The morning of my visit, I eat a bowl of overnight oats. As I stir the chia seeds into the almond milk, I feel almost odiously virtuous, like some saintly, gluten-free combination of“What did you have for breakfast this morning?” she cross-examines me. Thrilled by this line of inquiry, I announce with pride, “Overnight oats!” “There are much better options,” she says. “You’re sabotaging your energy with that kind of starchy-carb breakfast.
Turner disavows the common argument that eating starchy carbs early in the day gives us the whole day to burn them off. “Have starch in the evening because it’s going to help you sleep better,” she explains. “In the morning, do you just wake up or do you have to hit the snooze button?” I don’t even understand the question. “Of course I hit the snooze button,” I reply. “Well, I just wake up—when I’m up, I’m up,” she says with the pep of, well, bread popping up in the toaster.
Another common culprit, adds Turner, is a dysfunctional adrenal system. “The adrenal glands allow you to get out of bed in the morning and adapt to all the stressors in your day.” She conducts an orthostatic blood pressure test to assess changes in my blood pressure from when I’m lying down to when I’m standing up.
I’m also, apparently, deficient in iron. The normal range is between 20 and 200 nanograms per millilitre, and I am at six. “You should be 84,” Turner tells me. She sends me home with a small city of supplements , assuring me that with the dietary changes and supplements, I should start to feel more energized in a few weeks.