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Has the gluten-free fad helped or hurt those who are gluten-free as a medical treatment? There are convincing arguments for both sides. But arguments require logic, and the logical “or” is inclusive (“or” can mean “both”). Perhaps it is the case that the fad has both helped and hurt. Here are a few ways the gluten-free fad seems to have both helped and hurt.

Helped: Those in the food service industry generally know what gluten is these days, so when someone with celiac says, “I’m gluten-free,” the statement is met with more of an understanding than it has been in the past. (Remember when you didn’t know what gluten was? I remember when I didn’t, and it wasn’t unconscionably long ago.)

Hurt: On the other hand, some of those in the food service industry who now know what gluten is thanks to its mainstream qualities are tired of hearing about gluten. So when someone with celiac says, “I’m gluten-free,” the statement may indeed be met with understanding, plus a side of eye roll.

The eye roll we can deal with if it means our food is being handled properly. But if the eye roll is a manifestation of the eye rollers’ thoughts, and those thoughts are something along the lines of, “Great, another gluten-free faddist,” there is a danger that the eye roll means the condition won’t be taken as seriously.

Helped: Let’s face it — what’s popular gets more attention. More people are talking about celiac disease in light of gluten’s celebrity status. And the more people talk about it, the more people think about it, and hopefully more people get tested for celiac disease.

You can’t always treat things you aren’t aware of, so the more awareness there is about celiac (even if it’s a byproduct of the gluten-free fad), the better the chances are that people will get tested and treated.

Hurt: More attention, however, doesn’t always mean positive attention. There are people with large platforms who talk about the gluten-free diet, and the disseminated information might not always be accurate.

For example, a celebrity with a large following might state that, “If you don’t have celiac disease, you don’t need to be gluten-free.” She might have meant to imply that the gluten-free diet isn’t healthy for everyone. But what she said isn’t accurate (people have non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), etc.), and her inaccurate statement might be heard by millions of people — which might add fuel to gluten-free intolerance regardless of the celebrity’s intention.

Even some people with celiac disease scoff at those with NCGS or a gluten-intolerance/sensitivity, as if it’s somehow “less than” because it’s not celiac disease. Perhaps that stems from the constant need for those with celiac to defend/explain/protect the importance of their gluten-free eating, or annoyance at the rampant misconceptions about celiac disease. But if someone is sensitive to gluten and doesn’t need to carefully monitor cross-contamination, it doesn’t mean that person has it any easier — it means they have it different.

Helped: Do you think General Mills would be releasing gluten-free Lucky Charms if there weren’t enough people following the gluten-free diet? Even if you don’t eat Lucky Charms, think about how good gluten-free foods have gotten over the years. More and more brands are coming out with gluten-free foods, healthier gluten-free foods, and more delicious gluten-free foods. If there weren’t such a huge demand for gluten-free products, there would be less to choose from.

What happens when the fad ends? It’s hard to imagine that General Mills would invest so much time and money into making their products gluten-free (they’re not just coming out with gluten-free versions…the version will be gluten-free) if it weren’t here to stay. Even when the fad ends, there will be people who need to eat gluten-free, and the fact that companies like General Mills acknowledge the lasting need for gluten-free food indicates that gluten-free eating is more than just a passing fad.

Hurt: So, are companies like General Mills trying to capitalize on the gluten-free fad? Is it an eye-roll-inducing move to introduce gluten-free Cheerios, or does it give credibility to gluten-free? What happens to smaller companies that produce gluten-free foods that have been around since the beginning?

The “bigger” gluten gets, the more of a target it becomes. It will become more of a target of pharmaceutical companies, food companies, anyone who can think of a way to make money based on the fact that so many people require gluten-free food. Will a fiscal focus help or hurt (or both!) celiac disease researchers? Will a bigger pond dilute the meaning of the term “gluten-free?” There are already restaurants that claim items are “gluten-free,” but when pressed, will continue with, “but not recommended for celiacs.”

