that contribute to our well being and to our ability to perform at our peak; they are the energy of our body, mind, emotions, and environment. Your thoughts, including self talk, and the emotions you feel on a daily basis affect your health and performance.
Thoughts that are positive, affirming, confident, compassionate, and energized with excitement or possibility thinking actually change our physiology for the better. However, when we are down, filled with fear, stress, or negative thoughts, it will actually create biochemical changes adversely affecting our health; these thoughts will actually impact every cell in our bodies. They then create emotions in us and negative emotions have the same impact on our bodies. If you have ever felt stress or gone through a hard time, and then all of a sudden had back pain or body pain, this is an example of the mind body connection.
In the work I do with leaders and entrepreneurs, this element of the mind body connection and how one thinks and feels is a key to superior performance in their career or business. This is where the breakthroughs happen for people because mind body energy training and techniques is the key to performing at your peak. Some of the work I do here includes visualization, mental rehearsal, belief work, affirmations, creating alter egos, and incorporating neuroscience brain training.
The 4 Pillars to Peak Health and Energy
There you have the four most important factors that will lead you to peak health and energy. To summarize, here they are for you:
1. Movement daily and the 3 key types of movement 3-5 times weekly: Cardiovascular conditioning, Strength, and Flexibility or Mobility exercises
2. Training Your Body to be in its Optimal State with the parasympathetic nervous system where you can perform at your peak by implementing Mindfulness techniques, breath work, and rest
3. Fuel Your Body for Energy and Heal your gut
4. Developing a Mind Body Practice to foster powerful, positive, and healthy thoughts and emotions that will infuse you with health and energy!
Peak Health, Energy, and Performance Coaching
This is not your typical personal training or health coaching because it really encompasses your body, mind, whole life, and your energy. If you want to have more energy, improve your health and well being, and perform at your peak, connect for a complimentary consult by emailing [email protected]. Many executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, women, and youth are using peak energy performance health coaching to feel incredible, energize their bodies, and to have peak performance.
Reach out today with any questions you have or to get started and be energized! I cannot wait to begin working with you.
Energy Everyday!
Your Peak Energy Performance Health Coach,
Jody Kennett
