The fact that eating healthily can keep you energetic

It can be clearly said that maintaining a reasonable and healthy diet for a long time can indeed help people maintain more stable and lasting energy. This effect has much higher long-term benefits than drinking coffee temporarily and catching up on sleep.

During the three years I have been working as a community nutrition guide, the most common question I have encountered is "Just eat well and drink well. There are so many things to pay attention to. I drink iced American style and eat fried skewers every day without any loss of energy." What impressed me the most was a young Internet operation girl I contacted last year. 996 was the norm, and her drawers were full of all kinds of refreshing candies and instant coffee. She would squat at her work station and take a nap at three o'clock in the afternoon. Sometimes she would nod like a chicken pecking at rice during a meeting, without even realizing it. Later, she followed me to adjust her daily diet for two weeks. I didn’t let her stop drinking coffee, nor did I let her completely give up her favorite fried skewers. I just replaced the refined carbohydrates in brunch with one-third of whole grains, and added a fistful of vegetables and a palm of protein. Now when she gets off work, she can talk to the product manager about the plan for half an hour without having to drink coffee.

Many people say that "eating junk food can make you energetic", which is actually an illusion. You eat white rice with high-fat takeout and add an iced Coke. After the meal, your blood sugar spikes to a peak, and insulin is rapidly secreted to lower your blood sugar. You do feel excited and even a little high for half an hour, but when your blood sugar drops quickly, you feel sleepy and tired. It's like temporarily charging your mobile phone. The battery seems to be full, but it loses 20% in half an hour. That kind of "spirit" cannot sustain long-term brain use or work.

Of course, I have also met people at the other extreme. They think that healthy eating means boiling vegetables every day without adding any oil or salt. After half a month of eating, their faces turned green. They came to me and said, "The healthy eating you mentioned is useless. Eating this every day makes me more tired." This is actually the other extreme of the misunderstanding of "healthy diet" - there is no high-quality fat and sufficient protein intake, and the body cannot even meet the basic energy supply, and of course it will be tired. Two years ago, in order to catch up on a nutrition science popularization project, I tried to eat boiled vegetables with brown rice for a week. By the third day, my brain couldn't move. When I was writing a manuscript, I even got stuck on commonly used professional terms for a long time. Later, I quickly added fried chicken breasts and avocado, and I slowly regained my mood in the afternoon.

Regarding the relationship between diet and energy, there is actually no completely unified standard answer in the academic community. For example, supporters of the ketogenic diet believe that completely cutting out refined carbohydrates and relying on fat for energy is the best way to maintain peak energy. I also have a friend who is a designer and has been on the ketogenic diet for more than a year. He said that he now doesn’t have the same headaches as before when he stays up late. However, a large number of studies in the field of clinical nutrition have pointed out that long-term ketosis is very unfriendly to people with hypoglycemia and hypothyroidism. On the contrary, it will aggravate the problems of fatigue and slow response, and even affect women's hormone levels.

Last year, the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" published a cohort study that tracked 12,000 office workers. The final data showed that people whose daily diets accounted for more than 60% of whole grains, high-quality protein, and dark vegetables were 47% less likely to suffer from lack of energy and lack of concentration during the day than those whose meals were high in oil and sugar and accounted for more than 80% of refined carbohydrates. This data can actually illustrate the problem - you don't need to go to any extreme dietary pattern, as long as the overall diet structure is more "balanced", you can feel obvious changes in energy.

Don't tell me, last week I went to eat roadside fried skewers with iced Coke with my friends. It really satisfied my craving, but when I woke up the next day, my head was really foggy. I sat at my desk and took a long time to calm down before I got into the mood. It's absolutely fine to eat something heavy to satisfy your cravings occasionally. There's no need to make healthy eating a task like an ascetic. But what your long-term diet structure is like, your body is really more honest than anyone else.

A consultant who ran a marathon talked to me before, saying that he always thought that race performance depends on practice. Before every race, he would eat a lot of white bread and chocolate to replenish carbohydrates. Halfway through the race, he would "hit the wall" and his legs would be too heavy to lift. Later, I asked him to replace fast carbohydrates with slow carbohydrates such as brown rice and sweet potatoes three days before the race, and add enough grilled chicken breasts and dark green vegetables. When he ran the North Marathon last year, not only did he not hit the wall in the second half of the race, but he was also 12 minutes faster than his previous best time. He said that he was not as tired as before and wanted to lie down directly on the ground.

In fact, how can there be so many complicated truths? Whether you add 92% oil or 98% oil to the car, the running feel will be different, not to mention the human body. Every bite you eat will eventually be converted into energy for you to think and act. If you always fill it with fuel with a lot of "impurities", of course the engine will get stuck at every turn. If you give it appropriate and clean fuel, it will naturally run steadily and for a long time. You don’t need to believe in any unified recipe, and you don’t need to force yourself to eat things you don’t like. Try adjusting it for a week, and you will know the best effect.