Because of the gluten-free fad, there is more awareness about celiac disease, and there are more and better gluten-free options. Borne from the fad are also dangerous misconceptions about gluten and celiac disease, as well as resistance to and dismissal of the term “gluten-free,” which can translate to carelessness toward a medical treatment. So, has the gluten-free fad helped or hurt?

– Kaitlin Puccio

For many, transitioning from a gluten-eater to a gluten-free eater is exceedingly difficult. Some say that they simply can’t stick to a gluten-free diet — even after a celiac diagnosis. Aside from wheat addiction, giving up gluten is so difficult in part for those with celiac because it means facing the idea of never eating certain foods again. They want the gluten-filled glory days to last forever, and in turn, suffer from fatigue, stomach pains or a slew of other undesirable symptoms after ingesting gluten.

After hearing stories from my nutritionist about those who refused to eat gluten-free after a celiac diagnosis, I began to ponder the connection between suffering and the desire for gluten. How can we find relief from the cycle of suffering and desire? For me, the answer lies in the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

1. All life is suffering.
The first Truth states that suffering exists. The good news is that nothing lasts. So the extant suffering will come to an end. (The bad news is that nothing good lasts either. That delicious bite of flour-packed cake will be gone in a minute.) If I have celiac disease and suffer from nausea after eating a wheat bagel that I couldn’t resist, that nausea won’t last forever. In the moment, I will need to accept that I feel nauseous, and to get through it I will need to remind myself that my nausea will cease.

2. The cause of suffering is desire.
After those with celiac ingest gluten, a likely result is the desire to stop feeling sick, depending on that person’s symptoms. Some of those with celiac who eat strictly gluten-free may find that they desire something with gluten, or the ability to properly digest gluten. These desires cannot be met, and cause suffering.

3. To end suffering is to end desire.
If the cause of suffering is desire, then to end suffering is to end desire. If I apply this to celiac disease, if the cause of my suffering is my desire to eat a whole wheat wrap, then to end my suffering is to end my desire to eat a whole wheat wrap. This is more difficult than it may seem, however. I can certainly refrain from acting on my desire, but that doesn’t mean the desire is no longer there. How can I end my desire for that whole wheat wrap when desire seems to be something that is out of my control?

4. The path to the end of suffering.
The way to end desire is the path to the end of suffering. In Buddhism, this path is The Noble Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path factors include right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. While the meaning behind each of these factors might be full of depth and complexity too sublime for an article on finding celiac disease nirvana, considering the definitions of each of those words as we approach each individual day of our gluten-free lives might start to reshape how we think about celiac disease, gluten-free foods, and how they relate to us. If you are stuck in a cycle of suffering and desire, a new perspective might be the thing that releases you, and that new perspective may come from a simple awareness of the eight factors that make up the path to the end of suffering.

– Kaitlin Puccio

In a recent New York Times article, “Your Brain, Your Disease, Your Self,” authors Nina Strohminger and Shaun Nichols state that the most powerful predictor of identity change is disruption to the moral faculty. This was stated in the context of analyzing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. But what about other diseases, namely, celiac disease? Can consuming gluten change the identity of someone with celiac disease in the same way that neurodegenerative diseases seem to change the identity of those who suffer from them?

1) The Gut and the Brain
Ninety percent of the body’s serotonin, which is responsible for mood elevation, and 50 percent of the body’s dopamine, which is important for motivation and attention, lies in the gut. If my digestive tract is damaged and off-kilter due to undiagnosed (and untreated) celiac disease, my levels of serotonin and dopamine are off, which directly affect my mood. This established link is the first step in examining the relationship between celiac disease and identity.

