Imagine a U shaped function , right ? Where if you're very fasted , you're going to have a high degree of focus and concentration . But then if you ingest some food and your belly is full , your focus and concentration is reduced .
But in general , unless I'm working out very early , I will ingest my caffeine 90 to 100 and 20 minutes after I wake up . So again , I want to emphasize that if you hear somebody out there say being fasted is optimal for focus and concentration . Well , that is true in one context and perhaps ideal for a certain part of the day .
And my mental work both early and late in the day . So to make this very simple or as simple as I can for you being fasted is great for focus and concentration provided you're not thinking about food the entire time and being fed is terrific for focus and concentration actually can improve neuronal function provided that you didn't eat too much food . So one way to manage this is if you're going to have a lunch to make sure that you don't stuff yourself at lunch that you're not overeating and to not get quite so full that you put your nervous system into this parasympathetic mode and make it hard to focus in the afternoon .
And of course , you can incorporate both . I , in fact , as I just described , incorporate both fasted states and fed states in order to optimize my concentration and focus .
However , if we have any food , if we have enough of it , that is , if our gut is full , it diverts blood to our gut and we become sleepy and we can't focus as well . So a lot of people really like fasting in the state of being fasted for focus and concentration because they don't have as much of that parasympathetic activation . They're just not as sleepy .
