Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast.

My name is Vesna.

Today I'm gonna talk about.

What I would fix if you came to me exhausted,

what are the things that I would look at first?

So if you came to me exhausted, the first thing I

would understand is this, is that you're not just tired,

you're overstretched you're busy, you're responsible.

You can't just stop.

You can't leave your life, you know, and pack up

for six months and just focus on yourself, right?

You have responsibilities, you have things that you need to

do, so you need something that works with your life, right?

One of the biggest.

Issues that I see for women is that they don't look for

the right support because they can't stop, right?

They have to keep going.

They have to keep running their businesses, looking

after their families.

There is a lot that they juggle, and I think a lot

of the information out there is like, particularly when

you are heading into burnout and that exhaustion is like,

oh, you really need a break.

You really need to step back and well, that is true.

Sometimes we can't always do that.

Right?

And so I really wanna speak to that, right?

If you know you can't.

Walk away.

But also the solution which you are currently doing is

to just keep pushing through.

Right.

That I'll slow down later.

I'll wait till this passes.

That is also not going to work.

'cause that is going to push you into burnout.

So you don't need advice that tells you to just

slow down or quit your job or do less, right?

That's definitely not gonna work for you.

And you don't have a motivation problem, right?

You are motivated, you are disciplined, you're capable.

You don't lack willpower, and you don't have a

time problem, okay?

You've got a lot on, but you're very efficient,

you're very organized.

You're very productive.

So exhaustion isn't about.

Not having enough time.

Exhaustion is about capacity, having reduced

capacity, so the more tired and stressed that we

are, our capacity shrinks.

So you think about those days that you get a lot

done the same 24 hours in a day, but there's some days

you get a lot more done and some days you get less.

So capacity on one day is a lot more capacity on

the other is a lot less.

Okay?

And when it's less, we start to feel stressed and

urgent and flustered and anxious and overwhelmed.

So, when I work with women, I wanna look at what is the

biggest return they're going to get with the least, demand

with the smallest actions.

So what are the quickest wins they're going to get?

Because I know that implementing some simple

habits can really start to shift your energy in the way

that you feel without being so disruptive to your life.

Okay?

Without feeling like another thing to do,

without feeling overwhelmed, without feeling too much.

So the first thing I would fix and I would address is

regulating the nervous system.

So when you look at where you are in this place, the

reason why we become so exhausted is because of this,

you know, high levels of stress over time and stress

hormones, which change other hormones, which break down

key systems in the body.

They create.

low energy or exhaustion, high stress and anxiety.

They make our metabolism slow down so we

start gaining weight.

So until the nervous system is regulated, there's no

way anything is going to get you moving, because

when the nervous system is activated, your body thinks

that you are immortal danger.

And when our stress response thinks that it is designed

naturally to forget about everything else in the

body, not everything, right?

We're still breathing and our heart's beating,

but we're not digesting.

Our hormones are not being balanced.

Our fertility goes offline.

Like there's things that are not important when

you're in mortal danger.

And so it makes sense then to go, well, okay, let's

get the body out of mortal danger so everything can

get back online, otherwise.

All of your energy and resources are being hijacked

for the nervous system.

So it hijacks your energy, it hijacks your sleep,

your digestion increases anxiety, increases chances

of depression, and it blocks your recovery.

So I often will say that trying to throw

supplements and extreme diets into the mix.

Um, we're just trying one little habit or

a breathing exercise.

They're all great, but they're not going to regulate

the nervous system, okay?

And so therefore, it's like having one foot on the gas

and one foot on the brake, and you're not really

moving anywhere, right?

So you, you're trying to put all this good

stuff in, but the nervous system is just locked on.

Okay?

And so that needs to be regulated and relaxed in

order for your body to do at an extremely fast pace what

it naturally does, which is.

Go back to homeostasis, which is like heal itself.

So one of the ways that I do this in my programs

is really simple.

No caffeine on an empty stomach Caffeine is going

to drive up that stress response, particularly.

That's the first thing that you do.

You wake up in the morning, you beeline to the kitchen,

and you have your coffee.

That's definitely going to create a pattern for the day

with a nerve system just.

Stays locked on.

The other thing that's really.

bad for increasing cortisol levels or stress hormones,

which then locks on the nervous system is looking

at your phone as soon as you open your eyes in the morning.

