Raise Your Energy Level (Part 4)

Psalm 128:2 says: "For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee."

Our quote for today is from Pablo Picasso. He said: "Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."

Today, in the Get Things Done podcast we are looking at Part 4 of Step 5: "Raise Your Energy Level."

We've discussed exercise and relaxation as methods of fighting procrastination. The third physical aspect that we will deal with is diet. It's a big subject, one we won't go into in depth, but suffice it to say that so far as fatigue is concerned one big culprit is sugar. Most of us eat many times as much sugar as we should.

Lots of people think sugar is supposed to produce energy, but it just isn't true ­­ at least not in the way they think. Every week the average American eats more than two pounds of refined sugar, much of it hidden as an ingredient in various manufactured foods (one popular brand of ketchup is 29% sugar!) If eating refined sugar really produced energy, we would be a nation of live wires and lethargy would be unknown.

It is true that low blood sugar means less energy, but the proper way to maintain the right amount of sugar (glucose) in your blood is through a balanced diet. When you zap your system with refined sugar (sucrose) you trigger the release by the pancreas of large amounts of insulin to counteract the sugar shock, and this insulin overcompensates, resulting in a much lower blood­sugar level than you originally had. And one result of this process is fatigue. It sounds complicated, but that's the way it works. (There are other undesired effects of too much sugar, including weight gain and dental cavities, but this isn't the place to go into that.)

Of course, I'm not saying that procrastination is a result of eating too much sugar. What I am saying is that one result of bad dietary practices, such as eating too much sugar, is fatigue. If you are vacillating about whether to go ahead and get a job done or whether to put it off, you will more frequently choose to put it off if you feel pooped. So poor diet doesn't "cause" procrastination, but it may tip the scales. And if bad diet becomes habitual, causing chronic fatigue, it can tip those scales dozens of times a day ­­ on matters that don't seem to be related to health in any way whatsoever.

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