Work Fuel E-Book

Colette Heneghan

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Productivity Ninja
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 272

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

We all know the benefits of healthy eating, but in practice, it's often just not compatible with a busy, working lifestyle. Grabbing food on the go between meetings, before you rush to the gym, after catching up with friends – there's just not enough time to be fussy – what you eat often takes a backseat.   But what if that didn't have to be the case? What if what you were eating actually gave you more time; boosting your productivity, increasing your focus, and ensuring that you didn't fall victim to that daily 3pm energy slump? Productivity and nutrition experts Graham Allcott and Colette Heneghan present a new way to think about what you eat: the Productivity Ninja way. A new book in the bestselling Productivity Ninja series, Work Fuel shows you how eating well can and should fit into your lifestyle, however busy it is. From surviving conferences and work trips to how to best put together your food shopping list, Work Fuel provides you with an investment plan, promising to improve your performance, focus and energy by changing the way that you eat.

Leseprobe

Praise for Work Fuel

‘Life changing. It’s impossible to follow the advice in this book and not achieve more success in your career and life in general.’Paul Wilkinson, Chief HR Officer, Moog Inc.

‘This is a great practical guide to making improvements to the way nutrition fuels your productivity and energy, even with a hectic lifestyle. Sometimes it can just be about marginal gains, but this approach is a real game-changer!’Simon Blunn, VP EMEA, DataRobot

‘If you thought eating healthily was just for the yogis and vegans think again. Work Fuel not only shows you why you need to take nutrition seriously if you want to boost your productivity, but crucially how to do it. It’s packed full of practical – and memorable – tips that will help you build better habits around what you eat and when. Eat the rainbow!’Laurence McCahill, Co-founder, The Happy Startup School

‘Work Fuel is THE go-to guide for anyone who wants to understand the link between nutrition and their personal productivity. Combined with really practical hints and tips to boost energy and change habits, Colette and Graham’s realistic approach has effectively eliminated all the usual excuses of too busy, too stressed etc. As a business leader of a high-performing team, this will be on my team’s must-read list.’Claire Darley, VP, Adobe

‘Colette and Graham have written a must-read book full of practical information for people who have challenges with nutrition every day, people like me. Read the book and boost your energy, productivity and your career.’Kyle Whitehill, CEO, Avanti Communications Group Plc

‘Work Fuel is full of clever, but simple-to-understand advice to help anyone upgrade their focus and capability to achieve their best work, especially important for those of us working in hectic corporate environments.’George Galica, Head of Digital Buildings, Vodafone Group

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEINTRODUCTION 1.THE WORK FUEL WAY2.FOOD FOR THOUGHT: NUTRITION FOR COGNITION AND THE WORK FUEL PLATE3.BREAKFAST4.LUNCH5.DINNER6.BEING LABEL-SAVVY7.THRIVING ON THE GO8.HOW TO SHOP9.THE TOOLKIT10.LIFESTYLE11.MAKING IT STICK: HABITS AND HOW TO STAY ON TRACKEPILOGUERECIPESFURTHER READINGACKNOWLEDGEMENTSAPPENDIXABOUT THE AUTHORSCOPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION FROM GRAHAM ALLCOTT

Welcome to Work Fuel. We’re so excited to be bringing you this book, which is the result of a few years of collaboration between Colette and myself. Colette has been an inspiration as well as a fountain of knowledge on the topics of nutrition and well-being, and on developing the habits and strategies for peak performance. I’m honoured to be working with her to bring you the first of our series of Productivity Ninja Guides.

Since the release of How to be a Productivity Ninja, I’ve spent the last few years spreading the Ninja gospel around the world. If you’re here because you’re already a convert to the way of the Productivity Ninja, then thank you. But if you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, then allow me to briefly explain.

A Productivity Ninja is someone who takes control of their own productivity, with great systems and clear thinking that cuts through all the information overload and inefficiency that seem to plague our working lives. There are nine characteristics of the Productivity Ninja, which are:

Zen-like calm: Having a singular, ‘in-the-present-moment’ focus for your work, by getting all the myriad of ideas, nags and tasks out of your head and into a ‘second brain’ (a series of lists that help you manage everything you’re working on).

Ruthlessness: Learning the powerful art of saying no to anything that gets in the way – whether that be your own distractions or other people’s priorities.

Weapon-savvy: Using apps/tools to optimize productivity.

