I love thinking about food, cooking, and eating. I equally love understanding what role food plays in life. As we know, food is essential to our daily lives and performance, but so often we don’t think about food outside of the most obvious functionality of it. What role does food play in your life? Is it something you enjoy each day? Is it something that causes stress or pain? Are you aware of how what you eat impacts your mental clarity, performance and mood?
Regardless of our emotional relationship with the food we eat, we can get disconnected from the role food plays in our lives. The obvious role is that food is meant to nourish us, fill us, give us energy, and support our bodies, brains, and minds. With the right food we can charge not only our brains and bodies; we can improve our productivity, efficiency, mood, and overall sense of wellbeing. Our food choices can also make us sluggish, bloated, uncomfortable, fatigued, foggy, and leave us feeling unsatisfied and wanting. Food is an incredible resource: it can build us up mentally and physically, or it can leave us feeling depleted and unfulfilled.
In our busy lives, especially the lives of Executives, Leaders, Managers, and Entrepreneurs, enjoying quality, healthy food is one of the first things to get sacrificed on the list of priorities (exercise is next on the list). Many of the leaders I’ve worked with over the years simply eat to survive the day. Some of the most common frustrations I hear from busy leaders and professionals have to do with brain fog, feeling distracted, and having aching, bloated bodies with painful joints. These mental and cognitive health symptoms may have other underlying causes, but one thing that is controllable is to start addressing what food we consume and watch how these changes impact our cognitive, emotional and physical well-being.
Every time you go to put something in your mouth, be it food or beverage, ask yourself: Will this ___ support my brain, body, emotions, and productivity? Each meal is an opportunity to support and nourish your body, your brain, and your long-term health goals. Managing what we eat is the easiest and hardest skill to learn, but it is a skill and everyone can learn to eat better to feel better!
Here are 4 Tips for Eating for Mental Clarity, Performance and Improved Mood:
Start with the beginner hacks and once you’ve mastered the beginner hack, try the advanced hack. This approach is more likely to help you achieve small wins and ultimately build good long-term healthy habits that become part of your lifestyle.
- Hydration: Hydration is information to help support our brains to perform at our best.
- Beginner Hack: Drink a glass of water immediately when you wake up. Keep a glass of water by your bed or bathroom sink, and drink up.
- Advanced Hack: Drink one glass of room-temperature water every hour you’re awake, and 1-hour before bed. This may sound like a lot, but the latest neuroscience research shows that we need 120 ounces of water during the day for peak mental performance and physical health. We often mistake hunger for thirst, so if you think you are hungry, drink a glass of water first.
- Bonus Hacks:
- For an added bonus, drink lemon water in the morning before you drink your coffee or eat.
- For every cup of coffee/caffeinated beverage, drink 1 glass of water. Caffeinated drinks can be dehydrating and caffeine uses the water in your cells to give you energy. By drinking a glass of water with your caffeine your brain will be processing at high speed!
- Feeling bored with plain water? Drink organic, herbal, or medicinal teas throughout the day. This will add in some nice trace minerals and antioxidants while curbing hunger without dehydrating you with more caffeine.
- Protein Forward Eating Strategy: Good protein must be present in our meals for brain health, strong bones and muscles, mental clarity and performance. This applies whether you are an omnivore, vegetarian or vegan.
- Beginner Hack: Start your day with protein. Your first meal of the day should have a high dose of protein to help you maintain consistent blood sugar levels and energy. This can be eggs, lean meat protein, full-fat yogurt with nuts and seeds, a plant or animal protein shake.
- Advanced Hack: Eat your protein FIRST at every meal. This helps you feel full faster by telling your brain you have what you need from your meal. Don’t fear carbs: your brain loves carbs! But make sure there is protein on your plate for every meal.
- Break Up With Sugar: Sugar is one of our nation’s silent killers, and a source of addiction for millions of people. Sugar stresses the immune system, brain function, digestive system, and of course your waistline.
- Beginner Hack: Start by cutting out sweeteners in your coffee/tea. If you are looking for a non-sugar sweetener, I recommend sticking to natural sweeteners like stevia, monk fruit or honey. Other chemical sweeteners can impact your hormones and leave you feeling more hungry and foggy than before.
- Advanced Hack: Start reading labels on all the extras you consume in a day. This includes crackers, chips, “healthy” granola bars and snack foods and condiments. You will be surprised how much extra sugars we can consume without thought. Sugar is hidden in many foods because it’s addictive AND it leads us to buy more.
- Bonus Hack: If you have a sweet tooth, substitute with bananas, dates, or carrots. The fiber helps you feel full and keeps your blood sugar at an even keel. Maintaining your healthy blood sugar helps with mood, patience, and overall physical and mental health
- Color Conscious Eating: Stop brain fog and achy joints
- Beginner Hack: Add in more Green Foods and Decrease White Foods: Add in more green veggies, and decrease the amount of white stuff you are consuming (bread, pastries, cookies, cakes, muffins, pasta, non-organic dairy, etc.). The Standard American Diet (also known as SAD) is overrun with too much consumption of white, overly processed flours. Many “healthy” breads and snack foods are made with sugar and white flour. This baseline of “white” (flours and sugars) leads to insulin resistance and inflammation. This is where you start to address your brain fog and achy joints.
- Advanced Hack: Eat the rainbow during the day or with every meal. When you prepare and serve a meal, make sure many colors are represented on the plate. The SAD diet will often have a lot of white on the plate.
As you implement the above strategies, start a food journal and track what you eat. Track your food, drinks, snacks, and supplements. As you pay attention to what you eat, start to notice how you feel. Has your energy level changed? Your mood? Do you have any sensations or symptoms after eating certain foods? What you find may surprise you. I discovered a dairy intolerance this way, and clients of mine have discovered food allergies and sensitivities. You can track this the old-fashioned, pen-and-paper way, or use mobile apps.
We are here to support you on this journey. We can assist you and your team with more tips on how to use Food as Medicine to continue your journey toward mental clarity, improved performance and overall well-being.
LeaderHealth = Business Health
Image Credit: Thank you Davey Gravy & Unsplash
