If you’re anorexic or bulimic, please disregard this and seek professional help immediately! If not, read on…
Benjamin Franklin noticed how a lot of his friends would gorge at lunchtime and then have to take a two to three hour nap soon after because they could barely stay awake. That’s not being very productive. He had the same problem. He wondered about this. He decided to experiment.
Ben decided to try eating a light lunch to see how he felt. He noticed that when he ate a light lunch he had much more energy, didn’t have to struggle to stay awake, and was much more productive.
We now know that the digestion of food is the number two energy drainer in your life, second only to sex. So depending on your sex life, the digestion of food may be the number one energy drainer in your life!
When you over eat, your body has to redirect resources away from your brain to your digestive system in order to process all of the food. This strains your body’s resources. The result is that your body wants to shut down (put you to sleep or slow you down) so it can do its job of digestion. This lowers the oxygen levels in your brain, which decreases mental clarity, increases chances of committing errors in your work, and increases your stress levels.
If you combine this with a stressful job, poor food choices, and/or lack of exercise you are compounding the problem and contributing to dis-ease in your body.
How can this possibly lead to more productivity? It can’t. It can only lower productivity.
You should definitely stay away from all-you-can-eat buffets. The temptation is too great to want to get your money’s worth, so you almost always over eat. Stop eating before you feel full because the sensation of feeling full increases over time.
Become conscious of how you feel after you eat too much or just enough. Log that in your memory so you can make better choices about how much food to eat at any given time. If your goal/intention is to be fit, healthy and consistently have high levels of energy, eat for that.
Another benefit is living longer. A study was done with rats where they fed one group all the food they wanted. They fed another group exactly half that amount. The group that ate half the amount lived twice as long. Now that’s what I call increasing productivity!
Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!