240.#RESTORE: How to Restore Your Energy from Burnout in 4 Simple Steps with the F.U.E.L Framework

You can't think your way out of burnout—but you can systematically restore what chronic stress has stolen from your mind, body, and spirit.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim reveals why vacation time isn't enough to heal chronic depletion, and shares the 4-pillar FUEL framework that actually replenishes what burnout has stolen from your mind, body, and spirit.

This episode builds on Burnout Series Part 1's nervous system regulation tools by teaching you how to intentionally restore the physical, mental, and emotional resources that chronic stress depletes—so you can stop running on empty and start thriving again.

What You'll Learn:

• Why burnout is actually a form of malnutrition—and what nutrients (beyond food) your depleted system desperately needs
• The FUEL framework: Feed, Unwind, Energize, Lean in—4 pillars of true restoration that go deeper than rest
• Why "rest is not a reward for productivity—it is the foundation of it" and how to build restorative rituals into your day

"Restoration isn't passive like laying on the couch, although we definitely need to do that too. It's more intentional. It's more proactive. It's about giving your body and your brain the resources needed to rebuild and repair." - Dr. Adrienne Youdim

The Complete Burnout Prevention System:

• Regulate (Part 1): Nervous system tools for real-time stress management
• Restore (Part 2): Restore from burnout using the F.U.E.L method
• Reframe (Part 3): Transform limiting beliefs into empowering choices

Ready to move beyond surviving to actually thriving?

The FUEL framework works best when practiced consistently with others who understand the unique challenges of high-achievement. 

Our next Resilient Minds cohorts start September 30th (women) and October 1st (men)—an 8-week program that integrates regulation, restoration, and reframing with the community support that makes lasting change possible.

Download the free FUEL blueprint at dradrienneyoudim.com or learn more about Resilient Minds at dradrienneyoudim.com/resilient-minds

3 Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

• Join Resilient Minds: If this sounds familiar, you're exactly who Resilient Minds is designed for. Next cohort starts September 30th - Limited to 12 high-achieving professionals ready to move from success to significance.
  Ready to stop asking "Is this it?" and start living like you know it isn't?
  Application details here: https://www.dradrienneyoudim.com/resilient-minds
• Subscribe to Dr. Adrienne's weekly newsletter https://www.dradrienneyoudim.com/newsletter.
• Connect on Instagram : Follow @dradrienneyoudim for tips and inspiration on well-being and peak performance.

Transcript

I wonder how many of you high achieving professionals are driving yourselves to overeating, over drinking, overworking, and people pleasing. No judgment here. Trust me, I get it.

As a physician, a mother, a wife, and a type A personality, I know firsthand how we neglect ourselves in the pursuit of doing it all and how it can leave us feeling drained and unfulfilled.

My name is Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a physician, author, and expert in medical weight loss and mind-body medicine, and I help high-achieving professionals like you understand the existential hungers that drive our reactivity, burnout, and self-sabotaging behaviors.

And this is Health Bite, the podcast where we explore the essential nutrients that support your physical, mental, and emotional health and wellbeing. Each week, we will uncover one hidden hunger and explore evidence-based tools like nutrition, rest, mindset, and contemplative practices that help you regulate your stress response and redefine success without sacrificing your health, your relationships, or your personal health and well-being.

Episode Overview: Building Resilience to Burnout - Part 2

And this is part two of our building resilience to burnout mini series. Two episodes ago, we talked about how you can't think your way out of burnout and chronic stress and how rather we need to regulate ourselves out of reactivity. And I shared with you some tools. So if you haven't listened to that episode, it's number 238. We will link it back here in our show notes.

Today, we're going to talk about how to restore and what it means to have true deep restoration. And I'm going to share with you the four steps on how to get there.

Program Announcement

But first, I want to remind you, we are actively enrolling for the next cohort of resilient minds. This is my eight week program designed for high achieving professionals who are ready to shift out of burnout and reactivity to calm and intentional living.

In just two months, you will learn practical science-based mind-body strategies that are created to help regulate your stress, help you break free from self-sabotaging patterns, and to fuel your body and mind in a way that can profoundly change not only how you feel, not only how you lean in to your relationships, but how you lead in your workplace, your organizations, and your communities. I'm telling you this work is life-changing.

Our next women's cohort begins September 30th. Our men's cohort begins October 1st, and you can learn more and apply at dradrienneyoudim.com/resilientminds.

What Does It Mean to Restore?

All right, so let's get into it. What does it mean to restore?

So when people think about burnout, I think they often think the fix is a vacation, right? Let me just take some time off. And while taking a break definitely helps, I'm all for vacation. Restoration is something much deeper.

It's about literally replenishing what has been chronically depleted physically, mentally, emotionally, even spiritually.

I think of burnout as a form of malnutrition—an absence of what truly nourishes us. Things like joy, connection, purpose, movement, stillness, presence. And so restoration isn't passive like laying on the couch, although we definitely need to do that too. It's more intentional. It's more proactive. It's about giving your body and your brain the resources needed to rebuild and repair.

