4PM Crash? Veggies, Protein and Fat to the Rescue!
While I don’t have a statistic as to the number of people who have a 4PM, or thereabout, blood sugar crash, resulting in a trip to the local cafe for a milkshake (aka ‘blended, iced coffee drink) and a piece of cake (the seemingly benign little muffin), I’d be willing to bet it’s more common than not.
When a client tells me they’re experiencing this, I feel the need to troubleshoot. When did they last eat? What did they last eat? Was it balanced in terms of macro nutrients?
All too often, I see this as a typical pattern for any given day:
- No breakfast, or a small one that is almost completely made of processed carbohydrate. (Gotta keep it low-fat, right? Argh…)
- Hunger begins around 9 or 10 am, but it’s deemed ‘too soon’, so the person ‘powers through’ until lunch with coffee
- Lunch arrives and the person is ravenous, and eats far too much
- Person heads back to office and feels sleepy and sluggish and would like a nap
- A few hours elapse and then the blood sugar crash they experience sends them to the coffee shop as described above
- Blood sugar spike, then crash, and by the time they get home, they’re way too hungry again, eat too much and go to bed full
- Day two: repeat
Stop it! Break that cycle! Prepare your meals. All meals, even breakfast, should be as follows (*with the exception of what you eat before or after a workout):
- Start with local, seasonal veggies
- Add some lean protein
- And a dollop of fat – avocado, olive oil or coconut oil
- And sometimes a bit of fruit
That’s it. Pretty simple, isn’t it? A meal is a meal, and a snack is a meal, too. A snack is not a 100- calorie item in a package, people! Further, food is food, or it’s not food. No such thing as ‘breakfast food’ or ‘lunch food’… just food!
So, eat food, keep it balanced and Paleo, and say good bye to that horrible 4pm sugar crash once and for all.
