Food Coma: Don’t Let It Get To You

When it comes to food, I am a savage beast. I have to fight daily not to eat everything that comes in sight from donuts at the gym to those tasty little wafer cookies from the vending machine at my apartment. I mean it is intense. I once won a competition at Chipotle that required you to eat a burrito or bowl for a total of 50 days in just 2 months… and it was easy.

Ever since I can remember I have cleared my plate and the person’s next to mine until I am full to the brim. But what typically followed every meal was a couple hours of tiredness and lethargy. Food has never really given me energy, rather it just makes me want to take a nap. I just figured that was the name of the game until recently when I learned about blood flow diversion. What this means is that when you eat large quantities of food, your digestive system requires a huge amount of blood to start circulating the nutrients throughout the body. But, if most of your body’s blood is being diverted to the stomach, that means that the rest of the body is running low on blood and consequently oxygen. Thus leading to nappy time.

I’m no scientist but that sounds about right and this means that the food coma is real folks. So what’s the best course of action that will allow food to act as fuel instead of a bedtime story? Don’t eat so much at one time. With all the arguments about macros and quality of food we are eating aside, I think we could all benefit from not eating until we are “full”. Obviously we want to be satiated but if we are able to eat a little bit under our capacity, then our energy levels and performance will increase. You might just see some other health benefits along the way too.

Oh, and the award for winning that Chipotle competition… just a $500 catering voucher. The boys ate real good that night. But that’s all history now, onward!