How to beat the "Afternoon Crash" ?

Well... No. The simple carbs in your breakfast and lunch is what's causing your issue in my opinion. Hunger isn't a signal caused by lack of calorie intake, its caused by hormone release (Google this, ghrelin etc), and the same can be said for your afternoon slump IMO. Your body can 100% survive without ingesting food every 8hrs, the reason we get hungry is down to our modern simple/processed carb heavy diet. You want to get protein, fat, and your carbs from non starchy veg and low sugar fruit.
The whole cream coffee thing is just a simple way of getting some calories in while not spiking insulin, it's a cheat way of getting calories in.without affecting your body's signalling, as well as sating the psychological "breakfast" feel a lot of us have when making these sort of changes, talking a couple of tablespoons.

Ultimately this is totally not for everyone, but do your own research in to why your body does this and you'll be able to devise your own plan that works for you. My previous prescribing post was missing this message, which is my bad :p
Did you ever bother with carb backloading when it was all the rage many (10?) years ago? It is interesting how you can ‘cheat’ your body into certain feats when you apply yourself.

Carb backloading definitely ‘worked’ for me in the sense that I was able to get really lean and relatively strong (for me), but it didn’t work in the sense that I was going absolutely ****ing mental. My brain clearly isn’t suppose to operate on so few carbs in normal day to day use and such micromanagement of diet can lead to you being obsessive to the point where I was being antisocial to avoid breaking my strict regime.

As always, not going ‘full turbo’ is probably best for most people!

My current status: fat :o
 
Did you ever bother with carb backloading when it was all the rage many (10?) years ago? It is interesting how you can ‘cheat’ your body into certain feats when you apply yourself.

Carb backloading definitely ‘worked’ for me in the sense that I was able to get really lean and relatively strong (for me), but it didn’t work in the sense that I was going absolutely ****ing mental. My brain clearly isn’t suppose to operate on so few carbs in normal day to day use and such micromanagement of diet can lead to you being obsessive to the point where I was being antisocial to avoid breaking my strict regime.

As always, not going ‘full turbo’ is probably best for most people!

My current status: fat :o

Ah, the golden days of SA when I barely lifted, but at least lifted at all. I absolutely did get on CBL, and it worked a treat, but I couldn't keep it up just because it was so strict... Despite the fact that it is supposed to give one freedom. It's obviously not a good long term strat based on the fact that, in my experience, it's very difficult to get proper veg/micronutrients in as I put myself in pure fat/protein mode or pure ice cream/peanut m&ms mode :o I was OK mentality wise but I did lose my **** a bit on my birthday as I'd stupidly timed my glycogen depletion period then... Pretty stupid really but hey :D
 
Ah, the golden days of SA when I barely lifted, but at least lifted at all. I absolutely did get on CBL, and it worked a treat, but I couldn't keep it up just because it was so strict... Despite the fact that it is supposed to give one freedom. It's obviously not a good long term strat based on the fact that, in my experience, it's very difficult to get proper veg/micronutrients in as I put myself in pure fat/protein mode or pure ice cream/peanut m&ms mode :o I was OK mentality wise but I did lose my **** a bit on my birthday as I'd stupidly timed my glycogen depletion period then... Pretty stupid really but hey :D
Yes the post work-out feasts were ridiculous - I used to target getting the ‘carb-sweats’. Pack of chicken served all the popcorn, ice-cream, bagels etc :o It was obscene :D
 
Carbs have been demonised to the point they are more evil than sugar.

If you exercise you need carbs and probably more than you think it's that simple & as many have said you get them through natural food, not pizza, biscuits, cereals and what not. But any vegetable and real fruits. This low sugar fruit is nonsense as well, if you eat a proper orange you will not get a spike due to all the fibre that exists in the orange naturally whereas as just orange will send it through the roof as all the goodness to offset the fructose has been removed.
 
A large meal on your break (dinner, because tea is at 5:30-6pm) will always cause sluggishness in the afternoon.
Not sure about "always", I used to eat relatively big lunches sometimes and rarely experienced noticeable sluggishness. Sluggiest time of day for me has traditionally been the first ~2 hours after getting up, sometimes late evening if I've been up a long time and not slept that well the night before. Empirically I tended to perform better in afternoon exams compared to morning exams, although the sample size obviously wasn't that huge.

I'm aware it's a thing for other people though, I read an article once that suggested it was a bad idea to pick an interview slot in the early afternoon for this reason.
 
Back
Top Bottom