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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
The complete guide to eating for everyday energy. Are you a regular victim of an afternoon slump? Is it a struggle to keep focused on your to-do list? Do you want to fit more into your day, but feel as if you just don't have the energy? Nutritionist Colette Heneghan and productivity expert Graham Allcott provide all the answers in How to Have the Energy, explaining how not only what, but how you eat can improve your focus, boost productivity and even give you more time in your day. Using the High-Energy Plan, they show how eating well can and should fit into your lifestyle, however busy it is. From how to put your shopping list together, to how to upgrade your breakfast, from how to be label-savvy to the importance of ditching the desk lunch, from the author of the bestselling How to be a Productivity Ninja, this the complete guide to eating smarter and boosting your everyday energy.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Praise for How to Have the Energy(formerly 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. How to Have the Energy 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
‘How to Have the Energy 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
‘How to Have the Energy 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
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How to Have the Energy
Your nine-point plan to eating smarter, improving focus and feeding your potential
Graham Allcott & Colette Heneghan
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
GRAHAM ALLCOTT
Graham Allcott is a speaker, an entrepreneur and the founder of Think Productive, one of the world’s leading providers of business productivity workshops and coaching. Think Productive’s client list includes eBay, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Heineken and GlaxoSmithKline.
Think Productive workshops include:
How to be a Productivity Ninja Getting Your Inbox to Zero Email Etiquette Fixing Meetings Leading Remote Teams
Graham is the author of the international bestseller How to be a Productivity Ninja, as well as A Practical Guide to Productivity and How to be a Study Ninja. He is also the host of the popular business podcast Beyond Busy.
Prior to founding Think Productive, Graham held various roles, including co-founder of Intervol, chief executive of Student Volunteering England and adviser to the UK government on youth and community issues.
Despite an intolerance of failure elsewhere in his life, he is an Aston Villa season ticket holder and an avid follower of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.
Graham lives in Brighton, UK.vi
COLETTE HENEGHAN
Colette Heneghan is a speaker, a coach and founder of Optimum Living, a well-being organization that has designed, managed and delivered successful high-impact health and well-being programmes across the world. Optimum Living’s client list ranges from large multinational corporates such as Vodafone and BT to small charities and professional sports teams.
Colette delivers workshops and personal coaching covering topics such as nutrition for energy, thriving leadership, smart working from home, resiliency and the power of sleep.
Prior to founding Optimum Living, Colette worked in the global corporate world for over ten years. She has an MSc in personalized nutrition, a BSc in business information technology and diplomas in herbal medicine and naturopathic nutrition.
Colette is a foodie, a yoga teacher, entrepreneur and an eternal student. Originally from Manchester, she now lives in the South with her partner and young daughter.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION FROM GRAHAM ALLCOTT
Welcome to How to Have the Energy. 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.
Since the release of my first book, How to be a Productivity Ninja, I’ve spent the last few years spreading the Ninja gospel around the world, through my company, Think Productive. 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 I will explain all shortly.
A couple of years ago, I was finding that while I was sticking to all of the productivity principles that I was promoting, 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, xtoo. 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 my 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. Preparedness! I wrote about this in How to be a Productivity Ninja. A lot of the process wasn’t actually about food, but about gently coaching my resistance against changes in habit.
Preparedness is one of the key principles within How to be a Productivity Ninja. It’s not something that has ever come naturally to me (I’m a ‘seat of my pants’ kind of guy at heart) but I’ve recognized its importance in helping to drive my productivity – and in recent times to develop great eating habits too.xi
Unorthodoxy is another of my key productivity principles which is also incredibly relevant to eating for energy. There may be some times in this book when we’re asking you to ignore a lot of mainstream stuff – whole aisles of the processed food in supermarkets, including many that purport to be good for you. Conversely, the fact that it’s possible to eat healthily in McDonalds or on a plane if you know what you’re doing, may well surprise you too.
In How to be a Productivity Ninja I also wrote about the idea that we are ‘Human, not superhero’. Sometimes we have great habits and techniques that makes us seem like we’re invincible or full of special powers, but it’s always worth remembering that there are limits. There are no special powers or shortcuts, and we’ll all screw it up sometimes.
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, that How to Have the Energy began to feel like an obvious joint creation for us to put our energised and 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. It’s 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.xii
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 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 action packed afternoons. 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 just not being ill.xiii
True health is a state of vibrancy, having the energy 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 attended 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 fed.
Following some personal research and a desire to make some changes, I made a few simple upgrades to my food choices and almost immediately saw improvements in my energy levels and my mood. I simply got more stuff done and felt happier. It sparked a real passion to learn more of the science behind what was going on, so I resigned from my job and went back to university. 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 coach is filled with travel, meetings, video calls, webinars and conferences and on top of all that, I now have a young daughter. The difference in my energy and vitality is light years away from what it was and I will not compromise on this ever again. I can’t even imagine being able to take care of my daughter, run my business and write a book on the energy levels I had normalised in the past.
