I’ve been thinking about food and nutrition a lot lately, in part because the takeout options around my office leave a lot to be desired. There are four grocery stores within a ten minute walk, which in theory is cheaper than prepared food, but without full kitchen facilities it quickly becomes a game of annoying compromise and the most convenient options aren’t anywhere near the most productive.
By productive, I mean the foods that’ll avoid triggering a food coma after you eat them, and manage to keep you sharp throughout the day. Staying away from simple carbs is part of the battle, but so is getting enough calories in at the right pace to tide you through to the next meal.
Maybe I’ve thought about this too much, but maybe there’s some science I’m missing out on regarding the best nutrition choices for high-thinking desk work. I hate needles, but from time to time I think about an IV drip that’d deliver the very best food for my brain, directly into my veins. Extreme? Well, yeah, but a productive day at the office is that important to me.
In lieu of that, I’ve been looking into adopting a regular habit of sports nutrition products, like Vega Whole Food Health Optimizer, which I’ve already been having for breakfast for most of this year. It’s easy to digest, which means the food coma shouldn’t happen and I’ll have more energy available for thinking. The downside is that eating the same thing all the time can be boring.
That said, boring also means easy to decide. Eating the exact same thing all the time, with the proper motivation behind it, can be a good balance against the annoyance of trying to figure out what to have to lunch (no joke, maybe it’s just me or my location, but I’ve lost half hours at a time deliberating between the options at the various groceries near me. You want to talk about boring, desktop kitchen improv wins every time in that category.)
The other thing I’ve been worried about, if I go much further down this road, is if keeping to a set food routine will sap my discipline too much. Discipline is like a battery, and it needs to recharge regularly. There’ve been some cool studies about people who did some simple task requiring self control, and then later were much worse at performing some other unrelated task requiring further discipline. This is where rigorous time tracking kicks in – if my number of breaks and time to complete tasks starts to go up, I’ll know I need to back off on the monotonous food plan rigidity.
It’s early in the process, but so far it makes sense and seems to be working out – good cars need good fuel, and so on.
Oh, and stimulants including caffeine and energy drinks are all fair game, as far as I’m concerned. I find I don’t suffer from a crash from these, and they increase alertness, which is what it’s all about.
(And yes, this is one of those “oh, you’re thinking of starting a company? Here’s what that can do to your brain” cautionary tale posts…)
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