5 Ways To Beat Afternoon Energy Slumps

This is Nisha Vora, of Rainbow Plant Life fame. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she realized she hated being a lawyer, and pivoted completely to become what she now is 12 years later, a chef and health coach.

Here are her tips for boosting energy through the day:

Caffeine timing

If you don’t do caffeine at all, no need to change that, but if you do, Vora advises that midday is the best time for it, with a very good rationale:

• of course it should not be too late in the day, because the elimination half-life of caffeine (4–8 hours to eliminate just half of the caffeine, depending on genes, call it 6 hours as an average though honestly for most people it will either be 4 or 8, not 6) is such that it can easily interfere with sleep for most people
• because caffeine is an adenosine blocker, not an adenosine inhibitor, taking caffeine in the morning means either there’s no adenosine to block, or it’ll just “save” that adenosine for later, i.e. when the caffeine is eliminated, then the adenosine will kick in, meaning that your morning sleepiness has now been deferred to the afternoon, rather than eliminated.

Another reminder that caffeine is the “payday loan” of energy. So, midday it is. No morning sleepiness to defer, and yet also not so late as to interfere with sleep.

See also: Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep

Simplify what can be simplified

This one’s not from a physiological basis, but rather, that a lot of the time most of us have much of our energy being taken by constant task-switching (what gets called multitasking, but as our brain is a single processor, it really means switching rapidly between different kinds of cognition, which is not efficient). In order to avoid that energy drain, try to streamline things and make a particular effort to not only single-task, but to do so without distractions.

Counterpoint: if you have unmedicated ADHD, then chances are you’ll do better with a single small distraction chosen by you, than trying to go without distractions, because your brain will find distractions anyway, so you might as well choose one (for many people it is background music, or a podcast or TV show that one doesn’t may attention to but it’s there) as a matter of harm reduction, and that way you’ll do better at focusing on your primary task than if your brain were reaching out for every and any possible distraction.

Manage your blood sugars

In particular, she advocates for avoiding sugary breakfasts, opting instead for protein, fat, and fiber-rich options. For more in this regard, see:

10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars

Walk after meals

You don’t have to don hiking boots and “I am just going outside and may be some time“; rather, even a 2–5 minute walk after a meal helps regulate digestion and glucose levels, avoiding postprandial energy slumps.

So,

• if you have a treadmill, after eating is a great time to use it for a few minutes
• if you have stairs, now’s a great time to go up and down them a few times

One last technique for when everything else fails

We’ll quote her directly on this one:

❝Despite my best efforts, soemtimes I just have one of those days. Maybe I didn’t sleep well or I’m distracted by my never ending thoughts. If I need to be productive or energized on those days, I will do something that I absolutely hate:

I will take a cold shower.

And I hate it because I’m already always cold all the time, so why would I want to get a cold shower?

Well, it’s because cold water immersion has been shown to dramatically boost your dopamine levels, which gives you more energy and motivation.

In the moment though, it’s mostly painful and I hate everything and everyone around me.

But I know that if I can suffer through two minutes of a cold shower, I will feel so refreshed.❞

There are more benefits than just that, though, see:

A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

Want more from Nisha Vora?

We reviewed one of her books a while back:

The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook – by Nisha Vora

Enjoy!