How to Beat Exhaustion and Re-energize your Afternoons

The 2pm Slump That Was Ruining My Life

It happened again yesterday.

One minute I was at my desk, powering through my to-do list like a responsible adult. Next I was horizontal on the sofa, one slipper still on, dead to the world for 45 minutes.

My family have a name for it. They call it my “snooze time.” I call it survival.

It’s worse in summer. Something about the heat just drains me completely. I eat lunch and it’s like someone pulls a plug. The brain empties. The eyelids get heavy. Rational thought exits the building. And if I try to push through? Forget it. I’m useless. Staring at my screen, reading the same sentence four times, achieving precisely nothing.

I told myself this was just… life. Middle age. The price of being busy. Every woman I know seems tired. It’s practically a personality trait for us.

But here’s the thing. Tired is one thing. This was something else entirely.

It’s Not Just Being Busy

I want to be clear about what I’m describing, because I think a lot of us gaslight ourselves out of taking it seriously.

This wasn’t “I had a hectic week” tired.

This was bone-deep, caffeine-doesn’t-touch-it, who-am-I-and-what-was-I-doing exhausted. The kind where you cancel plans not because you don’t want to go, but because the thought of getting changed and walking to the car feels genuinely overwhelming.

The brain fog was the worst part. I’d open a tab and forget why. I’d start a sentence and lose it halfway through. I once stood in my kitchen for three full minutes trying to remember what I’d come in for. (It was a glass of water. I was desperately thirsty. My body had stopped communicating with my brain.)

I mentioned it to my doctor. She ran some bloods. Everything came back “normal.” Which is medically reassuring but practically useless when you’re still mainlining espresso and napping like a toddler.

So I started digging.

What Nobody Tells You About Energy in Your 40s

Here’s what I found out, and honestly it made me a bit annoyed that nobody had explained it sooner.

Your 40s are a nutritional perfect storm.

Hormones start shifting — oestrogen and progesterone begin their long goodbye, and they take a lot with them. Your body’s ability to absorb certain nutrients quietly declines. Stress depletes your reserves faster than ever. And the sleep you’re getting? Even if you’re clocking seven hours, the quality has likely dropped without you even realising.

The result is that your cells are genuinely running low on fuel. You’re not imagining it. You’re not being dramatic. You are actually, physiologically, more depleted than you were ten years ago — and your lifestyle probably hasn’t caught up with that yet.

I certainly hadn’t caught up with it.

The Magnesium Moment

I’d always thought of magnesium as something vaguely to do with muscle cramps. Sports people take it. I don’t consider myself a sports person.

Turns out, magnesium is involved in over 300 processes in your body. Energy production. Blood sugar regulation. Sleep quality. Nerve function. Stress response. And the vast majority of us — especially women in midlife — are quietly, chronically deficient in it.

The signs? Fatigue. Brain fog. Poor sleep. Afternoon crashes. Anxiety. Sound familiar?

I started reading more about why deficiency is so common and it honestly made complete sense. Modern diets are lower in magnesium than they used to be. Stress burns through it. Alcohol depletes it. Caffeine depletes it. And here I was, stressed, drinking coffee to survive my afternoons and having a glass of wine to wind down in the evening. Essentially pouring magnesium down the drain and wondering why I felt dreadful.

What I Actually Did About It

I want to be honest here. I didn’t overhaul my entire life overnight. I didn’t start going to bed at 9pm and eating nothing but leafy greens.

What I did was start paying more attention to what my body was actually missing, and fill in some of the gaps properly.

I came across LiveGood’s supplements through a friend — one of those “have you tried this?” conversations that I’d normally nod along to politely and then forget. But I was desperate enough to actually look into it. What struck me was the quality of the ingredients and the transparency about what’s actually in each product. No fluff. No fairy dust. Just well-researched nutrients in forms your body can actually absorb and use.

I started with the magnesium complex. Within a couple of weeks, I noticed I was sleeping more deeply. The 2pm slump didn’t disappear overnight, but it became… manageable. I stopped needing to be horizontal by half two. I started actually finishing tasks rather than staring blankly at them.

It wasn’t magic. But it felt a bit like magic, because the bar had become so low.

Your Energy Audit — Start Here

Before you do anything else, have an honest look at these questions:

Sleep: Are you getting 7-8 hours, and do you wake up feeling rested? (Not just having been unconscious — actually rested.)

Caffeine: How many teas/coffees/energy drinks are you having, and are you using them to prop yourself up rather than enjoy them?

Stress load: On a scale of 1-10, where are you genuinely sitting right now? And how long have you been there?

Diet: Are you regularly eating magnesium-rich foods — dark leafy greens, nuts, seeds, dark chocolate — or mostly just meaning to?

Supplements: Are you taking anything, and do you actually know if it’s in a form your body can absorb?

There are no wrong answers. This is just information. And information is where change starts.

One Last Thing

The emergency naps have reduced significantly. Not gone entirely — I’m human and it’s hot out there — but I’m no longer planning my afternoons around them.

More than that, I feel like I’m back in my own body again. A bit more present. A bit more like myself.

If any of this sounds familiar — the crashes, the fog, the “normal” blood results that explain nothing — I’d love to chat. Drop a comment below or send me a message.

And if you want to know exactly what I take every morning, I’ve linked it all below. No pressure. Just sharing what worked for me. 💛

Previously: NAD+ : this cell molecule supplement energises your tired brain

Next week: The perimenopause symptoms nobody warned me about — including the ones that made me think I was genuinely losing my mind.