Week 4: Eat Smarter to Think Better
KEY POINTS:
1. To maximize your productivity, you need to utilize the various tools, tactics, and strategies out there focus better and have more energy. One of the easiest ways to do that is by eating smarter.
2. Working to shift your mindset towards food will create a context that will improve your health and wellness, and enable you to be more effective and successful.
3. Simple changes include eating healthy snacks, and educating yourself and others about the issues of simple carbohydrates and the benefits of healthy proteins and fats.
“To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.”
This week we’ll be discussing how you can begin to create new habits and routines around healthy eating. There are a few simple things you can do:
Gradually transition to eating healthier snacks and drinks and eliminating unhealthy options. It’s time to get rid of the high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks such as pop, juice, and vending machine junk. It’s time to start investing in healthy snacks. When you’re at home, avoid buying and storing away unhealthy snacks. If they’re there, you’ll eat them. If they’re not, it’s much less likely that you’ll go out of your way to get them. Your environment largely dictates your success!
If you eat out, identify places nearby where you, your co-workers, or your family can go to get a healthy lunch. Look to decrease the amount of simple carbohydrates such as rice, bread, and pasta, and move towards vegetables, fruits, and healthy protein sources.
We also want to get people considering using healthy fats during the day such as avocado, olive oil, coconut, and wild fish. These foods elevate omega-3 fatty acid levels and make an enormous difference in brain power over time. This is, after all, about giving people more energy. These foods will help you avoid the afternoon crash, allowing you to sustain your energy levels all day.
Nutrition can be very confusing, but simple changes such as avoiding processed foods and eating more fresh fruits and vegetables can make a world of difference. Look to decrease your intake of sugar and highly processed carbs. Add proteins in the morning to help you concentrate and healthy fats to improve brain function. Keep everything as simple as possible by following a few rules, and you can dramatically improve your health and work performance.
This week, you’ll be creating a fuel plan to help you perform more optimally at work and in life. See pages 23 - 30 of The Focus Effect Workbook or click Here to download the exercise. After establishing your daily schedule, you’ll create a meal plan based on simple nutritional guidelines that we provide you with. Once you actually try out the plan, you can refine it by making the necessary changes based on what worked for you and what did not.
Check out this podcast with dietician Eric Williamson on Rethinking your Diet
The information and advice provided in this program is intended to assist you with improving your performance, as well as your general health. It is not intended and should not be used in place of advice from your own physician or for treatment or diagnosis of any specific health issue. By participating in this program you acknowledge that undertaking any new health, diet and/or exercise regime involves certain inherent risks, that you assume such risks, and that you release Wells Performance Inc. from any responsibility or claim relating to such participation.