Constant low energy and brain fog

Think I found the issue. Add some protein into that mix. You need to eat meet, bru

 

May be all of the above. You do seem to have a ton of carbs in the diet with all the bread, but it all matters.

I mostly only eat fruit first thing in the morning, maybe a smoothie - sort of transition food to break the fast from the night.

Do you eat at set times or is it pretty random?

 

If you feel tired, you are not rested well enough.
You have to improve your sleep.

1. Stick to a schedule:
Wake up the same time every day. It is more important to wake up on time than to sleep at the same time. Although it's best to stick to waking AND sleeping times. This has to be your first priority, it's the framework for better sleep.

2. Create a morning routine:
Your morning routine doesn't have to be "productive", it just has to be rigid, almost like a ritual. I for example wake up, take my time showering, making a coffee, scrambled eggs with bacon, banana, sometimes orange juice. Now I'm looking forward to waking up, because of the great breakfast. Some people read, others go for a walk, meditate. For beginners I'd recommend making your morning as enjoyable as possible, AS A ROUTINE.

3. Create a bedtime routine:
Here it's important to go back 2-3h before actually going into bed. Your last meal should optimally be 3h before sleep, if you are TRULY a busy person make it 2h at most so your stomach can do the heavy lifting while you're awake. After that last meal of the day, you can have tea with honey or so, just don't drink coke (caffeine + sugar). A couple of carbs are absolutely fine as dinner, they will make you release serotonin, which helps you fall asleep.

Once you've got that setup (it will take a couple of weeks), you can optimize other things, like food in general. Also, you can install software like f.lux to dim your screen in the evening, it helps keep your internal clock run more normally.

You should do all of this, the 3 points are in order of how important they are. If you just do one thing, let it be setting up a morning routine, it goes a long way.

Best of luck.

 

Another thing that helps: No caffeine after a set time. Let it be 14:00. Have your coffee, coke whatever, but after 14:00 stop consuming anything with caffeine. If you like coffee, drink GOOD coffee, the best stuff you can get, experiment with it and enjoy it in the morning. When you visit your friend, you won't like the normal cup of coffee that much and it will be easier to say no.

 

That makes sense especially considering how much of your diet seems to be carbs, after all it burns a lot faster than protein and fats.

I'm big on structuring time so anything from sleep to diet, exercise even though that's probably the one area where I'm not as consistent except for walking in the morning as a part of my morning routine. (which btw is meditation, walking, writing, reading and eating - although I hydrate before everything) But just diet alone goes a long way. Making sure I have something substantial, started with just gradually moving the dinner time back half an hour say, and over the last few years now I stop eating at 4pm and it's in about a 8 hour window, and I'm not hungry for the night. Even on days where I may eat a little less and the stomach gurgles I have no craving, it's just like ok I could have eaten more but I don't feel I need to do anything until the morning. I definitely couldn't do that with just bread and carbs though I'm sure.

I see Script already mentioned a few things along this line, the only thing I'd point out is to work with your whole day, both beginning and end. If you work on your sleep don't just get up at a set time, go to bed at a set time. Same thing with when you have the first meal and the last. You see some people focus on like just waking up early, and it's this big motivational thing - I doubt that's sustainable and I never hear those guys say they've been doing it a long time, the overall pattern looks more like they like the idea and it feels really positive to them, but it's just not realistic if the other end is totally ignored with staying up too late binge watching shows or whatever.

 

Some people simply get it wrong, it's just as you said right before: You have to work with "the whole day". If you are set to wake up at a specific time - it doesn't have to be 5am, that shouldn't be the point - you will ultimately go to sleep relative to that time, say 7-8h earlier. Otherwise it's not a sustainable model (I realize you said that too). It also might not be sustainable to wake up at 4am and go to sleep at 8-9pm when the sun is still up.

In my experience - and as a logical conclusion - it's easier to focus on one part of the day and make things work around it. If you get your mornings right, you'll automatically have your evenings done right as well (if you mess up the evening you'll mess up the morning). If your morning is not good enough -> maybe you sleep uneasy, if you sleep uneasy -> maybe you have to improve your eating habits for later in the day.. I guess you see where I'm coming from. One thing already relates to multiple others things.
It reduces stress to know you just have to work on "one" thing. You're more likely to tackle it seriously and give it your all.

And once you have that "one" thing working for you, you can work on other things. I think no-one just started to improve everything at the same time and succeeded. I know I tried: Waking up at 7am, no coffee, only water, workout every day etc. etc.. It was impossible to do and a stupid strategy. I saw other people being successful doing all these things and thought "I'm lacking behind, now I need to do all of the good things, ASAP!". Only as I gave up on it after I failed over and over with this approach, I tried to do at least one little thing. And at the time, I really needed that one thing. I was easy on me, I didn't try it during my exams in university, when I was stressed already. I did it after I finished exams and it worked. I stuck to the routine and slowly built a habit.

Long story short:

Make it as easy as possible for you to build new behaviors, step by step.