Stealth and camouflage: Making yourself deliberately less available, so that you can get some work done, away from the noisy world of the internet or the open-plan office.

Unorthodoxy: Questioning the rules and the status quo, and caring less about how you get there than about reaching the goal.

Agility: Being nimble and able to react to changing circumstances.

Mindfulness: Taking a mindful approach to work, whether that’s recognizing the importance of meditation and other mindfulness tools, or whether it’s approaching your to-do list or meetings mindfully so that you’re aware of your own emotions or resistance.

Preparedness: Adopting a mentality of preparing and thinking ahead, so that you’re organized and ready for whatever comes your way.

Human, not superhero: Productivity Ninjas may often look like superheroes, because so much seems to go to plan. But what’s worth remembering is that we’re all human. There are no special powers or shortcuts to success and we all get things wrong sometimes (so go easy on yourself – and others!).

I’ve lived and worked under the Ninja philosophy for many years now (after spending the first years of my career as a self-confessed disorganized mess), but I’m still human, not superhero.

A couple of years ago, I was finding that while I was sticking to these Ninja characteristics, I was still experiencing periods of very low energy and hence poor productivity. I would often experience low moods, especially in the afternoons, and it got to the point where I realized I needed help. I’d met Colette a couple of times before, so I asked her to become my nutrition coach. I didn’t really know what kind of results I could expect, but I knew that food and fuel are vital for the brain’s performance. However, the level of additional energy I managed to find was shocking – and I didn’t think I was eating that badly before.

The changes for me are permanent and habitual. I probably don’t spend any more time cooking or preparing food than I ever did. Many of the nutrient-rich meals I’m making are simple and fast to prepare. What’s changed is I now have more of a strategy to make sure the meals I’m serving myself are serving my brain’s functions, too. I’d previously experienced a lot of very low-energy days where I didn’t feel like working at all, and most days I’d feel an energy dip after lunch. Now all that’s gone. I’ve more or less cut out caffeine and don’t feel as sluggish when I wake up. When things get busy or I’ve got a lot on, I feel like I can absorb stress like a sponge – much like I did in the first few years of my career – but this time I’m helping myself rest and recover, to keep things sustainable too. And while vanity wasn’t part of the motivation for working with Colette, for the first time in my life, friends who I haven’t seen for a while say things like ‘You’re looking well’, or ‘Have you lost weight?’, which, to be honest, still feels weird!

For a few months, we had a daily WhatsApp chat, where I would post pictures of every meal and Colette would comment: ‘doing great, but add some more protein in there’, ‘switch this for that. Simple change’, and occasionally ‘… Oh dear. [Sad face]’. What this process taught me – aside from a huge wealth of little snippets of useful nutritional information, was that at times we all need a push to think about what we’re eating. Colette would challenge my occasional ‘I’m too busy for this’ narrative and remind me that her own work schedule was as busy as mine (as she sent me back a picture of a salad that had been thrown together from brilliant ingredients).

‘You eat well when you have good ingredients in your fridge’, I remember her messaging me. Ah. I get this now. Ninja preparedness! I wrote about this in How to be a Productivity Ninja. A lot of it wasn’t actually about food, but about gently coaching my resistance against changes in habit.

In fact, there are so many crossovers and similarities in the way Colette thinks about food and the way I think about productivity and work, Work Fuel began to feel like an obvious joint creation for us to put our well-fuelled minds to. And here we are.

This is the nutrition plan for people who can’t usually be arsed with nutrition. It’s a busy person’s guide to eating well. The Work Fuel Way is a lifestyle that will support healthier and better choices at work, but it will also give you more energy, better health and less stress in the rest of your life, too.

So, if you’re not lucky enough to work for a company that’s running workshops in this kind of stuff, or in a position to hire your own personal nutrition coach, here’s all the wisdom from two workshop leaders, a master’s-level qualified nutritionist and coach (Colette, obviously) and one extremely willing nutritional guinea pig (me), for the price of a takeaway.

INTRODUCTION FROM COLETTE HENEGHAN

If you want your brain and body to perform at their best, they have to be fed the right kind of fuel. Every meal counts. All the food we eat is either potential brain fuel or potential brain fog.

In my first career in global sales and management, my daily food choices were an afterthought. I would just grab food when I could, and regularly swapped eating time for catching up and meetings. It seemed like there was never enough time to fit in all the meetings, calls and emails in my day. My lunch breaks were few and far between. I survived some days on tea and biscuits provided in client meetings. At least it was some food, and surely skipping meals was a good thing as it meant fewer calories … right?