2) The Gut, the Brain, and Morals
Exploring further the link between the gut and the brain, if undiagnosed celiac disease can affect my brain in the way described above, could it also affect my brain in other ways? For example, could undiagnosed celiac disease affect my moral faculty? For the purpose of this argument, I will assume that the moral faculty originates in the brain. (I assume this based on the idea in “Your Brain, Your Disease, Your Self” that the neurodegenerative disease frontotemporal dementia muddles the moral compass.)

3) The Gut, the Brain, Morals, and Identity
If my moral faculty is affected by undiagnosed celiac disease, and disruption to the moral faculty is the most powerful predictor of identity change, then could undiagnosed celiac disease alter my identity the same way that Alzheimer’s alters the identity of those with the disease? If I had the ability to research these connections further, I would set out to confirm that undiagnosed celiac disease could affect identity. Without the ability to research further, however, I can only use logic and observation to make an educated guess.

While the disruption of the moral faculty in those with frontotemporal dementia may manifest in antisocial outbursts, pathological lying, and apathy, the disruption of the moral faculty in those with celiac disease may manifest in other ways. Apathy could indeed be one of those ways, as apathy is related to (though different from) depression, and depression is a symptom of celiac disease.

If what you eat affects your brain, and your brain is the garden of your morals, and your morals are central to your identity, I suppose you really are what you eat.

– Kaitlin Puccio

There are myriad ways that treating celiac disease can lead to improved health. But are there ways in which treating the disease could contribute to the development of addiction?

According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, alcohol is absorbed by the stomach and small intestine into the bloodstream, then circulated throughout the organs in the body. Physical dependence occurs when central nervous system cells need alcohol to function normally.

Women are at a higher risk of developing physical alcohol dependence than men because a woman’s blood alcohol concentration tends to be higher than a man’s after drinking the same amount of alcohol. From this it can be deduced that the higher the blood alcohol concentration, the higher the risk for developing physical alcohol dependence.

1) Celiac disease and malabsorption

One of the symptoms of untreated celiac disease is malabsorption of nutrients into the bloodstream. When someone with celiac disease ingests gluten, antibodies that damage the small intestine are produced, resulting in a flattening of the villi. This flattening leads to malabsorption of nutrients. Malabsorption can also be a result of lactose intolerance, Crohn’s disease, and many other conditions.

2) Ingesting alcohol

As previously stated, alcohol is ingested and absorbed into the bloodstream through the gut, and untreated celiac disease can cause malabsorption. And in the case of alcohol consumption, the higher the blood alcohol concentration, the higher the risk for developing physical dependence. Conversely, the lower the blood alcohol concentration due to malabsorption, the lower the risk of developing physical dependence on alcohol.

3) Treatment and absorption

Assume that there is a man who comes from a long line of alcoholics on one side of his family, and a long line of celiac disease sufferers on the other. This man has been drinking alcohol for 20 years without becoming addicted.

One day he is diagnosed with celiac disease, and eliminates gluten from his diet so that his villi heal. Soon after, his intestines begin to properly absorb. Now, though, the alcohol that he drinks is properly absorbed, meaning his blood alcohol concentration is greater, which, as stated above, means greater risk for physical dependence. Is it possible that the healing of his gut increased his risk of forming an addiction — a physical dependence — to alcohol?

By this logic, it could be that treating celiac disease can leave sufferers who are also alcohol drinkers vulnerable to physical alcohol dependence. The interplay between celiac disease and addiction may extend beyond depression — a symptom of celiac disease — and its known correlation with addiction.

– The Editors

Maybe you’ve mastered eating gluten-free as a result of a celiac diagnosis. Maybe you’re still figuring it out. Maybe you have non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), and are trying to navigate the medically mysterious lands between having celiac and not having celiac. Whatever your situation, you might agree that it’s not always easy to maintain a gluten-free diet.

Now imagine what it’s like to be a gluten-free kid. Be wary of pasta necklaces and play dough in art class. Sit there politely while everyone else eats cupcakes on the first day of school. Don’t eat the pizza at the birthday party (or the cake).

