How To Avoid the Midafternoon Slump
You’re exhausted every day, 2pm-ish? Need more coffee to keep from falling asleep at your desk?
File this one under “common but not normal”.
Feeling a little tired later in the day is normal. But desperately needing a nap after lunch? Nope. Not normal.
If you’re anything like the countless women out there who are burning the candle at both ends- and if you’re anything like me not so long ago- then that desire to cut the workday short and fall into a deep luxurious sleep in your bed is definitely not a reflection of normal health. Even if everyone around you is going through the same thing.
Now, I’m guessing that you’d love for this to not be your life. Because feeling so tired all the time can really slow you down, make you irritable and anxious, pull your focus, and kill your productivity. Which often means you need to spend more time at work, possibly on nights and weekends- time that I’m sure you’d rather spend with family, friends, and basically doing whatever the heck you please.
In this post I’m going to give you the most likely explanation for why you always feel like you need a nap after lunch: it’s called the blood sugar roller coaster. You’ll learn blood sugar basics, how to identify if you’re on the ‘roller coaster’ (and what that even means), and you’ll learn a few simple tips to balance your blood sugar and therefore boost your energy naturally- so you can get back to slaying at work.
One last thing- even if your doctor has said your bloodwork is fine and that you don’t have pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, or insulin resistance, you could still be experiencing a blood sugar roller coaster, and all the tips I suggest here would still apply. Blood sugar balance really is for everyone.
Are you on a BLOOD SUGAR ROLLER COASTER?
A blood sugar rollercoaster is one of the top reasons you need a nap after lunch, can’t focus at work, and have crazy cravings for sweets and carbs. Let’s unpack this.
If you feel you could literally pass out right after lunch, chances are you’re not fueling your body properly.
When we’re busy, it’s easy for proper nutrition to become an afterthought. You might do things like skip breakfast, treat mocha lattes as meals, and overload on carbs, sugar, and quick snacks like bagels, muffins, chips, and chocolate.
I used to do this all the time. I’d pick up a venti vanilla latte from Starbucks on my way to work at 7am. I figured the milk counted as a meal. By 11am I’d be starving and would grab a bagel or a big muffin from the coffee cart. Since I hadn’t prepared, I’d often have nothing for lunch and just ‘hold out’ till I could make it home. But sometimes I’d be able to grab a bowl of soup and some Sun Chips at the work cafeteria, followed by another coffee around 2pm, because I still had work to take care of and I was losing steam. At the end of the day, I’d come home and be so starving that I’d eat 3 big bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal with milk. Then I’d plop down on my sofa because I had no energy for exercise at this point.
Eating like this on repeat all leads to a blood sugar roller coaster and an energy roller coaster. But what do I mean by that?
First, a couple Blood Sugar basics:
“Blood sugar” is the amount of glucose present in your blood at any time. When you eat carbohydrates, your digestive system breaks them down into into glucose (sugar). To balance things out, your pancreas will release insulin- a hormone that helps to regulate your blood sugar. Specifically, insulin helps get the glucose into your cells where it’s needed and can give you energy.
When this happens in a person with healthy, balanced blood sugar, it looks something like this:
In this diagram, you can see that in a person with healthy blood sugar regulation, blood sugar would go up a bit when you eat, but not too much. And then it would come back down again, gradually- but not go too low. Blood sugar generally is stable and remains in a healthy range. (Note- later in this post, I’ll share what kinds of foods can help you stay in this healthy range).
Blood sugar and energy tend to go hand in hand. So this person would likely experience pretty stable energy throughout the day. No super slump in the afternoon. Yay!
But let’s say you’re skipping meals, drinking lots of coffee, and grabbing sugary, carb-heavy snacks for quick energy- and not eating as much protein, healthy fats, or veggies.
In this case, your food choices will likely lead to a blood sugar rollercoaster:
In this graphic, you see sharp spikes in blood sugar after eating a meal or snack that’s high in carbohydrates. Your pancreas will counteract with insulin, but often producing too much because of all the carbohydrates that have been converted into sugar in the bloodstream. This leads to a fairly quick blood sugar crash, as depicted by the sharp valleys in the diagram.
When your blood sugar crashes, your energy will crash along with it, and you’ll get that awful ‘hangry’ feeling. I’m sure you’ve felt this before- anxiety, shakiness, fogginess, anger, and hunger all rolled into one. It’s the perfect storm!
