The most important meal of the day: Two key ingredients of replenishing lunch breaks

When it comes to maintaining your focus throughout the day, breakfast isn’t the most important meal – lunch is.

What makes for a replenishing lunch break? Avoiding foods that send you into a coma is a great start. As I have explained in an earlier post, eating a lunch that contains few to no starchy carbohydrates helps us work better in the afternoon.

Yet, the best lunch breaks have two additional ingredients. The first is control. Whether you can decide freely on when, where and with whom you have lunch makes a huge difference. Intriguingly, researchers found that a lack of control will even leave you more exhausted after the break! Conversely, having lunch “your way” will let you replenish your focus and better deal with stress throughout the rest of the day.

The second ingredient is detachment. Similar to a lack of control, associating lunch with work can lead to exhaustion instead of replenishment. Shifting your attention away from work, in turn, is great for regaining your ability to focus. To do that, try to detach both physically and psychologically. For one, it’s a bad idea to have your lunch break at your desk, because your brain associates your desk with – you guessed it – work. So, have your lunch somewhere else.

In addition to physical detachment, psychological detachment matters. After a productive morning, not talking about work throughout lunch will give your mind some much-needed opportunity to wind down in the middle of the day. Obviously, not bringing your smartphone – or at least keeping it in your pocket – also helps.

In a nutshell, have your lunch break at times, places and with colleagues that you like; get away from your desk; and try not to talk about work during lunch – at least not all the time. It will repay nicely later in the day.

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Until next week,Christian