If you have (or know of) a child who is gluten-free, you might know how hard it can be for kids to cope with their dietary restrictions. Thankfully, there are ways to make it easier on your child.

1) Turn it into an adventure.

Being a child who is gluten-free can be especially frustrating around the holidays, when cookies and candy are shared in abundance in school.

If your child is having a hard time accepting that she is gluten-free because it makes her feel different, check out “The Adventures of Celia Kaye,” a kids’ book that I wrote about a little girl named Celia Kaye who has something she thinks she needs to hide. She goes to great lengths to keep her mysterious secret concealed from her friends by becoming a master storyteller.

This book is designed to help kids cope with and understand not only celiac disease, but all differences, and goes beyond giving definitions and explanations–your child will follow Celia Kaye on her adventures as she creates stories about her limitations using unlimited imagination.

2) Talk to your child’s teachers/caretakers so that your child has an ally when you’re not around.

It’s not only important that your child knows to screen for gluten in foods, but it’s also important for those responsible for your child to understand what gluten-free really means. Wheat-free doesn’t necessarily mean gluten-free.

3) Check out the Gluten Intolerance Group’s Generation GF program.

The Gluten Intolerance Group offers programs that allow your kid to be a kid–not a “gluten-free kid.” Between events, camps, and pizza kitchen tours organized specifically with gluten-free needs in mind, kids don’t have to worry about being different.

4) Help your child understand that gluten-free food is real food.

It can be especially difficult for very young children with celiac disease to understand why they can’t eat certain foods. If glutenous foods are considered the “normal” version, then aren’t the gluten-free versions abnormal?

Brands like Smart Flour Foods, Russo’s New York Pizzeria, and Lucy’s cookies are not only trying to make gluten-free foods, but they are trying to make gluten-free foods that appeal to everyone–not just those with celiac.

Anthony Russo of Russo’s New York Pizzeria says that families order his gluten-free pizza because it tastes so good even if there is only one child in the family with celiac. That way, that child doesn’t need to order a special pizza, and no one else feels like they aren’t getting “the real thing.”

Dr. Lucy Gibney of Lucy’s cookies uses nutrient-dense ingredients to create her cookies, which she thinks of as “good food,” not necessarily “gluten-free food,” even though, yes, her cookies are gluten-free.

It can be hard being different, and it can be hard being gluten-free. For kids, it’s even harder. Knowing how to navigate celiac disease or other food intolerances can help your kid feel like a kid — not a gluten-free kid.

– Kaitlin Puccio

Holidays can be fun, but they can also be a lot of work. I bake lasagna every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For the past few years, since going gluten-free, I’ve baked two lasagnas–the classic that I’ve always made, and a gluten-free version (which required some experimenting to get it just right). I do the same with pies.

I could serve my family gluten-free versions of everything and they probably wouldn’t even know, but doubling the amount of lasagna and pie simply means that everyone gets lots of leftovers.

I’ve learned a few tricks about both hosting and guesting since going gluten-free. Here are a few that might help make this holiday season more fun than work.

If you’re hosting…

1. Know your audience.

No one wants to spend all day in the kitchen only to find out that half the guests are allergic to the main dish. Figure out food allergies before planning the meal so you aren’t left with hungry guests and untouched plates of food to clean up.

2. Make it seem easy.

Ballerinas make dancing look easy. Imagine what it would feel like to sit in the audience and watch a dancer struggle for three hours. By the end, you would probably feel exhausted and tense.

If you host a guest who is gluten-free, or has any other type of food allergy, you may be stressed about how your gluten-free dish turned out. Don’t let it show, or your gluten-free guest might feel awkward about putting you in that situation.

3. Relax!

Your gluten-free guest may ask exactly what ingredients you used in certain dishes. If you make sure to disclose everything–even spices–your job is done. You can’t be expected to know every single ingredient that contains gluten. If you tell your gluten-free guests what’s in the dish, they will most likely know whether or not it’s safe–or know where to look to find out.

