Recharging Mom Energy

“Moms of all ages and stages, from the day that they decide to become a mom—not even the day they become a mom, but the day they decide to become a mom—are giv­ing out their energy to another or to sev­eral oth­ers,” Ashley Koff told Organic Connections. “One of the things that can set us up for the great­est energy imbal­ance is turn­ing it on and not get­ting that proper energy back in.

“In talk­ing to my patients, I started to real­ize that peo­ple didn’t have a great under­stand­ing of how the body actu­ally works. In order to make the right choices, it’s impor­tant for us to not just be told what to do with our nutri­tion. To really learn how to make choices, we have to have the infor­ma­tion to make those choices.

“I wanted to teach peo­ple in a very 101 way about how their bod­ies worked, really go back to the basics. With the idea of nutri­tion, I wanted to help peo­ple to under­stand that the body is actu­ally a series of very sim­ple energy equations.”

From her prac­tice, Ashley has seen how moms gen­er­ally cope with energy prob­lems. “We all know peo­ple, moms espe­cially, that can ‘get it all done,’” Ashley explained. “She’s exer­cis­ing; she’s got a meal on the table; she’s got a job or her inter­ests; she’s han­dling things for her part­ner and for her kids. When I see them in my office, how­ever, they gen­er­ally have one or the other type of severe energy prob­lems. In all of these instances, what’s hap­pen­ing is that they are try­ing to use their energy to put out the fires or they are ‘band-aiding’ as opposed to really look­ing at the ori­gin or the source of what is opti­mal health, what is true energy. So I teach peo­ple from the get-go to not look at caf­feined or sug­ared energy as the desir­able energy but to really look at qual­ity energy, sus­tained energy. We’re always going to have highs and lows, but the more we can make it in the mid­dle ground, the bet­ter it will be for our bod­ies and for our beings.”

The book is orga­nized into four main parts: Before You Get Started, Reorganize, Rehabilitate and Recharge. It first takes the reader through under­stand­ing her own par­tic­u­lar phys­i­ol­ogy, which will fall into one of four cat­e­gories. Once she has placed her­self within a cat­e­gory, there is advice specif­i­cally tai­lored for each indi­vid­ual mom, as well as much gen­eral infor­ma­tion about food and its inter­ac­tion with the body. There is plen­ti­ful data on what to—and what not to—shop for, and which kinds of foods to focus on for her par­tic­u­lar body type.

Given a typ­i­cal day, it’s not sur­pris­ing that moms every­where are fran­ti­cally grasp­ing for energy solu­tions. “We wake up in the morn­ing and we’re exhausted,” Ashley con­tin­ued. “When our body is exhausted, then we turn to white sug­ars or caf­feine and we start our day off this way. We may even try to coun­ter­act that by exer­cis­ing or uti­liz­ing other meth­ods in that space. What ends up hap­pen­ing is the day gets set up for this high-and-low expe­ri­ence. Especially in the mid­dle of the after­noon we’re crash­ing; so peo­ple are hit­ting sugar or they’re hit­ting caf­feine, then they’re com­ing home. And at seven or eight, after we’ve eaten din­ner, after the kids have gone to bed or they’re set­tling down, we turn around and we’re exhausted. But instead of going to bed, what we end up doing at that point is say­ing, `Now it’s “me” time’—to relax in front of the TV, or work on a blog, or do that extra job from home, or catch up with friends on Facebook, or what­ever. We start doing things that engage our energy and typ­i­cally also eat­ing at that time because we’re tired; so in order to have energy we eat. Suddenly we can’t go to sleep. We’ve had caf­feine through­out the day; we’ve had food late in the evening. So now we’re tak­ing a med­ica­tion to help us go to sleep and we’re throw­ing the cycle off. In that 24 hours, we’re lay­ing the ground­work for dis­ease, 3, 5, 10, 15 years later.”

Unfortunately, the solu­tions that moms find on the gen­eral market—especially pack­aged food prod­ucts that promise “increased energy”—really don’t work, which makes for a vicious cir­cle. “The issue is that there are many ways you can cre­ate quote-unquote `energy,’” Ashley said. “You can look at energy just as calo­ries, and we know that all calo­ries are not cre­ated equal. You can look at energy in terms of shoot­ing somebody’s energy up high with a whole lot of stimulants—sugar or caf­feine, or all of these herbs that are now on the mar­ket. But what hap­pens when that energy drops? So the issue is in an energy claim: the peo­ple sell­ing these prod­ucts are not under­stand­ing how the body works and they’re not giv­ing you a claim that actu­ally res­onates with what is going to give your body its best energy. That’s the dif­fer­ence between a mar­ket­ing cam­paign and actu­ally work­ing with your own indi­vid­ual body and fig­ur­ing out what’s right for you.”

In read­ing Mom Energy, moms can look for­ward to a solu­tion that is not a quick fix but some­thing that will remain with them. “One of the things that was really impor­tant to us about this book was to not feel like we were giv­ing some­body a six-week or an eight-week plan that they go on and come off,” Ashley pointed out.

Not sur­pris­ingly, the types of food rec­om­mended are com­pletely nat­ural. “A fea­ture read­ers can look for­ward to is that every sin­gle food as it exists in nature is con­sid­ered an allow­able food,” said Ashley. “I want you to choose the best qual­ity foods so that you’re mak­ing things eas­i­est on your body.” Recommended items from this cat­e­gory com­prise a very long list, with foods tai­lored to var­i­ous types of energy solutions.

In addi­tion to foods, Ashley dis­cusses the need for includ­ing the proper sup­ple­ments and goes through them in detail. She addresses select­ing the right mul­ti­vi­t­a­min and min­eral sup­ple­ments, the neces­sity for a mag­ne­sium sup­ple­ment (such as Natural Calm, which Ashley rec­om­mends as a sleep aid), and specifics like B com­plex, vit­a­min D, sup­ple­ments for bone health, and many more.

“Another part they can really look for­ward to is that the promise of get­ting energy from your food is based on a clear under­stand­ing of how the body actu­ally works,” Ashley con­cluded. “You will see results from an energy stand­point when you learn how to nutri­ent bal­ance, and to pay atten­tion to the fre­quency of your con­sump­tion as well as quan­tity and qual­ity. That really is going to deliver you bet­ter energy. I see this every day in my prac­tice; I’ve seen it with my clients from my TV shows. People are astounded that they get the results and yet they don’t have to fol­low some pre­scrip­tion that is a mass pre­scrip­tion for every­one. This is really the fun of under­stand­ing your own body’s physiology.”

Mom Energy: A Simple Plan to Live Fully Charged will be avail­able September 1 at book­stores every­where. Click here to find it through the Organic Connections Bookstore.