If you aren’t feeling good about what you’re getting done, it might not be an organizational issue – it might be a matter of health. When we push our bodies to the limits, it’s not a surprise when the quality of our work suffers.

Here are some easy steps you can start this week to improve your health.

Pay attention to what you eat and when you eat
We think we know what we eat, but we often eat without thinking. An easy way to make yourself more mindful of what you’re putting into your body is to keep a daily log. You don’t have to amend anything – just track. What do you eat? What time of day? How much? And if you’re brave, track how you feel after a meal. Do certain foods affect your physical and mental state? If you feel achy, tired, acidy, have a headache – track that. Tracking gives you a clear way to see something we mostly do out of habit. After a week of tracking, start looking for patterns of foods that make you feel good and foods that bring you down.

Read the ingredients
I heard two great talks at the library this week – one on healthy snacking, and the other on sustainable fishing. You wouldn’t think those would tie together, but in both cases, the key to healthier eating – and in the case of fishing, to a healthier planet – is to read the ingredient list. If you read an ingredient list and don’t know what something is, look it up. Googling things like, “Health issues around BHT” will fill you with dread! And it’ll help you choose foods that don’t have a lot of additives or preservatives.

The sustainable fishing speaker is focused on changing how tuna are caught at a global level, but also talked about reading the label. When you look at the ingredients on a can of tuna, you’d expect to see “tuna” + either water or oil. But what you’ll also find out is if the tuna was caught with line and pole. This means a single person, using a single hook, caught a single fish. That means the fish was healthy and strong when it was caught, and that a lot of other sea creatures didn’t give up their lives (turtles, sharks, seabirds), to bring you your meal. You also want to look for tuna that is “single cooked” – which means the tuna was canned in a single, heated step. If the can doesn’t say “Single cooked” then it most likely was cooked, then flaked, then packed and re-cooked again. This process wipes out 90% of the omega-3s that make tuna so good for us!

All that is on a label.

Cook more; eat out less
The only way to know exactly what’s in your food is to cook more of your own food. If your food log shows you don’t react well to certain ingredients like wheat, milk, or sugar, try making your favorite foods without or with less of those ingredients. When you do eat out, most restaurants now post the menus with ingredients online. You might be surprised what you find there!

Keep healthy foods on hand at home and at work
If you find foods that work really well for you, get more of them and make sure they’re easy to get to. Packing your lunch for work could improve your health drastically – and you’ll save money!

The magic of taking control and starting to be decisive about food is that it’s catching. When you manage what you eat and start to feel healthier, who knows what you’ll be inspired to take on next!

Happy tracking, reading, and eating. 🙂

My parting shots today are from a flight down south last week. When I fly, I try to remember to spend time looking out the window to see views many of our grandparents and generations before them could only imagine!

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