If you’re a guest…

1. Don’t show up ravenous.

Your host may do everything he or she can to provide a safe meal for you. But mistakes do happen. Your meal may be completely gluten-free, but maybe the spoon designated for the glutenous gravy was accidentally dipped into the gluten-free gravy, contaminating it. If you start thinking that there was cross-contamination during the cooking process and want to opt out of the main meal to be safe, you won’t be kicking yourself for not eating lunch in anticipation of dinner.

2. Offer to bring something.

Yes, it’s a nice gesture, and your host will probably appreciate having one less thing to cook. But it also ensures that there will be something on the table that you can eat.

3. Focus on the company, not the food.

While the meal may be the main event, holidays are really a time to get together with people you may not see as often as you’d like. Suggest sprinkling the evening with a game of pool, or assemble a cornhole set (gift idea?) in the garage or on the patio.

Whether you’re bound to be a host or a guest, if you keep these tips in mind, food allergies don’t need to be an added stress to an already busy holiday season.

– Kaitlin Puccio

I hate gluten. Maybe this is a phrase that you’ve heard before. I have.

Gluten is bad for you, anyway. Another phrase that I’ve heard consistently, usually in response to learning that I can’t eat gluten (and usually with a hand wave and an inward curl of the shoulder to indicate that it’s not such a huge loss).

You know the feeling, right? Emails are flying, your phone is ringing, things are happening. By 10pm you’ve gotten what feels like a week’s worth of work done. And strangely, you want to do more. That last email that comes in that thwarts your Inbox:0 goals. Or one minor administrative task on your To Do list that you really don’t want to leave until tomorrow, but which will definitely take some brain power to complete. And so, you either press on, or you go to bed with your mind racing.

Though not everyone is given the same amount of days, everyone is given the same amount of time in a day. It might seem as though most people have just enough time in the day to not complete everything on their to-do list. Have you ever paused to consider someone—your toddler in one arm, your vacuum in the other, and dinner roasting away in the oven—and wondered, “How does she do it all?”

Time management is a widely considered topic, which is not surprising given these days of 24/7 global communication and instant gratification. There exists plenty of advice on how you can better manage your time, how you can make yourself more productive in shorter periods of time, how you can break the habit of “multitasking” and complete one task at a time to actually make progress.

What’s less considered when thinking about how you can better manage your time is how other people can affect your schedule—or even how their perception of your schedule can influence the way you perceive your own level of busy.

1) Meetings

There are two ways that meetings can become an inefficient use of time before they even begin. The person with whom you are meeting could arrive late, or could cancel the meeting altogether.

It is understandable in some cases when a person arrives a few minutes late to a meeting. Don’t necessarily expect it, but budget for it. If you are like me, you always try to arrive to meetings with at least ten minutes to spare. This means if someone is even five minutes late, you might wind up waiting fifteen minutes for a meeting to actually begin.

I’ve heard many people say, “I wish I had more time to read…” but I know those same people to sit in cafés at times waiting for their friends/colleagues/etc. to arrive, staring blankly at their phones not because there is something interesting on the screen, but simply because they are sitting alone. Swap those fifteen uncomfortable minutes of pretending there are important things on that phone for fifteen minutes of reading.

If you don’t want those fifteen minutes of waiting to turn into thirty and beyond, confirm the meeting the day before. I once set up a meeting a week in advance and confirmed the day before. The person with whom I was scheduled to meet responded to my confirmation that she thought I had cancelled the meeting. She had mixed up her contacts—another one of her meetings had been cancelled and she thought it was ours. If I hadn’t sent the confirmation, I would have been waiting for a meeting that would never begin.

