Career Women’s Eating Habits and How to Balance Them

In the fast-paced world of career women, it’s a common scenario: the convenience of takeout, the allure of snacks during a hectic day, and the challenge of managing stress through food.

In this blog post, I’m explaining career women’s eating habits and how to balance them. I explore how skipping breakfast, stress eating, emotional eating, desk dining, social gatherings, and a host of other habits impact your well-being.

The Breakfast Dilemma: Starting Your Day Right

It’s a busy Monday morning, and you’re rushing to get to work. Breakfast? That’s the last thing on your mind as a busy career woman with a full schedule ahead.

Skipping breakfast is a common eating habit among career women juggling hectic schedules. But what’s the deal with this morning ritual?

In the rush to beat the clock and dive headfirst into work, you can often overlook the importance of breakfast. And that’s not helpful at all. Breakfast fuels your body, kickstarts your metabolism, and provides you with the energy you need to tackle your day.

If you’re hungry for breakfast, skipping this meal can lead to reduced focus, energy dips, and even overeating later in the day. So, if you’re part of the breakfast-skippers club, it’s time to consider making this important meal a non-negotiable part of your morning routine.

To make it easy, you can just do a piece of fruit or a small yogurt. However, don’t eat while driving! Instead, take 5 minutes to eat it sitting down at home.

Of note: Some people are just not hungry in the morning. So, unless you have a medical condition in which you were told you must eat breakfast regardless if you’re hungry, don’t eat breakfast if you aren’t actually hungry.

Part of healthier eating habits for career women is learning to eat when hungry and stopping when or right before you’re just barely full.

• LISTEN OR READ: Healthier Breakfast Habits (Podcast Episode)

Stress Eating: When Emotions Drive Your Appetite

Stress can be a small or large part of a career woman’s life. But how you deal with it is what matters. For many, stress eating becomes a default coping mechanism. That looming deadline or demanding boss can cause you to seek out comfort from tasty foods.

The psychological impact of stress can increase your hunger signals, leading you to reach for high-calorie, sugary, or fatty foods as a way to self-soothe. This type of emotional eating may provide temporary relief, but it’s often followed by feelings of guilt and regret.

To combat stress eating, consider finding alternative stress-relief techniques like deep breathing, meditation, or engaging in a quick workout. Remember, emotional nourishment is just as important as the food on your plate.

Longer-term stress eating solutions involve finding the root cause of your stress, which are your thoughts. This is what a coach like myself can help you with.

Finding those thoughts and then deciding what to do with them, so you can feel better. There are several different ways to deal with these thoughts, but it is crucial to address the root cause with a coach, otherwise the stress and resultant stress eating will keep coming up.

• LISTEN OR READ: Stress and Eating Habits (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: Stress Eating (Podcast Episode)

Emotional Eating: When Food Becomes Your Best Friend

Emotions and food have a complicated relationship. Emotional eating, much like stress eating, is when you turn to food to cope with emotional distress. It might be sadness, boredom, or loneliness that causes you to seek out cookies, chips, and ice cream.

Food has the power to provide very temporary relief, releasing dopamine, the “reward” hormone. Dopamine gives you a sense of pleasure and satisfaction, but it’s very short-lived.

Why emotional eating can become a problem is because it can lead to overeating and overindulgence. Plus, it causes a vicious habit cycle of relying on food for emotional support.

To combat emotional eating, it’s crucial to identify the root causes of these emotions (your thoughts). There are also some techniques I teach my clients to help them cope better with their emotions.

• LISTEN OR READ: 3 Thoughts to Overcome Emotional Eating (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: Emotional Eating at Work (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: My Emotional Eating Habit (Podcast Episode)

The Desk Dilemma: Mindless Eating at Work

Career women’s eating habits include eating at your desk while tackling a mountain of tasks. (I even catch myself doing this sometimes.)

It’s a result of the never-ending to-do list and THINKING you need to multitask. But this often leads to mindless eating, where you consume without truly savoring your food.

Eating at your desk can be a slippery slope, as it often involves hurried, distracted eating. You’re more focused on emails, reports, and meetings than on your meal.

This habit can lead to overeating, poor food choices, and a lack of awareness of your body’s hunger and fullness cues. So, it’s time to break the desk dining cycle and prioritize mindful, off-desk eating for improved well-being.

When you take that short amount of time to just focus on the food you’re eating and your body, you’ll be so grateful you did. You’ll enjoy your food more, get a well-deserved break, and you’ll help break an overeating habit.

• LISTEN OR READ: Mindless Snacking & How to Stop (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: Mindful Eating Even When You’re Busy (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: Mindful Eating Even for Weight Loss (Podcast Episode)

Social Eating: Part of the Job?