Now, stop and think: when you’re hangry, what do you naturally crave? Is it broccoli? Haha, I bet not! More likely, you’re going to want foods like pastries, pasta, bread, bagels, muffins, chips, chocolate. Basically, carbs and sugar. And it’s natural you’d crave these foods because they’re the ones that will get you out of your blood sugar crash the fastest. When you indulge in that craving, however, it leads to another quick blood sugar spike, and yet another crash…
Can you see how this can turn into a vicious cycle?
The good news is that it’s fairly simple to turn around.
How to get off the blood sugar roller coaster & stabilize your energy
Riding the blood sugar rollercoaster is exhausting. But the good news is that there’s a ton you can do to balance blood sugar and boost your energy. As a reminder, these tips apply even if you don’t have pre-diabetes, insulin resistance or type-2 diabetes. Blood sugar balance is for everyone!
#1 Be intentional about when you eat
When you’ve got work and life obligations up the wazoo, it’s easy to skip breakfast and other meals. But skipping meals will lead you into a sharp blood sugar drop, you’ll feel hangry, and then you’ll eat anything you can get your hands on. Which will most likely be carbs and sweets. So…
Don’t skip meals. Eat at regular intervals throughout the day.
Eat breakfast within an hour or so of waking.
Prep meals in advance.
Always have snacks on hand- choose snacks that include protein and fat (examples below).
#2 Eat balanced meals & snacks
Your goal meal should look something like this:
Protein + healthy fat + fiber + color
If you can’t get all those into a meal or snack, focus on getting in the protein and fat. That’s what’ll keep your blood sugar stabilized. A few examples from the snack/breakfast genre:
Instead of that store-bought fruit-juice smoothie, make one that includes protein powder and a nut butter.
Instead of just an apple for a snack, pair it with a couple tablespoons of almond butter, a handful of nuts, or an ounce of cheese.
Instead of your regular oatmeal and fruit for breakfast, add in some chia seeds and protein powder or collagen powder. And always use rolled oats (steel cut are even better).
When you eat your favorite avocado toast, have two eggs with it. If possible, choose a high fiber & high protein bread (like Base Culture).
Instead of flavored yogurt with granola, try plain, full-fat greek yogurt with a handful of nuts and berries as topping.
#3 Limit Refined “Empty” Carbs and Sugar
You don’t have to swear off carbs forever. Foods like pizza, pasta, donuts, and ice cream are often the foods that remind us of our childhood, or help us bond with our loved ones on special occasions. They’re soul foods, and we do need them.
So it’s not a matter of 100% eliminating these foods, but rather striking a balance and limiting how often you have them and how much you have. Plus, if you do have a food that is high in refined carbohydrates, be sure to pair it with a source of protein in order offset the blood sugar spike. Some examples of refined carbohydrates to watch out for:
breads and pastries
white rice
pasta
cereal and granola
chips
foods with added sugars (check labels)
#4 Watch your caffeine intake
Drinking caffeine or having your coffee on an empty stomach can spike blood sugar in many people. This is because the body can perceive it as stressful, and when you’re under stress- whether you realize it or not- your body releases stored sugar into your blood stream. A couple ways to ease the impact of caffeine on your blood sugar:
Don’t drink coffee (or caffeine) on an empty stomach. Eat first.
If you’re drinking more than a cup of coffee a day, try cutting down to one cup.
Consider switching out your regular coffee for decaf, green tea, or matcha.
#5 Move your body
Exercise is one of the best ways to keep blood sugar stable. Taking a brief walk after lunch or dinner can help to regulate your blood sugar and keep your energy up.
But is it really going to work?
You may have been dealing with the fatigue and anxiety of the blood sugar roller coaster for so long that it’s hard to believe the fix is so easy. I get it. You want to know: is this going to work for me?
My answer: 1000 times YES!!!
Personally, these tips have truly been transformative for me. I can even remember a time when I thought I was eating very healthy- a mostly plant-based diet, in fact. But I was always tired, anxious, periodically hangry, and unfocused. I was exercising regularly, too. But it didn’t matter.
I was drinking more coffee than my body could handle and not prioritizing protein or fat in my meals. And that was enough to put me on the rollercoaster. Once I started making the nutrition tweaks above, my energy and mental wellbeing improved dramatically. I’ve seen it happen time and time again with my clients, too.
So please trust me when I say this stuff works! And you can do it!
Sometimes the hard part is figuring out how and where to start, though. If that’s your struggle, go ahead and book a free Burnout Breakthrough Chat with me and we’ll start putting together a plan to get your health back on track.
