When you work from home, it’s easy to combine work with everything else you do at home, including eating. If not careful, mindless eating can lead to weight gain and overall poor health over time.
The following three major principles will help you make the best food choices while working from home, and if implemented, can move you toward the healthy, wealthy, and wise woman entrepreneur you were meant to be!
Principle #1: Don’t mix eating and working.
This includes eating while you’re working as well as where you’re working. Separate your work and your meals as much as possible. Work can often cause stress, which triggers a physiological response to grab an unhealthy snack. What’s more, when you’re eating while working, your mind is on your work and off what you’re putting in your mouth.
Whether you work at your kitchen table, dining room table, or home office, don’t eat there (even if you’re not working at the same time). Your work area should be solely for work and your eating area should be solely for eating. Just sitting at your work station can bring feelings of stress or anxiety. These emotions can seep into your meal time and affect being present and mindful during your meal. Mainly, do your best to separate eating and working entirely.
Transformation Tip: Strive to make eating a single-task activity, meaning when you’re eating you’re not doing anything else – you’re not working, watching TV, or talking on the phone. Instead, try to practice mindfulness by eating slowly enough to really taste and appreciate the flavors and textures of your food. Being mindful and present when you eat helps you grow a healthier relationship with food.
Principle #2: Don’t keep tempting unhealthy foods at home.
Being an entrepreneur requires being faced with a variety of choices everyday. You are constantly making decisions, which drains your willpower throughout the day. Keeping unhealthy foods out of the house and only healthy foods readily available will help you make healthy choices. When you make healthy food choices, your confidence improves as well as the proud feeling of accomplishment that you did something good for yourself. On the other hand, choosing unhealthy foods does the opposite, so keep those away.
Transformation Tip: While it’s okay to eat unhealthy foods from time to time, keep ALL of those foods out of the house. Instead, make the commitment that you’ll only eat unhealthy foods on special occasions that are reserved for when you go out.
Principle #3: Don’t eat when you’re not hungry.
This seems pretty obvious, but when you’re an entrepreneur, you understand that your day can be up and down at any given time. Perhaps you’re writing an article and get stuck or you just got off the phone with an unhappy client. It’s easy to walk into the kitchen and grab some comfort food, but it only “comforts you” for a short time. Soon afterwards, it can lead to guilt, shame, and make you feel even worse than before you ate it. What’s more, unhealthy foods often sit like a brick in our stomachs and make us feel lethargic and tired, which doesn’t lead to our best work.
Transformation Tip: Don’t eat when you’re not hungry, even if it’s healthy food. It’s a bad habit. Instead, fight through the “stuckness” or “negative” feelings by finding other ways besides food to get through the moment. Perhaps you call up a trusted colleague or go for a stroll in the sunshine. Find what works for you.
I hope these principles were helpful for you as you continue to build a thriving business and thriving health simultaneously.
I’d love to continue to support your healthy, wealthy, and wise journey!
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