The challenge wasn’t the role itself; instead it was my energy levels and an inability to concentrate on any one thing for too long. I never made the connection that my poor concentration was because I hadn’t had breakfast, or that if I had eaten, it was likely to have been a sugary, so-called ‘healthy’, cereal. My lunch choices were not gearing me up for proactive attention in the afternoon. In fact, I was usually feeling more like I wanted a nap (a problem exacerbated by dark meeting rooms and endless slides – a colleague and I would literally stab each other with a pen whenever we looked like we might nod off).

As it turned out, I wasn’t alone.

When I mentioned this to my colleagues, they said that they were tired too and often struggled with their concentration and energy levels. They said things like ‘this is the reality of working life, just get used to it!’ After all, we were all still delivering our numbers, closing business, managing our clients and getting results. So, what was the problem?

The thing is, health is so much more than not being off sick.

True health is a state of high performance: having the energy, vibrancy and vitality to do whatever you want to do. I may have been delivering on the numbers, but was I missing out in other areas of life? The answer is most certainly yes.

I was on so many professional courses in my corporate career, from time management to negotiation skills, networking to presenting with impact. Not one of these mentioned that in order to deliver in all of these areas to the best of my ability, I had to be properly fuelled.

Following some personal research and a desire to make some changes, I made a few simple upgrades to my food choices and cut out some of the more obvious energy zappers and almost immediately saw improvements in my performance at work and in my mood. I simply got more stuff done. It sparked a real passion to learn more of the science behind it, so I resigned from my job and went back to uni. I spent five years in full-time study, completing a range of courses, another undergraduate qualification and a master’s in nutritional science.

Funnily enough, I have subsequently managed to create a role that is just as busy and demanding as my first career. My working week as a performance and nutrition coach is still filled with business travel, meetings, conference calls, webinars and conferences. Yet the difference in my energy, productivity and vitality is light years away and I will not compromise on these benefits ever again.

Despite all the information out there, we are still not doing a lot of the basics when it comes to food. Why? Because knowledge alone rarely stimulates behavioural change, plus our behaviour often strays from our good intentions. We need to make food decisions many times a day and we just can’t devote too much of our limited, precious decision-making capacity to each choice, so our eating tends to be habit driven (like most of our lives).

The importance of developing the right habits should not be underestimated; that’s why each chapter in this book has a call to action, with some bite-sized upgrades you can make, and why there is a whole chapter about making it stick. Creating stickiness is where the magic happens and where long-lasting change begins. The only imperative is that you have to start – and it’s a good idea to start small; you’ll learn why.

Let’s begin by giving more focus to what is on our daily menu, rather than our daily agenda, by loading our forks with real food that is literally going to feed our productivity, performance and health. What are you waiting for? Welcome to Work Fuel!

1. THE WORK FUEL WAY

‘The best investment you can make is in yourself.’

– Warren Buffett

They say that time is our most precious resource. It’s not. Our most precious resource is our attention. And the most precious resource of all is what we call ‘proactive attention’ – the two or three hours each day when we’re fully alert, our energy is high, and we feel like we can take on the world. Spending your proactive attention wisely is one of the most important ways to be a Productivity Ninja. Attention management is about how to make the most out of a finite resource.

But what if there was also a way to increase proactive attention? To actually have more of it? To feel in your peak state for longer during every working day, and to spend less time sitting unproductively at your desk feeling frazzled. That would truly feel like magically getting more hours in the day! We’re here to show you how.

There are a million food books out there and hundreds of business productivity books too, but this book, which combines our years of experience coaching individuals and teams at work on their food (Colette) and their productivity (Graham), is the bridge between the two. It’s a book backed up by hard scientific fact, not trendy fad diet plans. Our philosophy is that starting with practical reality is better than presenting unobtainable perfection. No 30-minute meals that take two hours to make, no soft-focus pretty pictures of perfect kitchens and Instagram lifestyle crap. This is a food book for busy people, who care about what they eat, but are too busy to get it right all the time. This is what you really need to know about the relationship between potatoes and peak performance. Between peaches and productivity. Between paella and … you get the idea. Let’s get started.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

In this chapter we’ll introduce you to the nine essentials of the Work Fuel Way. These are the key principles, habits and attitudes that will give you a rocket boost for the mind, body and soul. The Work Fuel Way is a mindset – a new way to think about how you approach your food and the creation of energy to nourish your body, soul, work and life. In Chapter 2, we’ll look specifically at the science of food and cognition: which foods bring us the best energy? What should we avoid? Some of this will feel like common sense but we think some of it will shock you, too.