About meetings that will never begin…

Some meetings will inevitably be cancelled. There are those that are cancelled well in advance, and those that are cancelled after you’re already on your way. They are both time-consuming. Oftentimes there is an understandable reason for cancelling a meeting. You might even do it yourself. Some other times you might find that you sent a confirmation email only to have the meeting cancelled in the reply (and what would have happened if you hadn’t sent the confirmation email? Perhaps it would have been cancelled even later…when you were already on your way.) Still other times you might find yourself in the middle of rescheduling a meeting (you’ve found a mutually agreeable date and time…it’s just a matter of place) when the other party simply stops responding.

The mysteries of what causes these things to happen may never be known. It may just be that some have a more casual relationship with time.

But time is a nonrenewable resource for individuals regardless of its inherent infinity.

A cancelled meeting could mean that suddenly there is a block of open time in your schedule. You understand the value of your time, and this might seem like a good thing. But you could have so much on your plate that you become paralyzed not knowing what to attack first, not wanting to waste your extra hour. Don’t dwell on how much time you spent preparing for your cancelled meeting—instead focus on the time that you have at that very moment. After all, time that has passed is fixed in a state of non-existence and therefore cannot be changed. Take one minute to readjust, pick a task, and do it. It truly doesn’t matter what it is; anything that you accomplish in that time is a better use than letting it slip away.

2) “You’re so busy…”

Another phrase I’ve heard a lot is, “You’re so busy,” or, “You probably don’t have time, but…” The strange thing about these phrases is that whenever they are directed toward me, I always feel that while they could be true, they are not necessarily true. If something is important, there is time for it.

Time is fixed. The hours on our clocks do not change. There are 24 in each day. Assume I automatically subtract 8 from those 24 for sleep, because sleep is not optional. I am left with 16 hours every day to be awake and productive. If hours are fixed, we are left with variables that we assign to each of those 16 hours. Those variables could be Eat, Read, Family, Work, Leisure, Tennis, Study, Guitar, etc. Variables will change for everyone, depending on what’s important/necessary in their life. Notice, however, that I classify neither Read nor Guitar as Leisure. They are their own variables. If they are important, they must be assigned a time. Otherwise, Leisure from 12pm-1pm could quickly turn into TV watching rather than the intended guitar practice, and you’ll find yourself down the ever-shortening line of time ahead of you wondering when you stopped playing guitar.

So when someone says to you, “You probably don’t have time to direct this film…” (or meet for coffee, or become a Certified Pilates Teacher), that may seem true at first. But because you are the puppeteer of the variables that fill your fixed 16 waking hours, if directing that film is important, it becomes the variable Direct, and it must be assigned the appropriate slots. Other variables will shift, but that’s why they’re variables and not fixed. They are flexible in their placement, but not in their existence.

Variables as discussed here are like rubber bands. If a variable has been assigned to a fixed time slot and must be replaced, the further away from that original time slot you move that variable, the more tension in the band. It can only be moved so far away from the original slot (days, weeks, months) before it snaps. A snapped band implies that variable is no longer important.

If someone posits that you might be too busy to do something that you deem important, it might be tempting to agree. But in reality, their perception of your busyness has little to do with how you manage your fixed hours and variables.

3) Scheduling Logic

Assume that you have 16 waking hours to complete 8 variables: Eat, Family, Guitar, Leisure, Read, Study, Tennis, Work. (I am assuming here that you wish for each of these things to be completed every day. If different days of the week have different variables, create a spread, as shown below, for each day of the week. You can also create spreads for a week or a month, depending on how variable your variables are.)

 

 

 

Because the 16 hours are fixed, they are in a fixed line above. Each slot represents one hour. The variables are represented by the first letter of the activity to be completed. You can figure out the assignments of each variable to the 16 slots using a series of conditional statements, or rules, that you determine to be true.

