“Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese. Most of the world’s population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight. 38 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2019. Obesity is preventable”. These key facts shared by the World Health Organisation combined with the evidence that more than half of the population of Brazil is overweight convinced me a healthy diet is still a relevant theme we should be talking about. You might be asking: but what does it have to do with growing professionally? I would say everything and I will show you why.
On my previous articles to Thrive Global, I have been sharing what steps I took in the last ten years which have most impacted my performance on my mission to succeed not only at work, but in all areas of life. One of the most relevant changes I made was establishing a new relationship to the way I fed myself.
Persevering in an arduous role in order to climb the hustle ladder
8 years ago, when I decided to abandon my Communications and Marketing career to pursue a whole new adventure in Business and Consulting for a franchise company (the one I work for presently), I started at the bottom. In the junior franchising consultant position that was offered to me at first, I would travel across three states of Brazil, excluding the one I lived in, so I was constantly far away on the road.
Specially because of the amount of commuting and tiredness it took, no consultant before me remained responsible for that geographic region for more than a year. That can give you an idea of how tiresome it was and the amount of will a professional should have to persist on that job. However, I endured for 6 years and “surprisingly” saw myself progressing from junior to then middle and after senior franchising consultant in the following three years. Next, I was promoted Franchise Coordinator adding two more states of the country in my business portfolio for two more years. In 2018, I was invited to move to Sao Paulo and travel longer distances being the manager of the Global Department.
None of that would have been possible if I had not understood the importance of my well-being and worked towards that in order to sustain my energy and keep advancing in the results I would bring to the firm overtime.
Understanding and investigating the importance of nourishment to my evolution at work
At the beginning, read 2012, taking those weekly trips left me restless. I would leave home on Mondays, come back on Saturdays and feel poorly the whole weekend. This was true for the first one year of my experience. Comprehending I could no longer function on my best production feeling continually sick, although knowing how important it was for me to beat this hardship as part of what would highlight my efficacy, I decided to examine why my immune system was always weak. I would catch any cold or virus that would come close to me in an airport, bus, connection train or room with someone who had the smallest cough. That was not normal.
I started-off using an app to track my food and water intake to figure out what was going on with my nutriment daily conduct. I could note thereupon I would devour huge amounts of calories with very imbalanced quantities of macro and micronutrients. I would drink less than a litre of water and eat too much only two or three times during the day. I found out those were my three biggest faults and I then started targeting these switches alone for a number of years.
Three micro steps which gave me the strength to keep levelling up
- Eating every three hours: I set alarms to remind me to eat more often, starting at breakfast. I still have them on today.
- Choosing the healthiest options on the menu: Following a strict diet was not possible for me at that time. Who travels on business knows regularly you will have to just sit anywhere and grab any food that comes your way. So my simple decision was to be careful with quantities and the quality of foods I chose every single time I set at a restaurant or at the hotel breakfast table. Another thing was to buy healthy snacks I would always carry inside my bags (all of them, so I would not forget).
- Drinking more water: I bought a one litre bottle and had it full of water together with me all day long. During the visits to the points of sales, training sessions or inside the transports, I could sip at all times.
Do your own check up
Any king of adjustment will come only when one feels they need it. We do not evolve if we do not see this will benefit us somehow. So the task here is to stop and reflect on your own energy levels, how frequent do you suffer from being bloated, intoxicated or sick, how joyfully do you encounter your days. If you sense there is something wrong, there probably is. Look through your own habits and…
Take action right away.
Send me a direct message if you feel I can be of help, I will respond. #Let’sGrow