The FUEL Framework

So when I think about restoration, I have four core pillars, and I like to use the acronym FUEL to describe this.

Now, a little bit about why it's needed, because remember, we talked about last time or two sessions ago, actually the last episode was about the reactivity of dropping off a child at college. I left my son, my number two at GW, and I know a lot of people out there also were going through the same thing, dropping off their kids at college. So that was a digression.

But two weeks ago, we talked about reactivity that comes from chronic stress and how this constant inundation, this constant noise in the background, whether it's from your job or whether it's from uncertainty in the world around you, right? There's so many ways in which we are really getting inundated and that depletes our mind and body. And that to me is burnout. It's total full on depletion.

So we need to give ourselves the restoration by replenishing, by giving back the nutrients that we need. And that's where the FUEL acronym comes in:

• F - Feed your body with wholesome food
• U - Unwind with true rest
• E - Energize your body with movement
• L - Lean into contemplative practices like breathing, mind-body practices, guided visualization, creative writing, expressive writing, and drawing, and then also things like being out in nature and relationship, creating community, connection as a way to deeply restore

So let's explore how these domains do that. Help us restore from the reactivity that leads to burnout so that we're not just getting through the day or getting through our lives, but actually refueling our mind, our body, and our spirit.

F: Feed Your Body with Nourishing Food

So let's get to the first: feeding your body with nourishing food. We all know that this is important. Why is it important in this particular context?

The truth is we cannot navigate all the moving parts of our lives if we're depleted from the necessary nutrition and nutrients that our body needs in order to function at its optimal capacity. And that's why restoration begins with how you feed your body.

There's so many studies that show that the quality of your food impacts your mood, your focus, your cognition, your creativity, your bandwidth. So when we're talking about preventing burnout and depletion and the likes, the food that you eat is of critical importance.

Simple, Effective Nutrition

And look, it doesn't have to be fancy. This is where simplicity really matters a lot. It really doesn't have to be difficult in order to be effective.

For example, eating more from the earth, less from the pantry. You've heard me say this on this podcast a million times. And you don't need to be perfect. But did you know that 70 to 80% of our diet comes from processed and ultra processed foods?

So choosing more from the earth, more fresh, more fruits and vegetables, which have so many vitamins, minerals, micronutrients that actually help our energy, our vitality, our cognition. This is actually medicine for our body.

Key Nutritional Strategies

High-Protein Foods: The other is choosing high-protein foods. Protein is what gives us that satiation, that satiety. And actually, protein is one of the key macronutrients that helps raise our body's own GLP-1, like Ozempic. I'm not going to say it's like it is ozempic for all of those people out there that are using the meds that I also prescribe. I just feel like I have to put that out there because people say, you know, take a little supplement and it's like ozempic. It's not, but you can build your body's own response and high protein foods is really giving you that sustenance, that satiety.

High Fiber Foods: Also choosing from high fiber foods, high fiber foods are not only filling, but they also help buffer that rise in blood sugar. You know, when we eat processed foods, blood sugar goes up and then we crash because blood sugar rapidly drops as quickly as it goes up. When you eat foods that are high in fiber, it allows the rise in blood sugar to really be slowed down. So you get this sustained energy, right? And sustained energy means less crash, less reactivity.

Fermented Foods: Fermented foods, these are foods that help improve and heal the gut. They literally work to replenish the gut microbiome. Things like kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, right?

Hydration: And then finally staying hydrated on water, especially in times of stress because caffeine can increase that irritability. Alcohol use we've talked about in prior podcasts also increases excitatory neurotransmitters in the brain that make us feel anxious. And so focusing on hydrating with water that doesn't have any extra sugars, any extra caffeine, or any extra substances that will drive that reactivity in the body.

When you fuel your body with good food, you fortify it against the inundation of stress that causes reactivity that ultimately leads to burnout.

U: Unwind with True Rest

The second pillar is you unwinding with rest. And I want to say this, rest is not a reward for productivity. It is the foundation of it.

Unwinding is how we switch off that survival system, that fight or flight response, and give our bodies a chance to slow down and to heal and to restore so that we have the bandwidth available for the next day.

Sleep Foundation

Start by prioritizing sleep, seven to eight hours with a consistent bedtime and a wind down routine that allows your body to shift into rest mode. So often we're doing, doing, doing, doing until we just pass out and collapse into bed. What I want you to start to do is create a ritual before bedtime, something that prepares your body, your internal environment, for sleep.

Micro Rest Breaks

The next is taking micro rest breaks. We talked about micro pauses and micro breaks in that last podcast. But you know, just taking a few minutes, I don't even mean going for a nap, but taking five minutes to step outside, to stretch, to breathe, just little moments of rest. Your mind and your body deserve a break. They deserve a rest. And when we do that, we self-regulate, we bring down and dampen that nervous system stress response. And that is restorative, right? So that you don't go through your entire day on overdrive. You are bringing in these micro breaks.