Once we have this foundation, the next three chapters will walk through common pitfalls and tactics for getting the best out of each of the three meals of the day. These chapters will provide the detail of what foods to eat at certain times of the day, how to prep it, how to make it easy and how to make it happen.

Chapter 6, ‘Being Label-savvy’, will explain how you can become a food label detective, so that you can start to pick food items up, scan them with your eyes, and make an informed choice as to whether to include them in your meal, or leave them behind.

Chapter 7 will discuss ‘Thriving on the Go’, with ideas of what to do when you are at the mercy of predetermined food choices, how you can mitigate them, and some useful work-arounds.

Chapter 8, ‘How to Shop’, will focus on how we can be much more Ninja prepared in the supermarket and the kitchen, and on learning to shop in the most ruthless way.

Chapter 9 is ‘The Toolkit’, where we will look at the tools you need to ensure this is going to be practical and easy to do. We’ll look at the kit needed for your home, work bag and office, and advise on things like supplements.

Chapter 10, ‘Lifestyle’, will look at some of the other habits that support and complement good nutrition, because clearly the world doesn’t completely revolve around food (!).

And then in Chapter 11 we will focus on how you can take the knowledge from this book and make it happen. We didn’t want to just leave you with great information but no plan. That’s the worst of all worlds. So the last chapter will help you design your habits so that they stick.

We’ve designed it to be fairly linear – we suggest you read the first two chapters first, and finish with the last chapter (even if you’re not reading it for the first time) because that will help translate information into behaviour change, but the middle sections act more like a reference tool, so you can dip in and out, or cherry-pick the bits you feel are most relevant to your own situation.

Just like with productivity, when you apply a bit of Ninja preparedness, embrace the unorthodox and occasionally even add a little stealth and mindfulness to your food choices, great things happen. And of course, the whole point of a book called Work Fuel is to help make it easy to provide rocket fuel for brilliant brains, because the world needs what you do.

We’ve also prepared a bunch of online PDF resources which you can download and print out, which we’ll tell you about when we get to those bits. So, let’s dive right in to the nine essentials of the Work Fuel Way.

THE NINE ESSENTIALS OF THE WORK FUEL WAY:

1. BE A FUELIE

GOOD FOOD IS BRAIN FUEL

Let’s start with the most obvious thing. ‘We are what we eat.’ Or rather, our brain performs relative to how well we feed and support it. Our brain and body also need certain vitamins, minerals and macro nutrients to maintain their functions, and good nutrition, hydration and rest are all vital to keep us alert and our attention strong.

Perhaps you describe yourself as a foodie. Perhaps you don’t. Either way, we hope with this book we can make you a ‘fuelie’. A fuelie is someone who recognizes the benefits of increased energy, lower stress and a healthier body and consciously and consistently makes food choices that support this.

It’s important to note, too, that it’s just as much about what you don’t eat as what you do eat. Set your bar high, make wise choices and your short-term energy will be boosted – not to mention your longer-term health, too.

It doesn’t take long to feel the effects either – usually within around two weeks of making these changes, people report better mood, more consistent energy, and confidence. For this to happen though, we must be bothered, interested and aware of what we put into our bodies. So if you’re a foodie, we see being a fuelie as a natural upgrade. If you’ve no interest in being a foodie, and just see food as fuel, then it may as well be rocket fuel!

Since most of us are busy, we cut corners in all of this. It means our brains are tired, starved of certain nutrients, and slightly below our best. The result is that each day we have less of that ‘proactive attention’ that we talked about earlier. At best, this means we’re suboptimal, and at worst this puts us on a path towards exhaustion and burnout. In the middle lies a spectrum of symptoms you’ll probably recognize: general tiredness; feeling like you can’t concentrate for long periods, especially in the afternoons; getting grumpy or irritable about stupid things; lacking the energy for a social life; not having time or energy for your family; feeling like you just want to stay in bed all day, and so on. These things are not inevitable. You just got so used to them that you forgot that you can change them. A fuelie stays mindful of this and learns how to avoid it altogether.

