How to Eat Well as a Founder?
How can you go through a day without crashing or feeling foggy and unfocused?
The traditional wisdom says: sleep well, move, and eat well.
We know how getting enough regular exercise and the recovery process of sleeping well help us feel better and more energized. But what does eating well mean exactly?
Does it mean what to eat like most diets promote? Or..
Does it mean when to eat like the new trends of intermittent fasting suggests? Or..
Does it mean how to eat?
“What we eat” is definitely important since it is literally the source of energy for our bodies. And “when we eat” could reset our metabolic processes via fasting. Also being targeted about using more sugar before an intense physical activity could provide the energy explosion necessary to go through that. “How we eat” though is less explored. A lot of us might think “eat mindfully” or variations of that idea, but is that all?
According to Jessie Inchauspé, author of “Glucose Revolution”, “how we eat” has a significant impact on how we feel (mental health, energy level, etc), and the ideal pattern we should strive for is eating in a way that reduces “glucose spikes”.
Glucose spikes introduce rapid increase in our energy level followed by a crash and having those too frequently is the recipe for volatile energy levels, fatigue, and consequently poor mental health. So, her prescription is, “flatten your glucose” to have a steady energy level and all the subsequent benefits of that. The core is to have a flat baseline plus controlled modulations that match the energy requirements for the tasks at hand.
She introduces “10 sugar hacks”, but I think I can summarize some of them as this rule of thumb:
Eat food in the order of its glycemic load*!
Example: In a meal, start from veggies, then protein, then fat, then sweet stuff. Apparently the same ingredients eaten in this particular order could result in a 70% lower spike!
Here is how I understand it: if a bunch of us have to walk somewhere together and the slowest person is our guide, it doesn’t matter how fast the rest of us are, we are going to get there slowly! So, since taking sugar out of veggies is more work for the body, when it is busy doing that, introducing more easily absorbed sugar is less impactful because the former literally gets in the way of the latter.
So, other than the example about, what other ways would this apply?
Start your meal with greens and veggies
If you want to snack go for savory (eg. almonds) or at least add a piece of protein (eg. cold cut) or fat (eg. avocado) to your bagel.
If you really want that chocolate cake, save it for dessert (as opposed to a snack eaten on an empty stomach).
One more tip is to move after having sugar (or any meal). 15-30 minutes of easy to moderate movement (walking, yoga, tai chi, squats, calf raises, etc) can blunt glucose peaks for the following 3 hours.
* Glycemic Load: a measure that accounts for how much carbohydrate is in the food and how much each gram of carbohydrate in the food raises blood glucose levels
