7.
Food FIXES for Fatigue
Stick with the FIXES approach for more zip, less zonk.
Start typing the words “why am I” in the Google search bar. The autofill that
appears below could be anything from the philosophical—“Why am I alive?”—
to the physical. You might expect the most popular question to focus on the
health problem that plagues more than two-thirds of American adults: “Why am
I overweight?”
The first thing that usually pops up: “Why am I always so tired?”
That’s how big the issue of fatigue is. The almighty Google confirms it. And
you confirmed it: In a reader poll for Dr. Oz The Good Life magazine, 74 percent
of readers said they find themselves wishing for more energy every day, and 59
percent would rather have more energy than drop a dress size (nearly four in five
also said they would rather have more energy than more sex).
So let’s tackle this issue. Fatigue can be a mysterious and complicated
ailment, because tangible data doesn’t back it up the way, say, blood pressure
indicates heart problems. You simply feel it. Maybe your body and mind just
don’t have the zip to get going in the morning. Maybe you feel that reach-for-
sugar crash coming on every afternoon. Maybe you crash at the end of the day
when the kids long for one last page of the book you’re reading to them.
But you just can’t. You’re toast.
We all know what fatigue feels like, and we’re all frustrated by it. We want
more cheetah, less slug. We want to bounce through the day, not trudge through
it.
I visualize fatigue like a ball of tangled yarn. The strands are influences—