Being Too Busy and Your Eating Habits

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• Eating Habits for Career Women

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hi, welcome to the podcast. I’m really happy you’re here with me today. This is going to be a good one, especially if you find yourself being too busy to eat healthier and as a result, have noticed some not-so-great eating habits that have developed. This is so common among career women, and convenient foods that seem to save time end up being a very common choice.

In this episode I’m going to share why it’s a normal human behavior to seek out quick, convenient foods when you’re feeling like you don’t have time, and what actually happens when it comes to eating habits and the thought that you’re too busy. You’ll also find out why convenient foods are usually not the healthiest foods and how they actually cause you to spend more time in the short and long run. And at the end I’ll be sharing some tips on how to save time AND still make healthy food choices.

But first, if you haven’t reserved your seat yet for the free virtual workshop I’m hosting on July 14^th at 7pm on How to Stop Emotionally Eating, then head over after you finish listening to this episode, because the 50 available virtual seats are filling up. I’m going to be doing some coaching on your specific eating habit challenges after I teach, and that’s why I have to limit the seats that are available, because we get a lot of questions from career women who need a little help with their eating habits.

The workshop is online and completely free, and no one will see or hear you, unless you volunteer to come on live to get coached if you’re feeling brave. Once you reserve your seat for the workshop, you’ll be emailed the link to the workshop and then you’ll be taken to a page where you have the option of pre-submitting a question or challenge that you’d like me to help you with when it comes to your eating habits. It can be on emotional eating but doesn’t have to be. You can also just ask a question at the workshop itself, with the chat box. Let me tell you, that’s so valuable. I’ve asked questions on something I needed help with by just typing it into chat boxes in group coaching calls with memberships I’m in and it’s just such an easy way to get help with something without putting yourself out there if you’re a little camera shy.

So, grab your seat if you’re an emotional eater or suspect that you are an emotional eater. You can sign up at katemjohnston.com/workshop. You can also sign up via the link in the show notes.

Alright, so as a busy career woman, you can sometimes look at your day as a whole as being “busy” right? I do this too, well I should say I used to do this, but with a mindset shift, have turned this around almost completely, which I’ll share with you in this episode. So you go from rushing off to work in the morning, to getting as much work done as possible during the workday, to running errands after work, all the things right? As women, we tend to have this jumble of tasks in our heads and try to make a mental list out of the mess, right? So, either in our minds or written down on paper, we see the long list of things that we need to do and automatically our minds go to “oh my goodness, I’m so busy today.” Or “I’m too busy.”

We you have a thought like either of those, what do you think happens? You’ve probably experienced it yourself. You start feeling tense, and maybe you’d even describe it as a feeling of being rushed. You may start to get a little bit stressed out and might go into a little bit of overwhelm. You may even get this little feeling of dread. Basically, your brain starts to see your busy day as a “problem “. Since your brain loves to find solutions to problems, which has helped with survival from the very beginning, you start to look for solutions to the problem of “busy “. Oftentimes, that means moving at a quicker pace, cutting corners with things, eliminating tasks.

The amazing thing about the human brain is that it’s really good at doing this. It’s great at finding the things it can cut corners with, eliminate, or make go at a quicker pace. It’s basically great at conservation. So, when it comes to finding a solution to the “busy-ness” of course that solution is to save some time so that you’re less busy, rushed, stressed, etc.

Now, when it comes to eating habits throughout the day, most of us eat at least three times a day, usually being breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When you throw snacks in there, and add it all up, that’s actually a decent amount of time spent each day with food or meals. So, your brain’s solution to saving some time, is almost always going to include finding ways to decrease the time spent with food and meals, especially since we do tend to spend a good amount of our day planning, prepping, and eating food when you really think about it.

And just a little sidenote here, a lot of times when we are rushing our meals throughout the day, and then when we sit down at night, it is finally a time to actually sit and enjoy food, which is when many people, myself included, love to snack. When you’ve had a busy and stressful and rushed day, and you didn’t really get to actually enjoy your food, when you finally do sit down to eat a snack at night, you may end up overeating or eating due to the emotions of the day.

I just wanted to mention that, because that’s one of the things that can ultimately result from rushing through your busy day. I’m not saying snacking at night is a “bad” thing, it’s just that sometimes your emotions from the day may take over your actions and you might find yourself overeating the so-called comfort food, usually the sweet, salty or fatty food.

So what happens when you start feeling rushed and busy and want to minimize time spent on meals? You end up eating food that you see as “convenient”. In fact, fast food restaurants as well as things like microwavable meals and convenient packaged dinners were made popular decades ago in an attempt to save time, as more and more women were entering the workforce.

So for you, maybe you grab takeout food instead of cooking, buy lunch instead of packing it, or eat a donut someone brought into work as your breakfast, because you didn’t think you had time to make oatmeal at home. You might grab a granola bar that has so much sugar in it that it can be considered a candy bar. I’ve been incredibly guilty of the granola bar thing when I was in my twenties. I didn’t even notice how much sugar they had in them, I would eat 1-2 throughout the day because they were quick and convenient. At the time, I saw granola bars as a godsend since they were so convenient and delicious.

