First of all, what is burnout?
‘Burnout’ is recognised by the World Health Organisation as an ‘occupational phenomenon’. Rather than being a health condition, it’s considered a syndrome - collection of symptoms. In the case of burnout, those symptoms relate to mental, physical and emotional exhaustion, often after experiencing a long period of stress, most commonly from work.
Does this sound like it could be you? Or you could have experienced it before?
Here are some signs to look out for!
Feeling tired or drained most of the time
Feeling helpless, trapped and/or defeated
Feeling detached/alone in the world
Having a cynical/negative outlook
Self-doubt
Procrastinating and taking longer to get things done
Feeling overwhelmed
One of the most important things about burnout and recovery is that we have to take action. Sadly, it won’t get better on its own, or with time. Our exhaustion will build, taking on simple tasks will get harder and it will likely start to have a significant impact on work performance, as well as relationships and health.
Identifying the root causes of burnout is key to overcoming it - work pressure, lack of physical movement, money concerns, poor health. With this, you can start to implement changes and address your needs and the root cause of the problem.

So what can you do when burnout hits?
In the modern world it can be really hard to switch off. Everything around us is stimulating our brain. Your phone is a permanent extension of your arm and it houses your friends, entertainment, shopping, food, and emails.
It’s not surprising that 93% of the population aligns with having feelings of high stress or burnout - we spend so much time switched on and not aligned with our body cues.
Why would we need to leave our phone? We have everything we need right in this comfy place on the sofa.
This has encouraged many of us to work longer hours, move less, and sleep much worse.
What’s next?
First up - take a step away from your phone. Set some damn boundaries.
Those boundaries could be that you tell yourself you’re only allowed to scroll on your phone between certain hours, or it could be more forceful - putting your phone in another room, or in the care of another person, or you could download an app that prevents you from opening apps for longer than x time, or during x hours.
For example, Forest is great for a visual reward for staying away from your phone. It blocks access to social media - if you get through tasks, it gradually builds a forest, but if you use social too much, it will start to break down your forest.
Or, you can use the Focus mode on your phone, blocking usage for set periods of time, and making everything look less appealing with grayscale whilst it’s in use.
Next up - go back to basics with your lifestyle habits.
Often when we’re over stimulated - from work and life - it’s hard to notice when we’re tired, hungry, happy or sad. By stripping it all back, it makes it easy to build back up to a healthy place. One of the biggest and most important elements here is sleep.
With the time you’ve just bought back from your phone (I challenge you to go into your phone settings, or Instagram settings and see how much time you spend scrolling) you could get more done through the day, giving you more time in the evening to “reclaim the day”, or have more time to have a shower and get to bed early.
When you’re burnt out, the main thing you need to allow your body to get back into a good rhythm is to sleep and physically recharge your body and mind.
What if I can’t sleep, no matter how hard I try?
If you can’t sleep, then rest. There is no harm in lying peacefully, reading, meditating or doing some gentle stretching.
Work on building your sleep routine, or hygiene, which helps to signal to your brain it’s time to switch off. For some people this is having a shower, washing their face and brushing their teeth, it could be reading. Whilst the quantity of sleep may not be there yet, it can help to build up the overall habit and routine.
Another great one is to journal. A great question to set yourself, if you’re not sure where to start - “what is worrying me right now?”
This can start to help you address what is going on behind the scenes and help you to get to the root. Initially it may be hard and a few lines is plenty. Over time, you should get more comfortable with it and over time begin to see different chatter come up to help you process. This may start to show you a pattern of challenges coming up and things you can start to work through.
Cut the intensity
For many of us, we love training and exercise - it’s part of our healthy lifestyle. But when burnout hits, one of the easiest and fastest ways to recover is to cut the intensity. It may not be that we have to cut exercise out entirely, although it could be wise. Instead, dropping the load, volume, and the push for a few days to a week would be great.
For a week, take a chill pill. Go for walks, stretch, lift some super light weights and focus on performance. You will gain more in your performance for resting now than pushing hard through it.
How about nutrition?
From there, you can begin looking at your nutrition. What nutrients are you getting into your body? If your diet is highly processed and based on convenience food (which would be no surprise if you’ve been working overtime), then we want to start bringing that back to as many whole foods as possible. We want to build our meals around veggies, protein and whole food carbohydrates. Introducing more fruits and vegetables will provide you with healing nutrients, as well as antioxidants that can decrease the impact of inflammation from stress.
Proteins are going to help recover your immune system, which has likely been impacted by high stress and poor sleep. Providing more white blood cells to transport nutrients. It will also help to bring the shine and glow back to your skin and hair.
If you’re happy to cook your own food - start to focus for a week on adding half a plate of veggies FIRST to every meal.
From there, in the next week, focus on filling a quarter of your plate with protein.
Then see how long you can do that consistently.
If you don’t have the capacity to cook. That’s absolutely ok! Well done for realising where you’re at right now. Why not start to explore meal prep companies that send food pre-made to your door, or food delivery companies like Hello Fresh that send you the ingredients and take the stress away but leave you the enjoyment.
There is no harm in outsourcing the things that are tough, as long as you reach the end goal of a healthier you!
Need a little more help with managing you lifestyle? Sleep, stress, nutrition. Send me an email and let’s talk about how we could start to make simple changes to overcome your overwhelm.
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