Welcome to The Healthy Celiac Podcast—the go-to podcast for women with celiac disease! This podcast is designed to help you thrive beyond your diagnosis and embrace life to the fullest because you are so much more than just a woman with celiac disease.
Hosted by Certified Health Coach Belinda Whelan, who specializes in follow-up care for women with celiac disease, each episode is a blend of practical advice, personal stories, and expert interviews. Belinda shares valuable insights on everything from navigating a gluten free lifestyle to managing the emotional aspects of celiac disease.
Join me as we explore topics that empower you to take control of your health, and discover joy in every meal and moment. Tune in for practical advice and support as we navigate the challenges of celiac disease and empower you to live confidently.
To find out how Belinda can support you, visit her website www.belindawhelan.com and while you're there be sure to download your FREE eBook '11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free'.
For collaborations, please email me info@belindawhelan.com (no MLM opportunities please. 😊)
All right, welcome back to this week's episode. I am talking all about how we can increase energy this week. Now, living with celiac disease can often mean that we are low in energy. We are consuming so much of our energy, thinking about food, constantly worrying constantly in this state of thinking about things that most people don't even have to give a second thought to. It's exhausting. It really is. So it's important to keep on track with our health, and one of the ways that we can do that is by increasing our energy. So I thought it would be timely to give you some tips to help you increase your energy. So let's get into it. Now, there are a few obvious ways, and it's nice just to have a reminder every now and again. Now the first one is to increase your water intake. If you do not drink water, please, please go back and listen to my episode where I talk about all of the amazing benefits of water. You'll be blown away by how many benefits there are from drinking water. But if your body is dehydrated, you'll feel very sluggish and you'll have very low energy. So by increasing your water intake, you'll instantly feel better and have more energy. So try that one if you are not drinking much water at this point in time. The next one is to exercise. Now, I know this might sound a little bit ridiculous when you have low energy, but when you exercise, it actually increases your energy for the day. So if you can just start by adding in a little bit and then slowly adding more each day, it can really help to improve your energy. Now, I remember when I was being going through the process of trying to get a diagnosis, and I remember one of the very first doctors that I went to and I told her I could barely get outta bed in the morning. I felt like rubbish. I've had all of these horrible symptoms going on. And she turned around and she said to me, you just need to start exercising. And I thought she was insane, and it was horrible to hear that from this doctor that that was gonna be the be all cure to my problems. And at the time, there's no way I could have got any benefit from exercising because I was so ill. But if you are on the road to recovery or you've been living with celiac disease for a while, then exercising can certainly help improve your energy levels and also help speed up healing. So in that respect, energy, getting energy from exercise is truly wonderful. And I truly do see the difference on the days when I exercise and comparing those to the days that I don't do exercise. So try that, and like I said, just add in a little bit at a
Speaker 2:
Time, time and just slowly increase the amount of time that you spend exercising and see how you feel. Now the next one is to focus on getting good sleep, good adequate sleep. And again, I've done an entire episode on talking about the benefits of sleep and why we need it. So go back and listen to that if you haven't already. And when we have sleep, obviously we're not tired, so that increases our energy. You may be the type of person who needs to have a nap in the afternoon if that's what helps you try that as well. There are lots of different ways that we can increase the amount of sleep that we get, and I'll highly recommend that that's something that you focus on if you know that you are not getting enough sleep, and that is affecting your energy levels. The next one is to focus on food and getting enough nutrients into your body. Now, many people say that they're eating gluten free, they think they're eating well, and they're focusing on eating all of this great gluten-free food, but they're not really eating good gluten-free food. There's good gluten-free food, and then there's not so good gluten-free food. So think of the the highly processed package labeled gluten-free food that should not be making up your entire diet because that's not going to give your body the nutrients that it needs to be able to thrive and to be able to give you that energy that you need. Now, if you are eating lots of sugar, that will decrease your energy in the long term. So how that works is when you have sugary foods, it spikes your blood sugar and then you come crashing down and you're constantly in this state of needing more sugar and then you crash and so forth. So when you eat a good balance of healthy food, you don't have that that high, and then that crash. So I've done a lot an entire episode on sugar as well. So again, go back and listen to that if you haven't, and get more info on the benefits of cutting back on your sugar. So that can really help as well. I've also done an episode on juicing. Gee, this feels, this whole episode feels like a recap of everything I've done, but I want to just reiterate that these things really do help with increasing your energy. If this is just one area that you need to focus on, this is just a recap of those key components of increasing energy. So yeah, making sure that you have low GI foods, making sure you have less sugar, making sure that you have a really great diet full of lots of nutrients can make a big difference as well. Now, you may also need to go to your doctor if you haven't done so recently, and just get a blood panel work done and see how you are going as far as your iron levels, because if you have low iron, that can truly affect your energy levels as well. So I don't recommend people take iron supplements without checking with their doctor first that they need them, because many
Speaker 3:
People, people don't need them. But if you do have very low iron, that can certainly affect your energy level. So go get that checked out first before you decide to TA start taking a, uh, an iron supplement or simply increase the amount of iron in your diet that you consume. Okay, moving on to the next one is to reduce stress. This is probably my biggest one. This is my biggest issue. Oh, along with the sleep, of course, sleep deprivation in my life that will hopefully go away soon,<laugh>. But reducing stress, stress is a big one that actually makes us feel fatigued and it affects our energy levels. So where can you reduce stress in your life? And that kind of ties into my next tip, which is do less. We are such busy people, aren't we? We're, we've always got something to do. We tend to say yes to things that we don't want to do. So where can you do less in life? Where can you delegate for someone else in your life to do something for you? Whether that's the kids that they unpack the dishwasher each day, or one of the kids does a vacuuming once a week, or you hire a cleaner to do these jobs for you. How can you do less in your life? A simple one for me when I'm busy, especially in the school holidays, is I do my grocery shopping online. I find that it's so much easier than dragging the kids to the shops and having to go through the motions of, no, you can't hit this. No, you can't have that. So I find it's really great to jump online, do my food shop and pick it up, and I don't have to worry about dealing with the kids in the supermarket. So that could be something that you could try as well. So there's lots of great ways that you can do less by saying no to the things that you don't want to do. I have a blog on my website, belinda wheelin.com, where I talk about saying no. So if you need a little bit of information or some tips about how to say no, go ahead and read that. I'll pop the link in the notes for you to access that one as well. And the last one is to use stimulants where you can. So it may be that you could have a coffee or it could be a green tea, something like that. You might find that they're enough to give you a boost of energy and can make a big difference in your life. I would definitely not say don't, don't rely on them 100%, but they can just help to increase your energy. And I, I actually like to have a coffee before I go to the gym. I find that that helps me with my workout. So it could be something like that to help you improve your energy as well. So I hope these tips have helped you. I hope these have inspired you to try a few different things or even cuts and things out and help you improve your energy moving forward. So thanks so much for listening and I look forward to talking with you again very soon. Take care.