BRAIN FUEL IS WORK FUEL

When it comes to improving productivity, so many people focus on downloading the latest apps, or buying a new notebook to make pretty lists, when the ultimate tool we need to be taking care of is always with you – right between your ears. Feeding our brains helps us think. And in case you’ve missed all the Productivity Ninja memos thus far, thinking is the hardest, most valuable, most important work that there is. When the machines come for your job, it’s your ability to think, to be creative, to problem-solve and strategize that matters most. The key to great productivity is thinking better. The key to thinking better is eating better.

WORK FUEL IS LIFE FUEL

There are many reasons why souped-up productivity is a good thing. We’re big fans of the idea of ‘playful, productive momentum’ throughout all areas of life: the more you embrace positivity in your work, the more it rubs off on your life, and vice versa.

All the stuff we are going to tell you about in this book is just as applicable to life outside of work. Encouraging optimal brain function also means reducing stress and increasing the hormones in your body that produce happiness and feelings of well-being.

The good news is there’s no bad news here. Want to have more energy for your kids? Tick. Want to feel better during the dark winter months? That too. Want to perform better in the gym? We’ve got you. And do you want to do all of this without spending loads more money on food or spending loads more time on prepping it? Don’t worry, we’ll show you how to make all of this convenient for your time and your bank balance too.

2. LUNCH IS NOT FOR WIMPS

DITCH THE MACHISMO

Gordon Gekko in the famous film Wall Street defined the 1980s’ high-octane work ethic. ‘Lunch is for wimps’ was a phrase that cut through into mainstream culture, and you still hear it today. The sad thing is, it’s utter nonsense. Deliberately depriving your body and brain the nutrients you need to think properly, and surviving on coffee alone, doesn’t make you cool, it just makes you a caffeinefuelled crazy idiot. It certainly doesn’t make you better at your job. It is a sad and empty brag. Of course, there are occasionally days when a lack of planning or a work emergency means you’re looking up at the clock at 3pm saying, ‘Oh, I forgot to eat’. If that’s because you were lost in your work, or on a high-adrenaline deadline, then perhaps you spent the morning being productive. The point is it’s unsustainable if you do this regularly – by the second day of skipping lunch, you’ll be seriously suboptimal. Let’s eliminate this ‘lunch is for wimps’ rubbish from our culture and fuel our bodies – and our brains – with what they actually need. This macho bragging generally hides average results.

HOW YOU EAT MATTERS TOO

There are many useful aspects to the rhythm of how we eat. We’re big fans of breakfast because it sets the tone for the day. It’s also useful to think of breakfast as the breaking of a fast – it’s ideal to have twelve hours during each 24 where you give your body a rest from eating and digesting, so that you can repair and rebuild. (Your sleep time plus avoiding late-evening snacks makes this quite easy when you’re in a routine.) These natural mini-fasts are great for digestion. Taking time to enjoy food and eat mindfully, too, allows the body a better chance of absorbing useful nutrients from our food. We digest food properly when the body is relaxed, and the body does the minimum it can get away with when it’s highly stressed. The other thing that’s often overlooked is chewing. The enzymes we produce as we chew are vital to the digestive process. Eating mindfully and chewing properly aren’t luxury extras here, they’re vital components of getting optimum energy from what we eat.

DITCH THE ‘AL DESKO’

Eating at your desk is bad for you. But you knew that already. There are several productivity reasons that have nothing to do with food – getting even just a few minutes out of the office in the middle of the day is a great way to clear your mind – but aside from this, the ability to move your body into a more relaxed state aids your digestion, and in doing this it enhances the production of energy from your food. So, when you think you don’t have twenty minutes for lunch, imagine how many minutes of better energy you’re denying yourself by eating at your desk. We’ll show you more of the science of this later. For now, consider this: unlike the New York Stock Exchange, the Tokyo Stock Exchange shuts down for a lunch break each day. A study made back in 1999, in Tokyo, analysed the effects of this institutional feature on volatility of stock returns. It clearly showed that the lack of trading over lunch reduces the volatility of the market.1 Less volatility sounds like a win to us! Take lunch.

3. DON’T EAT FOOD WITH ITS OWN JINGLE

IT’S TIME TO RECONNECT WITH OUR FOOD

One of the biggest problems we have in the Western world is that we’ve become disconnected from what we’re eating. Very few people grow any of their own food. Our vegetables arrive already chopped in plastic wrapping, we eat strawberries all year round instead of during their actual season because we can have them flown halfway around the world, and it’s hard to know what damage we’re doing by eating certain things, because the agricultural processes are so far from our view.

