Interesting thought experiment: if you’re attending a women’s conference and are suddenly asked to present on a topic that you’re passionate about, what would you say? Well for me the topic would be easy, I’d speak about health.

Our health is more important than we realize. As women, many times we put ourselves on the back burner. We’re busy taking care of our busy spouses, growing children, aging parents, sick friends, messy homes, and demanding jobs. We’ve been sold the lie that if we balance the never-ending tower of tasks just right we can get it all done!

But the truth is, we can’t get it all done. We’re not super-women. There are only so many hours in the day and we are forced to choose how we will spend them. When we prioritize, we are forced to let some things fall by the wayside. . . and many times what we let fall by the wayside is ourselves. The problem with putting not just our wants last, but our needs last is that we finally get to the point where we just can’t do any more. Our energy is gone and no amount of caffeine will make up for the lack. Our bodies are in pain and no amount of pills is really taking care of it. Our brains are so fogged that we can’t even think straight anymore. Life is lived, or endured rather, through a constant haze.

Sound familiar?

Maybe you haven’t gotten to the complete burn out stage yet. But you can see the signs. You’ve been pushing hard and you know that eventually your body will run out of reserves and you won’t be able to push any longer. You know meals on the go aren’t the best option, but they’re all you have time for. You’ve sacrificed sleep to get your work done so that it didn’t cut into family time. If your house gets more than spit and a polish it’s because you’ve cut out something else. You’re worried that you’ll have absolutely nothing left to give because you’ve used every last bit of what you had without replacing any of it. You’ve been burning the candle at both ends and that wick is getting mighty short.

Friends, don’t panic. I’ve got a few simple things you can start doing now that will help you not only in the short term, but also in the long run.

First thing, start drinking more water. (Don’t start groaning just yet. I’ve got reasons.) Put down the coffee, sodas, and energy drinks. Step away from the extra sweet tea. Hold off on the nightcap. While it feels like the caffeine boost is the only thing getting you through your day, it’s actually doing more harm than good. Caffeine and alcohol are diuretics. That means they’re forcing water out of your body through your kidneys, so not only are you loosing something your body desperately needs, but you’re also concentrating toxins and other things in your system that the body is trying to get rid of!

By drinking more water:

• You can help your joints feel better. Water is used by the joints to help cushion them. If the body isn’t getting enough water intake it will pull water from the joints, leaving painful joints in it’s wake.
• You can help lower your blood pressure. Blood is primarily made of water. If your body isn’t getting enough water, the blood becomes thicker and harder to pump. Pumping thicker blood is harder on the heart. And you can see how that cascades right?
• You can nip some headaches in the bud. Dehydration headaches are the easiest to cure. Like the blood, the brain is also made up of quite a bit of water. Not enough water in the brain can lead to some serious pain.
• You can start clearing up some of the brain fog. Again, the brain needs water to function properly. Not enough water can lead to those nerve synapses not working properly, which in turn gives us that inability to focus that we call brain fog.
• You can prevent UTIs. The kidneys are designed to filter toxins and junk out of the blood so that they can be excreted. The bladder holds on to these excretions until it is full. By having less water in the system, these toxins, bacteria, and other excretions spend more time in the bladder which can lead to painful infections. Drinking enough water helps keep the system flushed so that there is much less time for an infection to take hold.

But how much water is enough? Ideally you should drink half your body weight in ounces of water each day. Start working your way up to that amount. Whatever you do, don’t stop drinking caffeine (coffee, tea, energy drinks) cold turkey. Caffeine withdrawal is no fun! (Ask me how I know.) Start weaning down the caffeine and replacing with water slowly, one drink at a time. Remember, small steps taken consistently over time lead to big progress.

Second thing, rest. I know, rest feels pretty impossible right now. You’ve got a million things to do and not nearly enough time to do them in. And even when you do finally lay down, you either stare at the ceiling because your brain won’t turn off or you drop off so fast it seems like you just blinked and your alarm is going off. Either way it seems like you never get enough sleep so you’re turning to your old pal caffeine to get you through yet another day.

Friends, that lack of sleep is one of the reasons you’re feeling as bad as you do. Getting enough quality sleep is absolutely essential for you to feel well, have the energy you need, and be able to bring all of your formidable focus to your daily tasks.

