Energy boosting foods for a successful day
Feeling tired again? Third coffee isn’t doing the trick anymore? How many of you rely on a frequent influx of caffeine into your system to get you through the day? We’re holding our hands up here too, because if you couldn’t already tell we love coffee! Whether it be your daily Starbucks trip or a can of diet coke, many of us simply rely on it to see our day through. With our increasingly busy and work heavy schedules, sometimes we need to boost our energy levels to keep our creative juices flowing.
There are a number of superfoods out there that can help to replace your depleting energy sources and no coffee is required (although we aren’t sure we could ever say goodbye). Add these gems into your next food shop for a natural source of energy:
Almonds
Nuts are a great on-the-go snack, and can leave you feeling fuller for longer than a sugary snack will. Packed with magnesium, vitamin B and other important minerals, almonds are good at converting from food into energy, they can be high in fat though so try and keep to a small handful.
Quinoa
Quinoa has become a bit of an online phenomenon over the past year or so, but apart from being the subject of sweatshirts it’s also a great source of energy. Often mistaken as a grain, quinoa is actually a seed and is highly nutritional. A ‘pure protein’ quinoa has the ability to release energy slowly throughout the day, keeping your levels topped up and steering clear of the dreaded late afternoon slump. Incorporate quinoa into a yummy salad or perhaps try a quinoa stuffed roasted pepper. Some even use it as a porridge!
Coconut
Due to their medium chain triglycerides coconuts are pretty good at turning from food into energy efficiently instead of being stored as fats. Not to mention coconut is delicious and you can pretend you’re sitting on a sunny faraway beach somewhere instead of being at your desk. If only hey?
Water
How many of you are guilty for not drinking enough water? We’d hazard a guess and say quite a few! We should be drinking around eight glasses of water a day but it’s easy to forget and reach for the tea and coffee (guilty) instead. Water transports nutrients around our body and gets rid of waste that can actually cause fatigue. Not only that, water feeds the brain and stops it from shrinking which is a main cause of headaches and tiredness. Time to nip to the office watercooler we think.
Kale
This one seems to go hand in hand with Quinoa due to its popularity in social media, and they actually go quite nicely together in a salad or stew! Kale is a wonderful superfood, packed with health benefits and vitamins and minerals including potassium, iron and copper which helps to boost our energy levels as well as our overall health. It’s great either cooked on its own or whizzed up as a base for a green smoothie, and you can barely taste it once it’s blended!
Pumpkin Seeds
A solid source of protein, they may look small but they’re quite mighty! Pumpkin seeds will leave you feeling fuller than you may think and are the ideal addition to a salad or smoothie. You can also eat them on their own as a snack, but if you aren’t keen then you can even hide them into a sandwich!
Add these into your meal plan and you’ll begin to feel much more energised, less sluggish and hopefully finding yourself reaching for the caffeine a little less, but we’re only human after all and sometimes a coffee is just needed.
