Eating Habits for Career Women

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Full Episode Transcript:

Welcome, welcome. I’m so glad to be talking with you today. This episode is going to touch on some ever-so-important eating habits for career women. I wanted to do this episode as the very first one for a few reasons. One is that I want to establish that career women can benefit from healthier eating habits not just because of the traditional health benefits, but also from more secondary benefits like increased energy, decreased mental “chatter” around food, experiencing less negative feelings like frustration, disappointment, and hopelessness, all of which allow for you to put more focus and attention on the things most important to you.

If you can focus more on what’s specifically important to you like a hobby, advancing in your career, your family, all the things, then your life is going to be so much more full, simply because of some healthier eating habits.

Just think about right now if you can identify with this. You know, so often, you can spend so much of your time and energy on what you need to do, that there isn’t any left over for what you want to do. What truly lights you up inside. When your energy is lacking due to certain foods you’re eating (or not eating), it takes longer to get things done, leaving you less time.

So, I truly believe that better eating habits can save you time, because of even just that one reason of having more energy to accomplish what you need to, so you don’t end up spending more time than is necessary. And also, having energy left over to do what you want to. Because let’s face it, as a career woman, you’re used to prioritizing the things you need to do over the things you want to do. You’re used to prioritizing other people over yourself, whether it’s your colleagues, boss, friends, family, whomever.

What I want to offer to you though, is that when you start to prioritize yourself with lifestyle changes like healthier eating habits, other people reap the benefits too. When you have more energy due to healthier food choices, and you use that energy to do things you love doing, other people get the indirect benefits of that, right?

So, for example, say you love doing yoga and you now have more energy to do yoga a few times a week, the positive feelings that doing something you love generates, will radiate from you, to the people surrounding you. Contrast that with if you’re feeling tired, stressed, irritable, and not having much enjoyment in your life, that will have a negative effect on not only you, but also people around you. You might snap at people, forget you made a plan with someone because you’re just so overwhelmed or tired, there’s many possibilities of things that can happen.

Even if you’re just increasing your energy for the things you need to do, other people benefit significantly. Take your career for example, you’re serving others with the job you’re doing, right? You’re helping the company you work for (or own) serve others.

So healthier eating habits for career women is especially important. And that’s just the benefit of increased energy. There’s also of course more positive feelings of freedom, confidence, self-control, even drive. Less mental chatter around food, meaning less drama in your mind about your food choices, trying to fight cravings, and talking negatively to yourself when you “mess up.” And of course, the traditional health benefits. All the things that your healthcare provider makes money off of seeing you for, right?

So, what eating habits are some of the most crucial for you to really focus on to help with increasing energy levels to then help increase the amount of free time you have?

Let’s start out with the beginning of your day. So, you might be thinking that I’m about to say that breakfast is going to be the first eating habit to focus on, but I’m not.

It’s really important to get a good night’s sleep, so that you can get out of bed without feeling like you’re starting the day being tired. So what does that mean? It means ensuring that you can get a good night’s sleep by falling asleep fairly quickly and staying asleep during the night. Now there have been studies I’ve read regarding certain foods that may affect the quality of your sleep and also amount of calories consumed before going to bed. However, a lot of these studies were done on male truck-drivers and they weren’t massive studies necessarily. Also, what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another person. So, avoiding a high-calorie snack or even meal right before bed can certainly help a lot of people to fall asleep more easily, but there are also some people who have a lot of difficulty falling asleep unless they’ve had something to eat before bed. I’m one of those people.

That’s why my first piece of advice regarding eating habits for career women, is to find what works for you as far as to eat or not to eat before bed so that you can sleep well. What enables you to fall asleep and stay asleep more easily? You know your sleep schedule and your snacking at night habits. Do you tend to sleep well if you’ve had a snack or not sleep well? Do you sleep well if you’ve had a late dinner, or do you find that it’s difficult to fall asleep with a late dinner? Or maybe you love dessert, but notice that when you eat a sugary dessert in the evening, you wake up multiple times in the middle of the night.

