The feeling of waking up more tired than when you closed your eyes is all too familiar for many people living with lupus. The hamster wheel of lupus symptoms seems endless and impossible to catch up with. Fatigue remains a staple for most people who have lupus. Constant fatigue can slowly feel like it’s taking over your life. Missing out on special events due to barely being able to keep up with base life responsibilities. In today’s post, I’m going to cover how I manage my Lupus fatigue while still having a life.
Constant fatigue can feel like a time thief. A thief of family moments, special occasions, and just the little moments in life no one realizes are special until you don’t have them anymore. I remember feeling like I would never have a life after being diagnosed with lupus. I was struggling to keep up with base necessities like showering and would be ready for a nap after a 15-minute shower.
It would turn into a mental battle because I couldn’t control being sick and the last thing I needed was to use any of the limited mental energy I had beating myself up over something I couldn’t control. Now having a grip on my emotions and understanding how uncontrolled emotions can affect autoimmune diseases. I make sure to process my emotions as healthily as I can.
Read up on Stress and autoimmunity to learn more about emotions and how they can affect your autoimmune disease if unregulated. Trust me it’s worth the read.
Now let’s jump right into how I manage fatigue in my everyday life living with lupus….so I have a life.
Planning
I save physical and mental fatigue by planning out everything I can. It started with meal planning then quickly came to planning out my self-care, morning routine, and even cleaning schedule. To give an example of how in-depth my planning goes, let’s look at my morning routine plan: I have a set plan for high, medium, and low energy. So no matter how I’m feeling my base necessities are met and on days when I’m feeling better than normal, I don’t give myself decision fatigue I can just go ahead and look at my high-energy morning routine! Life became so much easier when a plan was set in place even if I didn’t end up using said plan. Having a backup to just winging it saves the day when I’m too tired to even think.
Diet
The most noticeable change in my fatigue is the food that I eat. The saying you are what you eat rings true in this instance. When I was eating fast food I never had energy and experienced more fatigue than ever. Changing my diet almost instantly brought me bursts of energy where I felt like I was on top of the world and made me almost forget about the fatigue. I was just so excited to actually be able to do not only things I needed to but have enough energy to get around to doing the things I wanted to. Now having changed my eating habits for over a year I realize how much food affects me and the state of my disease anytime I splurge. I find myself feeling terrible, experiencing more symptoms, sleeping longer, not feeling rested, never being able to get “enough” sleep, sweating a lot, not smelling good, and having extreme mood swings when I eat a westernized diet (high fat low fiber).
Get your body moving
I’ve noticed getting my body active in any way helps with fatigue. Depending on how I’m feeling determines the level of activity. It could just be a quick walk and I will notice I have more energy. I never feel like it when I’m experiencing fatigue but I know it does help so I make sure to get in some type of physical activity. On days when I’m just not feeling it, I will turn on a stretching video off youtube and follow along. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy just enough to get your body moving and the blood flowing.
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Chlorophyll
Drinking chlorophyll religiously has helped my energy and fatigue levels drastically change. I don’t like the way it tastes so instead of mixing it with a full cup of water I do a shot-sized amount. It just tastes like grass to me. It’s not horrible, but It’s never pleasant. It’s worth it though because I always find it leaves me with increased energy, clearer skin, more mental clarity, and it helps eliminate body odor. I recommend at least giving it a try.
Dealing with lupus fatigue can sometimes feel like a never-ending battle. Take your disease into your own hands and choose to work with your disease instead of against it. Let us know in the comments below how you cope with lupus and fatigue. We would love to hear from you!
Check out our free resource library. You can find all the printables I use to plan out my life there. We post new free resources monthly. You can sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop so you don’t miss out!
