If you’re feeling sleepy at some point every day, the culprit may be your eating habits. They don’t even have to be unhealthy—in fact, there are plenty of nutrient-rich foods that can take you out just as easily as a snack full of processed sugar. Here are just some foods that could be the culprit for you after-lunch exhaustion.
- Bananas and nuts: This one is particularly disappointing since I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love bananas for breakfast? But it’s true. Bananas and nuts are both rich in magnesium. Magnesium is great if you need a natural muscle relaxant for your post-workout muscle cramps. But magnesium’s muscle relaxing qualities may make you sleepy if you’re low in magnesium already.
- Dairy products: Dairy intolerance can manifest itself in countless ways as we get older, and one of them is fatigue. There’s no clear answer to why this happens, but the theory is that when you grow up with dairy, the body can develop a reaction to the proteins that appear in dairy, and now when you ingest them, your body spends so much energy fighting those proteins that it leaves you exhausted. If you already have some intolerance to dairy, it could be giving you GI problems as well as taking down your energy level.
- Red meat: One of the reasons people advise against eating red meat is because it’s so hard for your body to break down. The high amounts of fat in these rich meats means that your body will spend all its energy breaking that down, leaving you feeling tired. Even if you had red meat the night before, your body may be so tired from digesting it overnight that you'll be left fatigued in the morning.
- Salads and other light lunches: This is perhaps the most surprising culprit. It really depends on the salad, but if your salad is all light veggies and no protein or carbs, you’re going to be tired and hungry in no time. If you’re adding sugary salad dressings to the mix, you’ll add a sugar crash to your sleepiness.
- Coffee. We’ve all experienced a coffee crash. When you shotgun your morning cup(s), you’re giving yourself a lot of energy, but only for an hour or so. Then it’s inevitable that you’ll crash. If you want to make the most out of your caffeine, drink small amounts of it slowly, until around lunchtime. And be sure to get a real breakfast in!
- Sweet treats. Even if you’re someone who indulges in sweets only rarely, that rush of sugar will only last as long as it takes for the tryptophan in your brain to bring you back down again. After-lunch sweets may be tempting, but they’ll just leave you fatigued.
What foods do you rely on to keep you going throughout the day?
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