Pick what you’ve noticed works for you regarding being able to fall asleep more easily and stay asleep. For me, I find it much easier to fall sleep if I have at least a small snack at night and preferably within 30-60 minutes of bedtime. Otherwise, that hunger sensation bothers me enough that I lie awake for way longer than I’d like to. Now, if I really wanted to, I could stop that habit, but I don’t personally feel the need to do so, at this time. For you, if you find eating close to bedtime helps you to fall asleep because you aren’t feeling those hunger signals, then go for it. Now, certainly if you want to try to make that snack a healthier one if it’s not healthy, then that’s fantastic and you should certainly go ahead with that if you want to.

The point is though that optimizing your day as a career woman, really starts off with how you sleep the night before and that can oftentimes be affected by your night-time eating habits.

Next up, is your breakfast habits. Starting your day out with some calories, which is just energy, is optimal, right? That can be as little as a piece of fruit to get you going, to a full breakfast of an omelet and hashbrowns. The key is to get some sort of calories in, at some point in the morning, and preferably from something that will also provide some nutrients that your body will benefit from throughout the day. If you really want to optimize your breakfast, then aim for something that’s a few hundred calories and is a whole food, rather than processed.

Whole foods are foods that are in their natural form or state. For example, a piece of fruit and eggs are whole foods. Whereas, toast is processed because it’s a whole grain that has been mechanically processed into teeny tiny bits (flour). Flour is stripped of a lot of the fiber, unfortunately, so the nutrients in a piece of toast are pretty low compared to other processed foods, like a smoothie, which isn’t stripped of it’s nutrients. A smoothie made up of fruit and vegetables is processed to an extent…the blender mechanically processes it, but has so many nutrients that will serve you throughout your day.

The next eating habit I want to talk to you about that will benefit you as a career woman, is snacks. I like to think of snacks as sources of energy that keep you going in between meals. For that reason, they are very important. Especially if your job sometimes doesn’t allow for much time for a full lunchbreak. You may need to really bulk up those snacks to make up for a lack of a lunch. Also, I want to point out here, you don’t need to have a traditional lunch such as a sandwich, if you don’t want to. These traditional meals were essentially just made up by humans over the years. Humans knew they needed to eat periodically throughout the day to keep energy levels up, so your traditional breakfast, lunch, and dinner schedule came about, which actually can differ somewhat with different cultures. Then, the traditional breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods came about. Again, something just determined by humans.

I want you to know that there is no set universal rule that you have to have a traditional breakfast, lunch or dinner. If you find it easier to pack several healthy snacks for the day, rather than pack a snack and full-on lunch, then do that. Again, the main purpose is to provide energy for your day, plus nutrients.

What’s going to be really important with what you pack for work is, asking yourself if you’re packing enough to eat. If you find yourself feeling hungry at work because you didn’t pack enough food, you might end up making a poor choice in the moment and get something like a candy bar from the vending machine.

Now, one candy bar certainly isn’t going to kill you, but when this starts to become a habit, and it oftentimes does, that’s when it becomes problematic.

This is the reason why poor food choices are more likely to happen if you’re hungry. Whenever your body feels discomfort, it wants that discomfort to go away quickly, as in yesterday. So when you start feeling really hungry, you’ll do anything to make that hunger go away, which means sometimes making choices you later regret, whether it be later that day, or 2 months later when your pants are feeling a lot tighter.

Something else really important that I want to talk about regarding snacks is what kind of snacks are you packing? Is it snacks that include a lot of refined sugar? Meaning, sugar that isn’t in its natural state, such as it is in fruit? If you’re eating a lot of refined sugar throughout the day, you may be experiencing that so-called “sugar high” which is due to a quick increase in your blood sugar levels as well as dopamine, the “reward” hormone, also referred to as the “pleasure” hormone in the past. Unfortunately, these rise quickly, causing that increased energy and causing you to “feel good” momentarily, but then fall quickly as well. That’s commonly referred to as that dreaded “sugar crash.” I’ll do a deep dive into sugar as well as sugar cravings in another episode, but for now, it’s just important to become aware of if you’re eating a lot of refined sugar, as this may be causing you to feel less than your best.

Also, when it comes to sugar and sweets, I commonly see a lot of women criticizing themselves for eating the sugar in the first place, meaning they talk negatively to themselves in their thoughts. This negative self-talk serves no good purpose.

If you do this, then think about this. If you eat say a donut at work even though you’re trying to break that donut habit, and then have negative thoughts like, “why did I eat that? I know better than that.” Or, “why can’t I have better self-control like other people?” Or maybe it looks something like, “I’m never going to stop eating sugar, so why bother trying?” These are unproductive thoughts. They don’t leave you feeling very good, which means your motivation and desire to keep working on your eating habits is going to decrease. So on top of the sugar itself leaving you in the discomfort of that “sugar crash”, you’re also talking negatively to yourself, causing even more discomfort.

