That “3 o’clock” feeling is hypoglycemia (probably).
TL;DR: You can fight that “3 o’clock feeling” by increasing the protein & fiber in your lunch/snacks and going for a short walk after eating.
Metabolism tips to help you maintain energy throughout the day:
Move your muscles to reduce your BGLs after eating to prevent too much insulin from being released by the pancreas
Choose foods with protein, fiber, and/or fat that won’t raise BGLs quickly
Eat simple-carbohydrate snacks slowly, after protein/fiber foods, to prevent rapid BGL increases and elicit a more appropriate insulin response from the pancreas
That “3 o’clock feeling” is so common that it has a name. Chances are you’ve experienced it; we all have. If it’s so common, is there a way to avoid that post-lunch crash? Or are we all just stuck being tired in the middle of the day and the only thing to do is grab another coffee and eat another cookie?
Here’s where understanding the true root cause of that “3 o’clock feeling” becomes important. Likely, there are a number of factors at play: we didn’t get enough sleep the night before, whatever caffeine we were using as a crutch wore off, we’re dehydrated from running between work tasks, we ate things that left us full of snacks but hungry for a siesta. While these factors all contribute, what we ate for lunch is going to have an out-sized impact on how sleepy we feel throughout the day.
That “3 o’clock feeling” is probably due to a drop in blood glucose levels, aka hypoglycemia (hypo = low; glycemia = glucose). ‘What?,’ you might ask yourself, ‘how can this be due to low blood glucose levels (BGLs) if I RECENTLY ATE? Didn’t my lunch/other snacks provide enough glucose to keep my BGLs up? Should I be eating more cookies during the day to keep going?’
Great question. First, no, unless you’re doing endurance sports in the middle of the afternoon, your BGLs did not drop due to the lack of sugar from your lunch or snacks. It actually came from too much sugar in your food and not enough movement. Here’s how it works: your body’s most important job is to maintain balance. This means your BGLs cannot get too high or too low. If your BGLs are rising, your pancreas releases insulin to stimulate your cells to pull glucose out of the bloodstream to bring those BGLs back in line. The biggest players in this game to balance your blood glucose levels are your muscles, liver, and fat (adipose) cells. Your liver and fat cells will take glucose out of the bloodstream in response to insulin. Your muscles can take glucose out of the bloodstream in response to insulin or movement.
When you eat, your pancreas always releases a small amount of insulin (except in Type I Diabetes). Then, there is a delay in insulin release. This delay gives your muscles a chance to use the glucose first. The idea is that you ate food with the intention of moving around, or to store that food to fuel movement you’ll do later. So only a small amount of insulin is released when you first eat, there’s a lag that allows your muscles to take up glucose by movement, without insulin. If your muscles don’t take the glucose out of the bloodstream, then your pancreas releases more insulin so that your liver and fat cells will take the glucose and store it for later.
What happens if you don’t move around? Now what you eat matters a lot. Different foods will increase BGLs at different rates - and your pancreas will guess how much total insulin it needs to release based on how fast your BGLs rise. So if you ate something that was low in protein, fiber, or fat, and high in refined carbohydrates (biochemically speaking, this is sugar, even if looks like a bagel and is not sweet), then your BGLs will rise quickly and your pancreas will pump out a ton of insulin. In fact, it will put out too much insulin for the amount of glucose that actually needs to get taken out of the blood.
And this is what causes the hypoglycemia that makes you feel tired in the middle of the day: foods that contain a lot of simple carbohydrates will increase your BGLs very quickly, which stimulates your pancreas to release a lot of insulin at once, which signals to your liver and fat cells to draw too much glucose out of the blood and store it if you don’t move around. Voila, now you ate a lot of glucose but still ended up with low blood glucose levels.
How can you use this information to avoid feeling sleepy? If you know you’re going to be stuck in a meeting or at your desk or in some other situation where you can’t go for a 10-minute walk after eating, you can pick foods that are higher in protein, fat, and fiber so you feel full and don’t induce a sugar crash. Ideally, you could pick filling foods and go for a short walk. And if you know you’re going to eat a snack with a lot of simple carbohydrates (hello, mid-afternoon coffee + cookie), eat them after something with fiber & protein, and eat them more slowly. This will help your BGLs to not rise as fast, thereby stopping your insulin levels from rising too fast, and giving your body time to maintain balance.
Metabolism tips to help you maintain energy throughout the day:
Move your muscles to reduce your BGLs after eating to prevent too much insulin from being released by the pancreas
Choose foods with protein, fiber, and/or fat that won’t raise BGLs quickly
Eat simple-carbohydrate snacks slowly, after protein/fiber foods, to prevent rapid BGL increases and elicit a more appropriate insulin response from the pancreas