What’s happened over the years is that the idea of being healthy has been hijacked by the marketing people. They’ve recognized that most of us have such a naive understanding of what our food even is that they can adopt a two-step strategy to increase their profits:

1. Tell us something is bad (like saturated fats, gluten, sugar and so on).

2. Tell us their product is low in the thing, or the alternative to the bad thing, and therefore the solution.

And most of us simply don’t have the time to investigate the claims of every product. Therefore, we assume products that are low in fat, low in sugars or gluten free must be good for us. We assume that these companies have used science and have our best interests at heart, instead of seeing them as clever people using psychology to sell us often-substandard food. Often these products make up for the thing they leave out by adding in other less desirable ingredients (low-fat foods, for example, are often much higher in sugar).

So, we need to reconnect with food. A good rule of thumb is: if food needs a marketing team to convince us it’s worth eating, it’s probably not worth eating.

Steer clear of the jingles. There’s a reason you never see a humble broccoli singing in an advertisement.

FOOD MADE FROM PLANTS, NOT FOOD MADE IN PLANTS

Another simple rule is this one. Eat more food made from plants, not food made in plants. Factories need to include additives and preservatives to give food a long shelf life, they use cooking or manufacturing techniques that cut corners, which both ultimately reduce the nutritional value. Vegetables are one of the simplest ways to get a lot of nutrition quickly and should be thought of as a major part of a meal, not a little side-show next to the main event. We’ll show you how to give your plate a ‘plant slant’.

4. EAT THE RAINBOW

One of the simplest ways to ensure your plate is full of nutrients is to look at the colours. Obviously, we’ve all heard of ‘eat your greens’, but what about all those reds, yellows, purples and oranges? Different-coloured vegetables tend to contain different nutrients, so a rainbow on your plate will help ensure you’re not missing anything out. If you look at the finger food options at a big event like a wedding or conference, what you’ll generally see is a whole lot of beige. The meat is so processed it’s beige, the pastries are beige, there are a lot of potato or bread-based products (fried or processed), melted cheese and so on. Thankfully things are starting to improve as more people start to demand more varied options.

BANISH THE BEIGE

The same beige-complex is true for the freezer section of most supermarkets, where the pre-prepared meals are generally heavily processed and pumped full of refined salt and flavourings to make sure they taste good after the freeze. If, like us, you grew up on potato waffles, crispy pancakes and the like, you’ll be familiar with what we mean. Some of those foods with cartoon characters and jingles remind us of childhood and can bring feelings of comfort, but getting beyond the beige is a quick-fire step to better energy.

RANGE

As you’ll hear in the next chapter, it’s important to eat a wide range of good foods, yet it’s easy to find yourself stuck in a pattern of eating the same four meals over and over again. ‘Eat the rainbow’ reminds us to focus on range – both on an individual plate and over the course of a day or a week. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need a massive repertoire of dishes to cook: simply adding a handful of something colourful to an existing dish to ‘rainbow it up’ is enough to extend your range. Baby tomatoes, pre-chopped carrots or salad, a bit of sauerkraut or beetroot out of a jar … these things are all easy to add to a plate in a few seconds and yet they all add extra colour, flavour and nutrition to whatever else you’re eating.

5. BE LABEL-SAVVY

We talked about reconnecting with food. Getting to know its provenance, and what some of the marketing-speak does and doesn’t mean, can be time-consuming. Luckily for you we’ve created a whole chapter here – Chapter 6 – with some quick things you can do to make better food choices. One or two of the things in that chapter may shock you. In particular, this next thing.

STOP COUNTING CALORIES

Calories aren’t the smartest measure for fuel for a human body, and we don’t actually burn them in the way that is shouted about by every new workout programme. It’s a bit of a waste of time counting them at all. For example, a hundred calories from a packet of crisps is simply different from a hundred calories from a handful of walnuts. The way our body reacts, metabolizes, utilizes and feels is different. This is due to the macro and micro nutrients contained in each food; the walnut is much more nutritionally balanced than a packet of crisps, and so are we when we eat it. Our society tends to equate calories with health, which is just wrong. Would you rather eat 2,000 calories a day of densely packed, healthy and nutritious food, or 2,000 calories made entirely of fries? Which would leave you feeling at your best?