Eating Well vs. Eating Right

If you’re an active business person, especially a small business owner or entrepreneur who wears many hats all day long, it is so important to eat right every day to keep your body satiated and brain mentally focused throughout the long work day.  And this has nothing to do with your size (overweight or not); I know plenty of slim (dare I say skinny) people who eat like crap, and they feel it as well.  Regardless of your weight, you will function better, for longer, and be more productive every day if you eat right all day long.  Having said that, eating “well” and eating “right” are two different things.  Let me explain what I mean by this.

Eating “well” means the obvious: choosing lean meats and poultry, fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, whole grains, milk and dairy.  Everyone knows that eating well means choosing an apple over a bag of potato chips for a snack; or choosing grilled chicken over extra-crispy fried chicken for dinner.  However, let me give you two scenarios where, even if you eat ONLY from the “well” foods, you don’t do yourself any favors:

1. If you eat too much of these “well” items, more than your body needs, you will wreak havoc with your digestive system.  Shoveling it in all day long without any rhyme or reason affects your hormones and insulin response and, in the end, prevents you from having good sleep.  Additionally, this kind of eating pattern will definitely lead to weight gain because you’re taking in more fuel than your body is burning all day.
2. If you eat too little, going very long hours without eating these “well” items; or, relegating yourself to one meal a day with the rationale “I’m too busy to eat” or “I’m not hungry,” then, even when you do eat any of the “well” foods, you’re eating at a time when your blood sugar is very low, and your metabolism is very slow (and the longer you go without eating, the lower your blood sugar drops and the slower your metabolism gets).  In response, your blood sugar quickly spikes. The higher and faster it spikes, the lower it drops. You might respond by ignoring it and force yourself to push through the crash and be fatigued; or you might choose another “well” food; or you might go for a quicker-fixer-upper and choose a food item that you normally wouldn’t in order to get a rapid energy surge.  This kind of eating pattern sets you up for hypoglycemia, for one thing; for another, if you habitually allow too many hours to elapse in between eating, when you do eat your metabolism is in a slow mode, and you will eventually gain weight from less food.

So, the above are two examples of how choosing the right kinds of foods can work against you.  As I said, I know plenty of people who are slim, who have unbelievably terrible eating habits, and they feel it . . . and oftentimes they look it.  I also know very overweight people who do not partake of high-fat, high-sugar so-called junk foods.  But they eat too much of what’s “good” for them, more than their bodies need, and those excess calories are stored as fat.

Now, let’s talk about eating “right.”

Eating right means:

• you eat from the “well” foods;
• you use portion control;
• you plan in advance for the next work day;
• you pack for the next work day;
• you eat breakfast, then grab-and-go with what you packed the night before;
• you eat every 2-3 hours to keep your blood sugar stable;
• you drink water throughout the day to keep your body (and brain) hydrated.

If you’re a good business person, you certainly don’t “wing it” at the office each day.  You cannot achieve or maintain success at anything by winging it.  If there’s something you want to achieve — success with a new project or service; planning a corporate event; achieving a revenue benchmark in the next quarter — you don’t fly by the seat of your pants, do you?  Of course not.  You begin with the end in mind.  You want that “thing” to be a success.  You come up with a plan.  You itemize the steps necessary to complete that plan.  And then you follow through.

GOAL + PLAN + FOLLOW-THROUGH = SUCCESS

The same must be done if you want to eat RIGHT.

Eating well and eating right are two different things. Click To Tweet

So, look at your schedule for the next day.  See where you have to be, when.  Plan ahead what you will eat, and at what time.  And, when it comes to your snacks during the work day, there’s a difference between a healthy snack and dessert!  Always ask yourself, What can I eat as a snack during the work day that will sustain me for the longest time, that my body will more slowly digest and process? . . . and the answer is NOT a doughnut or a package of licorice, but fruits, veggies, and whole grains; or a protein, such as a hard boiled egg; a bean dip with some veggies, just to name a few.  As the above graphic shows, look at which 400 calories takes up more space in your stomach and that is what keeps you fuller longer!

Write your planned day down.  Example:

I want to stress that the above scenario is just a sample.  Given your age, height and weight; adult or child; medical issues; etc., your day might need to be planned differently.  You might perhaps need orefer protein at breakfast.  The sample above is to show you that (a) you should always have a plan; and (b) you should not let too much time elapse in between a meal or a snack.

Picture your fireplace at home.  You throw a bunch of logs into it.  You see a nice, crackling fire going.  You let 2-3 hours pass, you return, and you see the fire much smaller, but still burning; it hasn’t died out yet.  What happens if you throw another few logs into the fireplace at that time?  Right!   The fire starts up again.

As you can see in the planned day above, you are throwing a “log” into your fireplace (stomach) every few hours.  Before the last “log” is completely burned out, the next log is coming down.  So, just as with your real fireplace at home, if you want to have a nice fire going in the hearth all day long, you never let it burn completely out.  Similarly, if there’s always a ‘log’ in your stomach, it always has something to burn . . . and so it will.  And in that scenario, the food you’re eating is being converted to glucose in a nice, steady manner all day long — never too high, never too low . . . always just ‘right.’

. . . and the more “right” days you can string together, the better you will feel, the more productive you will be, and the more you will achieve.