There is lots of information out there now about food, yet many of us are still not following some of the basic principles. Why? Because knowledge alone rarely stimulates behavioural change, and 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 precious, limited decision-making capacity to each choice, xivso our eating tends to be habit-driven (like most of our lives). Plus, the diet and food world tends be trend-led, so what was in fashion last month isn’t necessarily the go-to food or approach this month, which can make it very confusing.
The importance of developing the right habits around what we eat should not be underestimated; that’s why each of the chapters in this book has an activity to get you started, with tiny upgrades that you can make immediately, 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 to-do list, by loading our forks with real food that is literally going to feed our energy and health. What are you waiting for? Welcome to How to Have the Energy!
1.
THE HIGH-ENERGY PLAN: 9 WAYS TO FUEL YOUR BRAIN, YOUR WORK AND YOUR LIFE2
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‘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. Graham first wrote about spending your proactive attention wisely in How to be a Productivity Ninja and it’s a tricky challenge for people all over the world: from CEOs to full-time parents. 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 day, and to spend less time sitting unproductively, 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. 4
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
In this chapter we’ll introduce you to the High-Energy Plan. This is made up of the nine key principles, habits and attitudes that will give your mind, body and soul a rocket boost. The High-Energy Plan is a mindset – a new way to think about how you approach your food and the creation of energy to nourish your body. The nine principles will be woven through the book. In Chapter 2, we’ll look specifically at the science of food and cognition and how this should be represented on our plates: which foods boost our 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 easily 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 more prepared in the supermarket and the kitchen, and on learning to shop in the most ruthless way. 5
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, your office and your bag, 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 informed preparedness, embrace the unorthodox and occasionally even add a little stealth and mindfulness to your food choices, great things happen. And of course, the main goal of a book called How to Have the Energy is to help make it possible for you to generate your own vitality each day, so that you are healthier, happier, and have the energy to live life to the fullest.
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 into the High-Energy Plan. 6
THE HIGH-ENERGY PLAN
1. CHOOSE HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL
GREAT FOOD CHOICES MEAN GREAT ENERGY
When you look at a menu in a restaurant, or go food shopping, why do you choose the things you do? Well, if you’re like most humans, the chances are you choose food for a whole variety of weird and complicated reasons.
Most often, you probably just choose the things you’ve had before because you know you’ll enjoy them (we humans are creatures of habit, after all), or perhaps you choose foods that satisfy particular cravings, or that your friends recommend, or that remind you of home cooking, or that you think will help you lose weight, or that have persuasive claims on the packaging (more of which later!), or the thing that’s most convenient, or the last thing left in the fridge, or pizza because ‘when in Rome’.
We are not saying that any of these reasons are wrong, but when you’re choosing food, we want you to look at the choice through a new lens of ‘what is going to give me the energy to feel great?’ We’ll 7spend the next couple of chapters looking at the specifics of this, but hopefully it goes without saying that we are what we choose to eat.
Our brains and bodies perform relative to how well we feed and support them. We need certain vitamins, minerals and macronutrients to maintain their functions, and good nutrition, hydration and rest are all vital to keep us alert and our energy strong.
Whenever you have a choice, choose food that will positively power your body and mind. You may not always have access to the perfect ingredients, but if you ask yourself the question ‘How good do I want to feel?’ just before you make that choice it prompts a mindset shift. You have that control. There is always an upgrade that can be made, however small it may be. The surprising secret about healthy eating is that it actually comes down to the daily small choices, it’s the consistent and tiny upgrades that change the game.
It doesn’t take long to feel the effects either. For some it’s immediate, for others it may take a little longer, but usually within two weeks of consistently choosing energy-supportive foods, people report better mood, more consistent energy, and confidence. For this to happen, we must be switched on, interested and aware of what we put into our bodies. So, if you’re a foodie, we see choosing how you want to feel 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 that makes you feel great!
Since most of us are busy, we regularly cut corners in all of this. It means our brains are tired, starved of certain nutrients, and working below our optimum. 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 and perhaps have normalised: general tiredness; feeling like you can’t concentrate for long periods, especially in the afternoons; getting 8grumpy 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. Stay mindful, empower yourself to choose how you want to feel and avoid it altogether.
GREAT ENERGY FUELS YOUR BRAIN
When it comes to improving energy and 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 us – right between our ears. Feeding our brains helps us think. And in case you’ve missed all the 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.
HIGH ENERGY IS LIFE FUEL
Supporting optimal brain function with your food choices 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 when you choose how you want to feel. 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. How good do you want to feel? It’s up to you and your daily choices. 9
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 of the nutrients you need to think properly, and surviving on coffee alone, doesn’t make you cool, it just makes you a caffeine-fuelled 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 day, 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.
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 10useful 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 (or the space you’re in for the rest of the day) 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 in a different surrounding 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 the 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. 11
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.
12And 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 floret singing in an advertisement.
FOOD MADE FROM PLANTS, NOT FOOD MADE IN PLANTS
Another simple tenet 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, and 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 energy 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 13a wedding or a 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 oils 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 variety – 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 14enough 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.