That’s the thing about convenient foods. When you’re thinking that you’re busy, your brain tends to prioritize foods that are quick and satisfying, which usually means less healthy packaged or already prepared foods. When they are packaged, meaning in some sort of wrapper, box, bag, container, they tend to be higher in sugar, salt, fat, preservatives, because the companies are trying to appeal your tastebuds, so they can sell more of them and of course many use preservatives so the packaged food doesn’t get moldy or stale quickly.

Typically, these foods also don’t have nearly as many nutrients as whole foods like fruit, vegetables, whole grains, meat, dairy. This isn’t always the case of course, but it is frequently. When foods don’t have nearly as many nutrients, they leave you feeling hungry, because your body is not getting the nutrients that it wants and needs for the day. This can lead to over-eating, because your brain ends up noticing your body isn’t getting what it needs, so it triggers those hunger signals to suggest that you eat more in an attempt to get the nutrients.

The other thing about just wanting a quick convenient food, is that when you are grabbing something quick, you are using the more primitive part of your brain, which is consider to be the “lower part“ of your brain, which is more concerned about instant gratification and survival. It’s more concerned with solving problems in the moment, rather than doing more long-term planning and using a higher level of thinking that is more future-focused.

When you are rushing and grabbing that quick granola bar and bag of pretzels for lunch, your brain is not using that higher portion of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, to think about what your body really needs, and also is failing to think about what can result when your body is not getting what it needs and when your body is getting a lot of sugar, salt, preservatives, etc.

Okay, so once you start making those less-than-healthy choices just to save some time, what happens? Well, you might have negative immediate and longer-term physical or health effects, right? So immediate negative effects might be low energy from the lack of nutrients, or even the sugar crash, heartburn or reflux from the heavy takeout food, a headache from not eating breakfast. You might even have negative mental or emotional effects like guilt afterwards. Longer-term physical or health effects might be weight gain, high blood pressure from all the salt, high cholesterol, or increasing your risk for other health issues.

Alright, so here’s how these things actually cause you to be MORE busy. You thought you were saving time with the convenient food, right? Well, I’m going to try to blow your mind a little bit with this. When you don’t feel well physically because of what you’ve been eating, and when you don’t feel well mentally or emotionally because of what you’ve been eating or the effect they’re having on your body, you’re spending MORE time.

Here’s why. You’re spending more time trying to feel better when you have heart burn or low energy. Or more time resting because you don’t feel well enough to do the next activity you wanted or needed to do. You’re also potentially spending more time worrying about your weight and then even more time trying to lose the weight. You’re spending more time at the doctor’s office. You’re spending more time feeling badly.

So, does eating those quick, satisfying packaged food, takeout, or even skipping meals, really solve the problem of being too busy? No, not really. If anything, it will make you MORE busy due to the results of making those poor food choices. And this includes skipping meals because when you skip meals and end up hungry, you can end up not feeling well physically. For example, low energy, headache, stomach grumbling. This makes it tough to concentrate and do tasks efficiently.

Also, when you skip meals, you can tend to overeat or make poor food choices because you get to the point of being so overly hungry that all you can think about is just getting food in your belly, right? I’ve done this on more than one occasion in the past and present.

I’m telling you though, you can have both. You can have healthier eating habits AND not spend all your free time on food and meals.

So, I have some tips for you, which really turned it around for me.

I would classify these as mindset tips. By mindset, I mean the way you think about something. I’m starting here because before every action, you’re always going to have a thought in your brain right? Whether it be a conscious or unconscious thought. This thought ultimately ends up leading to the action, so if you change your thoughts, or your mindset, you can have a much easier time changing the resulting actions or behaviors. And when you change your actions or behaviors and keep doing that changed action or behavior over and over again, a new habit forms.

So remember when I said earlier in the episode that oftentimes you can have this long list of things you need to accomplish for the day either in your mind, written on paper, or on a calendar or phone, you’ll tend to have a thought such as “I’m so busy.” What if you didn’t have that thought? Or what if the thought was one that didn’t elicit that feeling of being rushed or stressed or overwhelmed? Do you think you’d find yourself slowing down and maybe making better food decisions?

Taking that moment to think about what your body needs for the day, food-wise. Taking that moment to think about how you really should be feeding your body, and what will make you feel good rather than feel physically unwell or even feel those negative feelings of guilt. Absolutely. You’d actually have a moment to think from the higher portion of your brain, that pre-frontal cortex. Remember, that more future-focused part of your brain.

I just want you to think about this. Have you ever had a time when you thought you were late to something and started rushing around as a result? Then, you get to the location, only to find the event or meeting doesn’t start for another half hour. You actually had the time wrong. What happens once you have the thought in your brain that you have time? You slow down, you become more relaxed. This allows for you to be more deliberate or intentional about your next actions. You might find yourself being able to think more clearly.