Intentional Transitions

Another thing we talked about was intentional transitions. Transition between work and home and home and work. Transitions between meetings. Transitions between one aspect of your day and the other. Even something as simple as changing your clothes, washing your face, lighting a candle. Maybe there's a song that you listen to that helps you shift from one space into the other. Again, these rituals can go a long way of regulating you throughout the day.

How many people are jumping? How many of you are jumping from one thing to another to another, from one task to another? And then not only are you engaging in multiple tasks, but they're completely different, right? Work-related, home-related, answer an email. Oh, kids' needs are being met. Maybe a form you have to fill out. Maybe your insurance company needed your attention. And so we're just jumping from task to task to task without transition. Can you see how that level of constant effort and volatility is causing burnout? It really feels clear to me.

Unstructured Downtime

And then finally, giving yourself unstructured downtime, just time to do nothing. Daydream, sit, simply be. You don't have to earn the rest, you just have to allow it.

E: Energize with Movement

So the next pillar is, E, energizing with movement. Movement is so important to revitalizing ourselves, to fueling the body and mind, and to giving ourselves deep bodily restoration.

I actually think of exercise as a spiritual practice. And if you've been listening to me long enough, you've heard me say it before. It is a way to process and metabolize all of the day's frustrations and uncertainties and stressors. You literally are mobilizing this nervous energy through and out of your body.

Types of Movement

So I want you to try this. Maybe it's joyful, non-performative activity. What I mean by that is it's not going to the gym. It's not doing structured exercise. It's merely flipping on the radio and dancing around your living room or in your office, right?

Maybe it's short bursts of vigorous movement—we do a shaking practice in resilient minds. It is a way of just shaking that energy, that nervous energy out of the body.

Or maybe you do try something structured. Maybe it's a low-impact activity like walking or hiking or yoga. Maybe it's a class where you're engaged in something purposeful in community. It becomes a twofer and whatever feels good, do that. Because moving your body is a critical component to giving yourself that restoration that you need.

L: Lean Into Nature, Contemplative Practices, and Connection

And finally, L, leaning in to nature, contemplative practices, and connection. Because burnout can leave us feeling disconnected from ourselves, from others, from the world around us. Leaning in is how we return, how we return to ourselves.

Ways to Lean In

And you can do this in different ways:

Nature and Contemplative Practices: Tuning into nature, engaging in contemplative practices, journaling, breath work, meditation, prayer.

Value-Based Rituals: It can also look like value based rituals, like setting morning intentions or a gratitude practice or mindful eating practice, right? These rituals that get you to pause, be really mindful and intentional.

Spiritual or Creative Practices: Or spiritual or creative practices, moments that reconnect you with something bigger, like a creative pursuit—you're drawing, you're creating music, you're writing. These creative practices, they are a form of spirituality, a way of engaging in something that is bigger and beyond.

Finding Your People: And finally, finding your people. Where are your supportive relationships? People who reflect your worth and not your productivity.

Putting It All Together

Together, these pillars—feed, unwind, energize, lean in—they truly are a blueprint for restoration.

Getting Started

And as a final note, I want you to remember, you don't have to do everything and you don't have to do them all at once and you don't have to do them perfectly. Just make a commitment and start with the one that feels most nourishing to you right now. What is the thing that you might be missing? For example, what is the thing that you have neglected most or just the one that feels most interesting? Let that be your anchor.

Reflection Questions

And finally, I want you to ask yourself:

• What kind of rest do I need most right now?
• Where am I feeling depleted physically, emotionally, relationally, where do I need to focus some attention towards?
• And again, what is one restorative ritual that I can add into my daily practice this week?

The Cost of Not Restoring

Burnout and stress often tricks us into thinking that we don't have time to restore, but this is the time when you need it most because without the restoration you are running on empty and ultimately you are paying the price in terms of the cost to your physical health, your mental and emotional health, your relational health when that reactivity spills over, and ultimately into your professional health.

We cannot be productive, creative, collaborative when we're running on empty. So choose one act of small nourishment. Your body will thank you. Your mind will thank you. Your future self will thank you.

Closing

And I thank you for joining me this week on Health Bite. So far, we've talked about regulating, shifting out of reactivity. Today, we talked about restoring, replenishing the body and brain, the body and mind with what it truly needs. And next week we'll go just a little bit deeper. We'll talk about reframe. We'll explore how our thoughts, our expectations, how our stories, how these non tangible things actually fuel our burnout and how we can reshape them in a way that aligns with our values and our goals.

Resources

If you want to start to contemplate these nutrients a little bit more deeply, you can head over to my website at dradrienneyoudim.com. You can download the free fuel blueprint there. And last but not least, if you're ready to do this work more deeply, I'd love for you to join us in the next cohort of resilient minds. You can get more information on that at dradrienneyoudim.com/resilient-minds.

Until then, I'm Dr. Adrienne Youdim. This is your Health Bite. I'm wishing you a great week, mind, body, and soul.