One trick that really helped me stay awake for afternoon meetings at work was to eat a vegetarian or salad + chicken/turkey lunch. Why? Because when you eat a meat + starch lunch like a chicken sandwich, pizza + pepperoni, or chow mein + pork, your body is hard at work trying to process that meat + starch combo thus bringing on that lethargic blah. Plus, there is a theory about food combining which suggests what type of foods digest better with each other.
Personally, after eating something like a turkey sandwich or beef burrito for lunch, when that 2pm meeting starts rolling around, I'd start feeling like a slug instead of energized which then resulted in a caffeine fix to perk up.
Eating vegetarian, or veg+carb, or veg+meat, is less work for the bod and it helps to make you feel lighter the rest of the day until dinner. Try it out for a few days, and see if you notice any difference.
In this picture, my typical blogging lunch when I go to my fave Starbucks is like this one from Erik's Deli; roasted vegetable bisque soup with the Farmer's Market sandwich containing fresh avocado, sunflower seeds, mushrooms, grated carrots, red bell peppers, red onions, tomatoes, sprouts and lettuce with Erik's Sweet Hot Mustard piled on Sweet Molasses wheat bread. I wash it all down with a Grande Starbucks Iced Green Tea sweetened with one packet of raw sugar.