This doesn’t encourage the type of action you need to take to keep working on that eating habit and being successful with getting better control over it.

So take a look at the food you’re eating during the day to keep your energy levels up and to ensure that you aren’t going to end up talking negatively to yourself. Do you have enough food, so that you avoid making poor choices due to hunger, that could lead to a new bad eating habit? Are you eating things that are going to cause negative self-talk and result in negative feelings about yourself and your eating habits?

Now, we’re up to dinner. Dinner often seems to have the bad rap of the meal requiring the most amount of time. Therefore, it can be seen as an inconvenience, meaning a problem. What happens when you see something as a problem? You want to find the solution. So if you see dinner as a time-consuming event that leaves you with less free time, your gut reaction is to want to try to remedy that with quick, convenient dinners like takeout, packaged, frozen dinners, a bowl of cereal, etc.

If you see dinner NOT as a problem, or a time-consuming event, you’re going to be more likely to enjoy taking a little time to make something that is healthier than the takeout or packaged, frozen dinner. If you just invest as little as 15 minutes, you can make up a quick, healthy dinner (it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, or even a traditional dinner). You can enjoy the meal you just made, and feel good afterward. You’ll end up avoiding having those negative thoughts like you might after eating greasy or salty takeout that doesn’t leave you feeling so good afterward.

How you look at dinner makes all the difference. Meaning, your mindset around dinner. If you look at it as a time to practice getting really good at a few quick, healthy dinners that you can whip up in 15 minutes or less, you’re going to most likely take some pride in that, right? I personally love that I can whip up a healthy meal like its second-nature. I put on some music, and it’s no longer work, but enjoyment. I also feel really good after we eat, knowing that we ate nourishing food. Also, the healthier the dinner is, the more I look forward to a bit of dark chocolate later. That’s just an extra perk that I’ve found.

I know I’ve covered a lot in this episode, but I really wanted to make sure you understand how your eating habits as a career woman will help you with so much more than just helping to keep preventable disease away.

You deserve to feel better every day both physically and mentally, and eating habits play such a large part in both. I’ll share a quick personal story about my past eating habits before I go. I used to work in Orthopedic Surgery as a Physician Assistant. I was in my mid-twenties at the time in that particular job, just starting out in the career that I worked so hard for, so I should have been full of energy. Well, I wasn’t. I was working pretty long hours, anywhere from 50-80 hours a week depending on if I was on-call. I thought grabbing a quick bagel as I ran out the door in the morning, and eating mainly carbohydrates during the day, then cereal or pasta at night would give me the energy I needed, plus have the extra benefit of saving time since it was so convenient.

I ended up feeling tired at work all of the time, then dragging myself out the door in my free time to go for a run, which was one of the only things at the time really providing me pleasure. I felt like I always wanted to sleep. I would look at the floor longingly, wishing I could just curl up in a corner and take a nap. I’m not a nap kind of a person, so this is kind of mind-blowing to me when I think about that now.

So, contrast that with how I feel now. After changing my eating habits around age 30, while I was still working as a Physician Assistant, but in spine surgery, I gained so much more energy. Now as I approach 40, I do way more than I did back in my twenties and feel like I have energy left in the tank. It’s easy to wake up in the morning and I have so much energy during the day that I’ve added in more hobbies and activities that I just really want to do. I’ve not only increased my energy levels from the food choices I’m making now, but I’m also creating more time because I have the energy to add in more enjoyable things to my day when I want to.

I have a lot more on my schedule now than I did back in my twenties, but I have more energy, have no mental chatter about food, and no negative feelings around food, my body, or my eating habits. Therefore, I feel so much more freedom and feel so much lighter.

I really want that for you, my friend. So, think about what it is that you’d love to have some more energy to do, preferably something you want to do and not something you feel you need to do. Then start thinking about how nice it will be to not have any of that mental chatter creeping into your day, around your eating habits.

So much freedom. It’s pretty amazing.

That’s what I have for you today on eating habits for career women. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Eating Habits for Life, so you get updated as new episodes come out. Take care and I’ll talk with you soon..