The same thing occurs when have a thought of having enough time when it comes to food. If you look at your schedule for the day and automatically think, “I’m so busy today” of course you’re going to feel rushed. But when you look at your schedule and tell yourself something like, “I’ve got this,” or “I have a lot to do, but I have plenty of time to do it.” When you think about it, you have 24 hours in your day, every day. That’s a lot of time! Besides any time commitments for work, you get to decide how you will allot the rest of the hours of your day. You’re in control. You can tell yourself that you have plenty of time to eat a little healthier.

When you tell yourself thoughts like, “I have plenty of time,” or I’ve got this,” how do you think that will make you feel? More in control, right? Maybe less rushed and less stressed. All of a sudden, you may feel like time has just slowed down a little for you. You think, “yeah, I have 5 minutes to make a healthy sandwich for work tomorrow.” Or, “I’m going to make dinner tonight instead of going out to eat again”.

So, pick a thought or two that you can try instead of “I’m so busy” or” I’m too busy” and practice that thought at the start of your day instead. You can even start with a thought for a specific meal like “I have plenty of time to make myself a bowl of oatmeal every morning.” This is going to feel so much better than that feeling of busy-ness, right?

You can get in that habit though of thinking and of course feeling that you’re so busy and that busy-ness is not a good place to be. You don’t want to feel like you’re rushing through life, and then on top of it, dealing with the negative consequences of making food choices that really don’t serve you well in the long-term. Just having that simple mindset shift can really make a difference in how you feel about your time, which then results in what your actions or behaviors will be.

Alright, onto some action tips. When you think about it, having a bowl of yogurt with fruit, or scrambling a couple eggs for breakfast in the morning, really only takes a few minutes right? Also packing your lunch for work probably takes the same amount of time as getting Chinese takeout, when you really think about it. So when you streamline that, it’s even faster, right? Basically, instead of making one lunch at a time each day, make a few ahead at once.

Let me give you an example. Carve out a little time in your schedule Sunday evening or an evening earlier in the week like Monday or Tuesday evening. You only need about 20-30 minutes, depending upon what you’re deciding to make for lunch. Set out the containers, pieces of aluminum foil all in a row. Get the rest of the ingredients out that you need.

So let’s just say you’re making a ham and cheese sandwich with mustard, lettuce and tomato for 3 of the days of the work week. Put out your slices of bread on each of the pieces of foil, then squirt your mustard on a slice of bread for each sandwich. Then put your ham on all three, then the cheese and lettuce. Then if you don’t want your tomato slices getting the bread all soggy, cut up a few slices and stick them in a container, so you can bring the container to work with you and stick a slice of tomato on your sandwich if you’d like. See how quick and easy that can be?

Same thing if you’re making salads. Get out your containers, line them up. Put the lettuce in all the containers, then slice or cut up whatever else you’re putting on your salad and then one at a time, put each ingredient on all the salads. Bring the bottle of dressing with you to work, or quickly make your own simple dressing with some oil, vinegar, and herbs.

For dinner, you can consider doubling the recipe, so that you’re making dinner for two nights. Doubling the recipe almost never takes as much time as cooking another meal another night. You can potentially save anywhere from 20-40 minutes if you double a recipe. If you don’t like having leftovers in the same week, then freeze it for the next week or a few weeks later to save you time then.

What you can also do for healthier eating in less time, is cooking a protein ahead of time, like several servings of chicken and using it throughout the week in different meals. You can top a salad with it, make simple wraps out of it, or add it to a pasta and veggie dish. Just making that one ingredient ahead of time that is versatile, will save time then you know you’re guaranteed to have a few healthier meals from it.

For breakfast, if you’re feeling rushed in the morning, I recommend just putting your breakfast food and dish plus utensils out on the counter ahead of time. It takes about 1 minute tops and makes your morning seem easier. Seeing it on the counter can serve as a reminder to eat breakfast at home, rather than grabbing something like a pastry along the way or skipping breakfast entirely.

These action tips are certainly going to help you save time, but if your mindset is still that you’re so busy and don’t have time, you’ll never actually do these action tips. That’s because you’ll still have the belief that you don’t have enough time. Or, if you do them, you won’t continue doing them, because your brain is still going to be thinking, “I don’t have time for this.”

So, start with the mindset shift first. That’s your base. That’s really what is going to create more time. Then, start streamlining your meals, doubling recipes, things like that. You’ll find you can have both, the healthier eating habits and the time.  

That’s what I have for you today. Remember, if you’re an emotional eater or suspect, but aren’t sure if you’re an emotional eater, then join me in the virtual workshop coming up. Head over to katemjohnston.com/workshop or you can find the link in the show notes that will bring you to the episode page and the link will be under Show Resources.

Thanks for being here with me. I can’t wait for you to start feeling like you have plenty of time to eat food that will serve you now and in your future. I’ll talk with you soon.