There are 16 slots and only 8 variables. You can assign multiple variables to a single slot, or you can assign a single variable to multiple slots. You can assign that single variable to successive slots or not. Here is an example:

Assume each variable requires either 30 minutes or 1 hour to complete, except W, which takes 8; E, which takes 2; and F, which takes 2. That leaves 4 hours for G, L, R, S, and T. Because there are 4 hours left to do five things, two of those things must be 30-minute tasks. You might determine a rule to be: If I play tennis for one hour, I do not eat in the hour that immediately follows. If you assign the first slot to Tennis, then Eat cannot occupy the second slot.

Depending on the travel time required for each of these tasks, you may need to add another variable, C (commute) and adjust the rules of your spread.

With a spread like this, “busy” has no place. You do not need to eat and study at the same time (create a rule that says Eat and Study cannot take up the same time on your spread), which can lead to cold food, sauce-stained books, and the feeling of time pressure. You do not need to panic that you haven’t spent enough time with your family—you will know exactly how much time you spent with your family (and it might be more than you give yourself credit for, Guilty Gil).

With this more formal relationship with time, you won’t find your hours slipping by unnoticed. You will know where you are in space at designated times, and any variation of dealing in some way with a meeting (attending a meeting, having a meeting cancelled, waiting for a meeting to begin), or other variable whose fixity is largely dependent upon others, won’t hemorrhage into your future time slots, causing a massive temporal clean-up and readjustment of variables. No one has time for that.

“There aren’t enough hours in the day” is not an uncommon complaint. And yet, the most productive people that exist today have the same amount of hours in a day as anyone else. What makes them more productive?

We can’t change how many hours there are in a day, but we can change how we use them. That is, we can better manage our energy, which will in turn make our use of time more efficient. Here are a few tweaks you can make to your daily routine that will help you start maximizing the time you do have.

1) Start your day the night before.

Decide the night before what time you want to get up, and what you are going to do in the morning. If you decide to wake up at 7:00am but spend an hour wandering aimlessly around your apartment, you might give in to a mid-morning nap, which defeats the purpose of getting up at 7:00am. Whether it’s exercise, writing, or reading the newspaper, having a plan will make it easier to get up—and stay up—when sleep inertia is telling you to press snooze.

2) Get out of bed when your first alarm goes off.

When your alarm wakes you up, instead of hitting snooze, get right out of bed if you don’t want to feel groggy throughout the morning. Even if you’ve gotten seven hours of sleep, you might still feel groggy when your alarm goes off because of sleep inertia: the period between waking and being fully awake, when you’re more likely to be tempted to snooze for “just a few more minutes.” But those extra five minutes of sleep can make you feel worse than if you had just gotten up, because your brain restarts the sleep cycle. When your alarm goes off for the second time, you’re likely in an earlier, deeper part of your sleep cycle.

3) Build in flex time.

The key to planning out your day the night before is to build flex time into your schedule. It may sound counterintuitive. You want to get the most out of your day, so you shouldn’t waste a single minute not having something on the schedule to do. But downtime is actually beneficial for optimal productivity. It gives your mind a break—a chance to unwind and reenergize so that you can reach maximum productivity the next day, or while tackling your next task.

4) Make meals a priority.

Healthy eating may not seem compatible with a busy lifestyle. But food is energy, and we all need energy to function, let alone excel at the tasks before us. You may sometimes get so caught up in a task that when you finally look up, it’s 4pm and you haven’t eaten lunch. To avoid this, plan out your meals the day before so that you don’t feel like figuring out what to eat is an interruption that you can’t afford, or that you’re wasting valuable mental energy deciding what to eat. If you don’t want to waste your decision-making energy on minor things, plan ahead so that you’re simply doing rather than deciding.

5) Don’t let emails dominate your day.

While it may feel like you’re really on top of things if you answer emails immediately, don’t keep refreshing the page to see if there’s new mail. When an email comes in, deal with it right away when you read it. This is different from constantly checking to see if you have a new email, which will actually make you feel more pressured throughout the day.

Making small changes such as these will be beneficial as you take the next steps toward your goal of being more productive.