By getting at least 8 hours of sleep:

• You will boost your immune system! This means your body isn’t getting sick as often. Melatonin, the hormone that helps you get to sleep, is also a powerful part of your immune system and it only works while you’re sleeping.
• Your body will have time to heal. Every night while we sleep our bodies go into repair mode: disassembling old, broken cells and replacing them with brand new healthy ones. Healing takes energy, which usually kicks in about 11pm – midnight. So if you’ve ever stayed up late enough to “catch your second wind” you may just be depriving your body of the energy it needs for all that repair work.
• You will have more energy. Your body was designed to have a certain amount of rest. While you’re sleeping, not only does your immune system work overtime and your body go into healing mode, but your body also builds up your energy reserves. Working with your body’s natural rhythms is all to your benefit.
• You will be able to think more clearly. Not only does sleep give your mind the break it needs, it is also an opportunity for your subconscious to go to work on those difficult problems. “Sleeping on it” gives a different part of your brain a crack at those problems you’re facing, and many times you’ll wake up with the solution you were looking for.

Here are a few tips for improving your sleeping habits and getting the rest you need. Stay away from electronic devices at least 30 minutes prior to bedtime. The blue lights from those screens are telling your body it’s time to wake up and inhibiting the production of melatonin. Have a consistent bed time and routine for bed, even on the weekends. This routine will help tell your body that it is time for sleep and will aid you in feeling sleepy. Keep a journal on your bedside table, especially if you tend to struggle with racing thoughts. Write those thoughts down as part of your routine right before you go to sleep. Once they’re on paper, they shouldn’t continue to run through your mind. If you wake up in the middle of the night because you’ve thought of something, quickly write it down. It will be there waiting for you when you wake up in the morning.

Third and final thing for today, eat real food. This is huge. Because our lives are busy, busy, busy we rarely stop to think about what we’re fueling our bodies with. Mostly it just comes down to something I can grab on the go because I have somewhere I needed to be 10 minutes ago.

Since this is something we rarely think about, I’d like to give you a little illustration. Say I’m in a hurry and I need to get somewhere fast. I run out to my car and see the fuel indicator is almost empty. Shoot, not enough to get me where I need to go. So I run to the side of my house and grab the water hose, put it in the fuel tank and fill ‘er up. How far down the road do you think I’d get before I ran into a problem? Not to far right? Because I just loaded up my car with the wrong kind of fuel, it can’t run.

Our bodies are the same way. They need not just any fuel, but the right kind of fuel. Our digestive system is amazing and does a tremendous job of breaking down what we eat into component parts that can be used throughout the body for other purposes. But if what we’re taking in doesn’t contain the parts that we need, we’re in trouble. Like the water in the gas tank, we’re working on borrowed time. So what kind of fuel does our body need, and what do I mean by real food? Real food refers to things that swim in the water, run through the grass, fall from the trees, fly through the air, and grow from the ground. This is the fuel that your body really needs. Real food has nutrition, those basic building blocks that the body uses for everything. Processed foods have been stripped of nutrition, leaving them the equivalent of that water we were putting in our gas tanks earlier. If your meals mostly come from a take out line or a box, your body is not getting what it needs. I’m not saying you have to become a gourmet chef, but you can learn to prepare simple meals from real food in the same amount of time it takes to prepare a “quickie” meal from a box.

These are just a few simple things that you can start doing now to help yourself start feeling better. We all need energy and clear heads in order to get those mountains of tasks done once they’ve been carefully prioritized for the day. Maybe you’ve heard these things before and you told yourself you were going to start them tomorrow. Friends, don’t wait until tomorrow. Start today. You can’t keep going the way you have been. Make a commitment to start prioritizing your health right now.

I’ll give you one more tip to make this whole thing more achievable for you. Get an accountability partner. There’s nothing like knowing that you have to check in with someone to help keep you honest. As a holistic health practitioner, I’ve had clients tell me just how much it helps them stay on track knowing that they’ve got an appointment coming up and I’m going to be asking about these things. One last thing before I go ladies, I know the advice I’ve given today has been very general. If you need more individual advice to help with your health, seek it out. Again, don’t wait. Problems only compound the longer you wait to deal with them. Make your health a priority today so that you can enjoy the life you have now.

Jessica Meades