How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

We’ve talked before about how to recover more quickly after a workout, especially if you overdid it. There are a lot of tips in that article, so by all means check it out if you didn’t catch it at the time!

That was very specific to recovering from exercise, though. Today we’re looking at something a little different, a little more holistic.

You’re busier than you think

Maybe your life is an obvious blur of busy-ness. Maybe it’s not. But either way, you’re almost certainly busier than you think. Especially on a cellular level.

Your resting metabolic rate (RMR), or how many calories you burn while at rest (i.e., calories used just to keep you alive) will depend on various factors including age, sex, weight, body composition, and other things.

That said, it’ll probably be between 1000 and 2000 calories per day. You can get a rough idea of what it might be for you, using this calculator:

How Many Calories Do You Burn a Day at Rest (Doing Nothing)?

So if ever you wonder why you feel so exhausted, despite having done nothing, it could be that your body was busy:

• Metabolizing, generally (did you have a big meal?)
• Fighting an illness (bacterial or viral infection, for example)
• Fighting an imaginary illness and creating a real one in the process (stress, inflammation, etc)
• Recovering/rebuilding from something you did yesterday or even before that
• Thinking (your brain is your largest organ by mass, and consumes the most calories by far)

Your brain does not get a free pass on being part of your body! Just like if a certain muscle group were working out constantly for 16 hours you’d be feeling pretty tired, the same goes for the organ that is your brain, if it’s been working out constantly.

Your body is a composite organism—take advantage of that

Dolphins can shut down half of their brain at once, to let each hemisphere of the brain sleep independently in shifts. We (except in the case of split brain patients, where the corpus callosum has been severed) can’t do that, but we can let different parts of the organism that is our body work in shifts.

This is the real meaning of “a change is as a good as a rest”:

If you’ve been doing cognitive work (at your desk perhaps, maybe managing a spreadsheet, say), then taking a break to do crosswords will not, actually, give you break. Because you’re still sitting manipulating letters and numbers. As far as your brain (still having to do work!) is concerned, it’s basically the same. Nor will checking out social media; you’re still sitting examining a screen.

Instead, time to get physically active. Literally just doing the washing up would be a better break! Some yoga or Pilates would be perfect.

In contrast, if you’ve been doing a vigorous bit of gardening, then for example taking a break to lift weights isn’t going to be a break, because again you just switched to a similar task.

Better to pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read, or the crosswords we mentioned earlier. Or just lounge in your nicely-gardened garden.

The important thing is: to not require the same resources from the body (including the brain, it’s still part of the body) that you have been.

For more specific tips than we have room for here today, check out:

How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research

Give your metabolism a break too

Not completely—you don’t need to be put into cryostasis or anything.

But, give your metabolism a rest, in relative terms. Intermittent fasting is great for precisely this; it lets your body rest and reset.

See: Intermittent Fasting: we sort the science from the hype!

So does the practice of meditation, by the way. You don’t have to get fancy with it, either:

Check out: No Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Enjoy, and rest well!

How To Actually Use Those Indices

Carbohydrates are essential for our life, and/but often bring about our early demise. It would be a very conveniently simple world if it were simply a matter of “enjoy in moderation”, but the truth is, it’s not that simple.

To take an extreme example, for the sake of clearest illustration: The person who eats an 80% whole fruit diet (and makes up the necessary protein and fats etc in the other 20%) will probably be healthier than the person who eats a “standard American diet”, despite not practising moderation in their fruit-eating activities. The “standard American diet” has many faults, and one of those faults is how it promotes sporadic insulin spikes leading to metabolic disease.

If your breakfast is a glass of orange juice, this is a supremely “moderate” consumption, but an insulin spike is an insulin spike.

Quick sidenote: if you’re wondering why eating immoderate amounts of fruit is unlikely to cause such spikes, but a single glass of orange juice is, check out:

Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

Glycemic Index

The first tool in our toolbox here is glycemic index, or GI.

GI measures how much a carb-containing food raises blood glucose levels, also called blood sugar levels, but it’s just glucose that’s actually measured, bearing in mind that more complex carbs will generally get broken down to glucose.

Pure glucose has a GI of 100, and other foods are ranked from 0 to 100 based on how they compare.

Sometimes, what we do to foods changes its GI.

• Some is because it changed form, like the above example of whole fruit (low GI) vs fruit juice (high GI).
• Some is because of more “industrial” refinement processes, such as whole grain wheat (medium GI) vs white flour and white flour products (high GI)
• Some is because of other changes, like starches that were allowed to cool before being reheated (or eaten cold).

Broadly speaking, a daily average GI of 45 is considered great.

But that’s not the whole story…

Glycemic Load

Glycemic Load, or GL, takes the GI and says “ok, but how much of it was there?”, because this is often relevant information.

Refined sugar may have a high GI, but half a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee isn’t going to move your blood sugar levels as much as a glass of Coke, say—the latter simply has more sugar in, and just the same zero fiber.

GL is calculated by (grams of carbs / 100) x GI, by the way.

But it still misses some important things, so now let’s look at…

Insulin Index

Insulin Index, which does not get an abbreviation (probably because of the potentially confusing appearance of “II”), measures the rise in insulin levels, regardless of glucose levels.

This is important, because a lot of insulin response is independent of blood glucose:

• Some is because of other sugars, some some is in response to fats, and yes, even proteins.
• Some is a function of metabolic base rate.
• Some is a stress response.
• Some remains a mystery!

Another reason it’s important is that insulin drives weight gain and metabolic disorders far more than glucose.

Note: the indices of foods are calculated based on average non-diabetic response. If for example you have Type 1 Diabetes, then when you take a certain food, your rise in insulin is going to be whatever insulin you then take, because your body’s insulin response is disrupted by being too busy fighting a civil war in your pancreas.

If your diabetes is type 2, or you are prediabetic, then a lot of different things could happen depending on the stage and state of your diabetes, but the insulin index is still a very good thing to be aware of, because you want to resensitize your body to insulin, which means (barring any urgent actions for immediate management of hyper- or hypoglycemia, obviously) you want to eat foods with a low insulin index where possible.

Great! What foods have a low insulin index?

Many factors affect insulin index, but to speak in general terms:

• Whole plant foods are usually top-tier options
• Lean and/or white meats generally have lower insulin index than red and/or fatty ones
• Unprocessed is generally lower than processed
• The more solid a food is, generally the lower its insulin index compared to a less solid version of the same food (e.g. baked potatoes vs mashed potatoes; cheese vs milk, etc)

But do remember the non-food factors too! This means where possible:

• reducing/managing stress
• getting frequent exercise
• getting good sleep
• practising intermittent fasting

See for example (we promise you it’s relevant):

Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science

…as are (especially recommendable!) the two links we drop at the bottom of that page; do check them out if you can

Take care!