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My quest for the ideal lunch break is definitely a triumph of hope over experience. From inventing endless super-soups that might banish the mid-afternoon snack attack, to wildly optimistic lunchtime to-do lists, I have tried and failed countless times. The executive coach Zoe Thomson is not surprised. “One of the biggest things for people is they overestimate how much time and energy they are going to have in their lunch hour,” says Thomson, who previously had a 20-year career with the Avon and Somerset police. “And they underestimate how much time and energy they might need to achieve it.”
I tell her that this has been the flaw with most of my doomed lunchtime masterplans. “The problem is, unpredictable things happen. Say you plan to do a 45-minute spin class in a 60-minute lunch break, but your last call overruns by 10 minutes. Your plan is no longer feasible. If you decided instead to do a 10-minute walk around the block every day, and then have a nice cup of tea after your sandwich, you’re winning. Even if something urgent comes up, the 10-minute walk is still possible. And on a really good day you could walk four times around the block.”
I confess that I find this idea a bit uninspiring. How am I going to transform my lung capacity by ambling to the end of the road? “Actually, when you look at the most successful people, they do the boring, small, incremental changes daily and stick with it,” says Thomson.
But even if you’re ensconced in a healthy routine, there can still be space to mix it up. “As humans, we like certainty, but we crave variety,” she says. And after a morning of work, she points out, many of us struggle with decision fatigue. “So if we aim for 80% routine and 20% variety, that’s probably about right. Having to make a fresh decision about what to do for lunch every day creates stress,” says Thomson. Having occasional lunch breaks with a shared activity can be great – a book group works well, as does an uplifting choir session such as those organised by Music in Offices.
Selina Barker is a coach and creator of Time to Thrive, a journal that focuses on energy management rather than time. “However long your lunch break lasts, even if it’s only 10 minutes, the key point is that it’s there to top your energy back up. The prescription for how you do this will vary depending on the type of work you do. So if you’ve been in meetings all morning with people talking at you, maybe what you need is a quiet walk in the park – especially for introverts working in an open-plan office. But if you’ve been on your feet for hours, maybe the best thing would be a yoga or meditation class.”
If you work in an office, it can sometimes feel a bit awkward to step away from the canteen crowd and go off on your own. Barker says we shouldn’t feel embarrassed about prioritising what we actually need. “Don’t make a big thing of it. Just say I’m off to recharge my batteries.”
When it comes to the main event – the food – choosing what to eat can be tricky. Ideally, we want something that is enticing, yet still healthy and will sustain our energy until home time.
“The lunches that work against you are usually the highly refined ones,” says the nutritionist Rosemary Martin. “A pastry or white-bread sandwich with crisps or a chocolate bar on the side gives you a quick boost followed by a predictable drop in energy and concentration.” But not all lunches labelled healthy are good either. “The tiny low-carb salad may feel virtuous at midday but leaves you tired, distracted and craving sugar a couple of hours later.”
Martin suggests that if you want steady energy and clear focus after lunch, the magic ingredient is balance. “Go for meals that combine whole grains, plant protein, healthy fats and colourful vegetables that will digest at a comfortable pace and give your brain what it needs to stay focused into the afternoon. Lentil soup with wholegrain bread, a tofu, rice and veg bowl or a hummus wrap with plenty of crunchy salad are simple but nourishing options which will reliably carry you through the rest of your day.”
For those who work at home, all of this becomes a lot easier. You can exercise at home and prepare lunch far from the horrors of the office microwave. But experts point out that there are still important issues to be mindful of. A common strategy is skipping the lunch break altogether in order to finish early. “I do often question it when people tell me they’re saving that hour for the end of the day. I think that takes away from what the lunch break is actually for,” says Thomson.
However, she agrees that for some people, taking an entire hour might not make sense. “You could split the hour into three 20-minute breaks spread across the afternoon or two half-hour ones,” she says, but the principles remain the same. Are you stepping away from your desk? “Are you taking time to get up and move (or sit down and rest if you’re on your feet all day?) Are you giving yourself some downtime? If you don’t create that space to slow down the brain, it will wake you up at three or four in the morning.” It’s much better, she says, “to give yourself headspace by design.”