In the professional world, social eating is par for the course. Work-related dinners, networking events, and business meetings often revolve around food. And it’s usually higher-calorie food too.

While these gatherings can be an essential part of career growth, they can sometimes mean eating more than you actually need.

So, ask yourself if you really have to eat at the social events or can you just focus on the social networking? If you are going to eat, decide ahead of time what and how much if you can.

Also, get comfortable with declining food you don’t want to eat when offered to you. You can even visualize yourself ahead of time declining, just to help you get comfortable with it.

I’m a firm believer that you don’t have to eat or eat all the food offered to you at social events. You get to choose what you put in your body.

• LISTEN OR READ: Social Eating Habits (Podcast Episode)

Takeout Troubles: Convenience vs. Nutrition

“Takeout again?” Sound familiar?

The convenience of ordering in or picking up fast food often wins out in the hectic lives of career women. With busy schedules and never-ending work demands, quick, takeout options can seem like the only solution.

But convenience often comes at a cost to your health and can slow down your progress toward your eating habit, health or weight loss goals.

Fast food and takeout meals are typically high in calories, saturated fats, and sodium. These options might be tasty, but they’re not always the best choices for your well-being.

The key is to find a balance between convenience and nutrition. Look for healthier takeout options, make smarter choices when dining out, and prioritize homemade meals whenever possible. You can also stock up your freezer with some healthier frozen alternatives to fall back on those really busy days.

• LISTEN OR READ: 8 Time-Saving Tips for Healthier Eating Habits (Podcast Episode)

Boredom Eating: When Your Schedule Finally Clears

After a long day at the office, feeling super busy and productive, downtime can feel downright boring. This can then lead to boredom eating. You wouldn’t think boredom eating is one of the common career women’s eating habits, but it absolutely is.

Boredom eating often stems from the sudden transition from a hectic, work-filled day to a quieter evening or weekend. Food can fill the void when you have little else to occupy our time.

To address this habit, it’s essential to find alternative sources of entertainment, engage in hobbies, and plan activities that keep your mind and body engaged. Food can feel like a good fix and something to do, but there are healthier and more fulfilling ways to pass the time.

• LISTEN OR READ: Boredom Eating (Podcast Episode)

Food Rewards: A Treat for “Good” or “Bad” Days

Finally, we have the age-old habit of using food as a reward. Whether it’s celebrating a successful presentation or indulging in comfort food after a tough day, treating yourself with food is a common practice among career women.

Food rewards are quick and easy, making them the favorable choice to your brain after a long day. However, you’ll often feel a negative emotion afterward like guilt, regret, disappointment in yourself, or even anger at yourself.

None of these feel good and can then lead to emotional eating.

I like to tell my clients, “Of course you deserve the ________, but you actually deserve something better than food.”

So, one of the tricks to help with breaking the habit of using food as a reward is to think of a non-food reward instead. One that provides some excitement or anticipation like food normally would.

• LISTEN OR READ: Is Food a Reward? (Podcast Episode)

Snacking: Constant Nibbling for Fuel

For many career women, snacking becomes a way to sustain energy levels throughout the day. This can lead to grazing on small, often unhealthy snacks, especially when you may not even be hungry.

Addressing this habit involves first making sure you’re hydrated. Turning to water before food can make a difference in your energy levels and many career women don’t realize this.

So drink some water and see how your energy levels will improve in about 10 minutes. If you’re still actually hungry, you can then make a decision about food.

• LISTEN OR READ: Nighttime Snacking Habit (Podcast Episode)

Avoidance Activity: Distraction and Procrastination

Sometimes when you don’t feel like doing a certain work task, you can turn to food as a distraction or even use it as an activity to procrastinate getting started on something.

The reason behind both of these is avoidance. Trying to avoid the discomfort of doing the task you don’t really want to do, or avoidance with getting started on a task you’re not looking forward to.

To help with this, think of how you’ll feel once you have completed the task and envision yourself feeling this way. If you want, you can also choose a non-food reward ahead of time to help motivate you to get the task done without using food as a distraction or procrastination tactic.

• LISTEN OR READ: Decoding Eating Habits of Career Women (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: Food: The Comfort Connection (Podcast Episode)

Final Notes:

As a busy career woman, you might feel like you have so many challenges working against you when it comes to eating habits.

However, with awareness, mindfulness, and some practical strategies, you can make healthier choices and build a positive relationship with food in the midst of your busy lives.

Print this post out for reference, so you don’t have to memorize it all. Highlight the ones you feel are applicable to you and start with some of the tips you think will be the easiest for you to implement.

Since you’ve made it this far, continue getting some help with your eating habits by signing up for weekly tips below. You’ll receive a tip every Sunday morning to help keep you on track.