We all know the feeling. It’s 3:30. You’re tired. Your productivity has just gone to zero. It won’t be long before you clock out, so you just spend the next few waking hours hardly waking.

At this point you’ll probably think a coffee would be a great idea. The only problem with that is that the general rule of thumb is that any coffee after 2pm will result in a terrible night’s sleep. A terrible night’s sleep is what got you into this mess in the first place. At the exact same time

And so the cycle repeats.

Look, I’m all for coffee. I think there’s nothing better than the nice, warm hug of happiness coffee brings you in the morning, but there are better ways around this. Here are 5 brain foods to help to prevent the 3pm blues.

Omega-3 is the most prominently featured nutrient in most articles about brain food, and with good reason. The brain burns a huge amount of energy alone, and most of this energy can be derived from either carbohydrates or fats. Generally speaking, carbs are often guilty of making you sleepy, which is why we recommend fats for brain food. Of these, the healthiest fatty foods are (you guessed it) salmon and avocado. Try them in anything from sushi to a healthy salad.

Ok so Coffee can be an obvious pick-me-up. But if you’re prone to having milk and sugar in your coffee as most of us are, the milk and sugar can often lend themselves to an intense crash in the middle of the day. To avoid the crash, try bulletproof coffee, which has a combination of grass-fed butter and MCT (medium chain triglyceride) oil and coffee. The company Bulletproof claims to have a unique blend of coffee beans and “brain octane” oil, but for those playing at home try this unique combination for a beautiful slow burning coffee experience.

Chia seeds are an incredibly versatile super-food. Not only do they only have a “just add boiling water” aspect to them, but with a little bit of maple syrup, honey or yoghurt, you can have yourself a healthy snack at the office. Not only that, but chia seeds are packed with protein and other nutrients. They’re also very Instagram worthy!

Nuts are of course packed with the good stuff. Almonds and cashews tend the be the best of the bunch, packed with both protein and healthy fat. I’m sure by this point you’re starting to see a pattern here with this whole “healthy fat for the brain” thing.

Ok so this isn’t an M. Night Shymalan twist. This is actually a real thing.

Intermittent fasting is one of the best ways to wake your body up. Your body spends a lot of time and energy digesting food, which is why you feel so tired just after lunch. This is your body telling you that it needs energy to digest food. Skipping a single meal can make 3pm the most awake you will feel all day. When your body is empty, you may feel an intense rush of productivity due to the fact that your body can finally get around to burning all the energy it just took in.

So there is a twist in all this. Eating small meals throughout the day may be the key to maintaining productivity and keeping on high alert. At the end of the day, all food is brain food, so if you can keep between the lines of not eating too much or too little you should be on the right track!