Okay?

This is the worst thing that you can do because there's

gonna be text messages on there, notifications,

and bad news, right?

If you've got any news apps on your phone, it's never good.

So really leave that till later.

Allow your body to kind of start waking up.

Without being frightened, you know, without being shocked.

So leave that, get an alarm.

Something else if you need to wake you up, keep the phone

away, not in arm's reach.

And you know, doing something as simple as that, having your

breakfast first, coffee later, not grabbing your phone,

that will already start to.

Relax the nervous system, reduce those cortisol

levels so that they're normal in the morning.

So cortisol is naturally meant to rise.

That gives you energy, gets you outta bed, gets you going,

but it's those peaks, right?

That when it goes up, you start to feel, oh gosh,

I'm already under pressure.

Stress, rush, rush, rush, urgent, you mental bandwidth

shrinks your capacity shrinks, your hormones

are up, and you're just kind of operating at that

pace, which while it feels like things are happening.

It's really the least productive state that

we can be in, right?

And so just a few simple tweaks like that can start

to change that stress hormone profile in the morning.

The next thing I would look at is restoring

mitochondrial energy.

So with high stress over time, the mitochondria, which

are the cells that produce our energy, so we have

trillions of them, right?

They're our superpower.

They produce loss of energy, but with stress, they go

into hibernation mode.

So our.

Energy production drops, we feel more tired.

We've got a lot to do, so we try to push ourselves.

That creates more stress because we don't have the

energy to naturally and easily and effortlessly

execute on those tasks, right?

So we have less energy, less resilience.

Our stress tolerance drops.

We become more stressed and anxious, and we

don't have that mental energy or mental clarity.

So chronic stress will affect mitochondrial function, so

you start to feel tired and your stress tolerance drops.

And so one of the most simplest ways to start

restoring the mitochondria are so we are looking, again,

we're still downregulating or regulating the nervous

system, but we wanna put good nutrition into

the body, like a healthy breakfast, having healthy

meals throughout the day.

And again.

The trends out there, the diet are extreme, right.

Fasting and carnivore and keto, like they are all

great for different phases.

Not all of them, but You know, they can be helpful

in different phases of life, but where you are right now,

you really need to flood the body with nutrition.

Okay.

And so you need to make sure that you have a healthy

breakfast with proteins, with carbohydrates, which

help to again, relax the nervous system, get in the

mitochondria back online.

And also something very simple is.

Going for a walk in the morning as the

sun is coming up.

So just going for a sunrise walk and that way you'd

intentionally get the sunlight into the eyes, which starts

to reset the circadian rhythm, which is really important

for the mitochondria.

Okay, so light is important to restore mitochondria, the

cells that produce an endless amount of energy for us.

then I work on restoring other key systems that

are a part of resilience and high performance

and, you know, increasing capacity and bandwidth.

And so we're looking at blood sugar level regulations,

regulating the HPA axis or the stress response system,

gut health, liver health, thyroid health, all of that.

But what I wanna go into a little bit more is about

mental bandwidth this is where you'll get the.

The biggest gains because when we look at stress, we look

at our life and our demands and our responsibilities,

and we're like, stress is coming from my life,

but It's what happens.

Yes, there's certainly things that are very demanding in

our life and very challenging in business and in life and

in health and in family.

But it's how we handle, like, how we perceive

that, what we do with that information internally, right?

Do we catastrophize?

Do we worry?

Do we find it hard to let go?

Do we overanalyze?

Like all of that stuff that's happening in our head

is what's actually driving more stress in the body.

So the quickest gains that we can have is by easing that up.

So increasing our mental bandwidth.

So mental bandwidth looks like, so when we have high

mental bandwidth, it's those days where you just feel like

you can just get so much done.

You just feel like you've got so much time.

At the end of the day, you're like ticking

things off your list.

You're like, wow, I've just had such a productive day.

You didn't feel urgent.

I didn't feel rushed.

Had time for a conversation, had time for a bit of a laugh.

You're driving home, you're feeling pretty

relaxed in the car traffic.

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

It's not a big deal.

Right?

So really those high bandwidth days is where you have

massive amounts of capacity to get everything done

without feeling stressed.

The low bandwidth days are the exact opposite.

It feels like you've got so much to do in

such a short time.

It's urgent.

There's pressure.

You gotta get your coffee in the morning.

The woman's taking too long to make your coffee.

You're driving through the traffic.

You're like, oh my gosh, the traffic today is insane.

you just feel like you're in the back.

Right.

You're not as productive because you're not actually

getting much done because you don't have that mental

bandwidth or capacity.

Right.

So it shrinks.

So we get urgency, we get stress, we get anxiety.

We get pressure, we get overwhelmed.

We like spinning our wheels, but we're not

really getting as much done.

The high bandwidth days is when we get a lot done.

The low bandwidth days?

No, it just feels like there's a lot more on

those days because it's, we have a smaller container.

Okay, hopefully that makes sense.

So obviously we wanna get to those days of

really high bandwidth, which is a natural state.

Mental bandwidth collapses when your system is

under chronic stress.

Psychological stress, but also physiological stress.

So missing meals, eating too much sugar.

Fried foods take away not adding the right

nutrition to your body.

Blood sugar level fluctuations will really

mess with mental bandwidth.

So really, you know, taking care of your nutrition

is gonna be a really big key because what

you eat matters for your mental bandwidth, right?

So because our blood glucose levels, because

our brain feeds on glucose.

What you are balancing.

Your nutrition with during the day.

So, you know, proteins, carbs, and healthy fats,

how often you're eating, what you're eating,

um, the sources, right?

The source of your carbohydrates or the source of

your protein, like the quality of your food is really gonna

matter for your blood sugar levels, and it's really going

to matter for your brain.

It's gonna matter for your mental bandwidth,

your concentration, your mental energy.

And so that's the difference between you know, these

anxiety states with, as our sugar levels drop, we get into

these kind of, it feels like anxiety, And we just don't

have that mental bandwidth.

Okay?

So therefore, we're not operating at our

highest potential.

So nutrition matters, extreme kind of trendy diets, and

not for this place, right?

You really need to flood the body with

nutrition and then sleep.

Sleep to increase your mental bandwidth.

So don't sacrifice on this one.

Like be really regimented and strict on this one.

You know, the power of eight before 10 is what

I often talk about, like getting eight hours, going

to bed by before 10:00 PM.

That's the key, right?

Those, those times are the key windows of deep sleep

that are going to help to process your emotions.

It helps to reset your brain, so you start with a

clean slate in the morning.

So much more happens inside the body, but if

you are not getting that proper sleep, that is

just not happening, right?

You're gonna wake up and there's still mental noise,

and you're still feeling under pressure, right?

So it hasn't cleaned the slate overnight.

So really, really important.

So, you know, making sure that you are looking for the

right nutritional advice.

You're not going for these trends, and you're getting

that sleep to increase your mental bandwidth.

It's gonna make a hell of a difference to the way that

you feel very, very quickly.

Mm-hmm.

And then the final thing, I'll just say like we do,

I do focus on repairing key systems, but initially what

you are going to feel from just those habits that I

mentioned and what to focus on, you're gonna start to

feel that your energy's increasing, you feeling less

stress, there's less anxiety.

You feel like you've got more capacity to get more done.

There's a sense of, I can do this right?

I'm on top of this now and I'm not feeling

so overwhelmed by it.

What's the next thing?

And so then we have to do the deeper work to repair

those systems that are controlling your energy and

stress tolerance, right?

So just increasing your capacity all over to handle

everything that you have on your plate and not just

handle it, but really kind of take you to that next level.

Like really increasing your performance.

So whatever you've got on your plate, you can get through

it without feeling completely exhausted and burnt out.

Oh, without feeling just spent at the end of the day, right?

You know, having energy at the end of the day as well.

So this is you, you're feeling at that stage and you're like,

I don't know what to do first.

I would start on those habits that I talked about,

you know, no caffeine on an empty stomach, getting some

sunlight in the morning, having a healthy breakfast.

Having a healthy breakfast within 20 minutes of rising.

So breakfast before caffeine.

Don't look at your phone.

Very simple things.

Okay, but stacked on top of each other will

make a difference.

So I'd love you to leave me a comment below, like

what, have you already tried to fix your exhaustion?

Have you tried extreme diets and fasting or supplements

in order to shift it?

And it hasn't?

And what would be the first habit that you

would try from here?