When we first started out in our business, diet became a necessary evil. It was during moments of busyness when we recognized the weakness of being human. No AI would ever exhaust their fuel, needing to pause to provide the right nutrients.
But when we pause, we don’t choose the most nutritious foods, do we? We choose what’s easy, fast, and going to satisfy our hunger pains. For us, that meant eating more fats and proteins, which felt heavy and made us sluggish. For some on our team, they were a little better than the rest and at least chose grapes with their cheese, crackers, and deli meat snacks. Typically, it became burgers and fries, or the fattest burritos.
Breakfast was usually donuts, bagels, and at least two cups of coffee. If we wanted to be healthier, we’d blend up a smoothie or throw in a banana here or there. Eventually this let up and we chose to take longer breaks and be okay with it. Because taking a time out and feeding yourself well is essential to productivity. That’s easier said than done, though. In the beginning, nothing is more important than getting our business off the ground.
What Types of Businesses Are the Busiest?
We’d have to say, arguably, that business-to-business (b2b) types of companies are busier than someone working for themselves and marketing to a broader audience online. For instance, someone who provides b2b seo services like this agency, are working with multiple clients. All these clients are their bosses, and they have much to keep up with for them. It’s not that they’re working on one business – their own – then selling their services and products… in fact, their services and products are for their clients, but they also have to market for themselves to get more clients.
Okay, most businesses are like this but think about it. If your business operates to help other businesses, that’s a lot of demand and needs to fulfill. It’s quite busy.
The Gamer Diet
There’s a stereotype that gamers eat nothing but Doritos and have crumbs all over their keyboards or controllers. Not everyone is like that, granted, but it’s still something we think of when someone brings up the diet of video gamers. South Park even did an episode on it. Start-up businesses are quite similar in how they eat. Again, we’re choosing fast foods that enter our mouths with the least amount of effort and never interfere with our time with the game, er, work.
Like we listed above, some of us chose food with a little effort, but others chose Lunchables, bags of cookies, jerky, and frozen TV dinners. Eventually this will catch up to you. You’re going to feel tired, irritable, and your brain won’t be as alert as you need it to be.
How to Eat When Starting Out Your Business
Snacks that include a bit of all macros and even micronutrients can greatly help. People tend to forget the glucose we need to think straight and maintain our energy. The best bet is to prolong your hunger when your metabolism is most active. For many, that’s in the morning. So, start with a mini breakfast to ease your way into your workday, like carbohydrates. Think, bananas, cereal, oatmeal, apples, or anything else that provides energy. Then try to eat something more substantial, like eggs and potatoes sometime after. This will keep your hunger at bay.
By lunchtime, have something that targets all macros (carbs, proteins, and fats). Include something with micronutrients, like a salad. Having a balance like this will also keep your hunger from returning within the hour, every hour – like it does with just snacking all day.
Trust us, fueling yourself right throughout the day keeps you productive in the long run. This way, you can get more done, and in less time, because you have the energy and mental capacity to do so.
This isn’t just hippie advice. We’re serious when we say that it is common to eat poorly and quickly when starting a business. Don’t. Practice taking the time now to feed yourself well. Burnout is a real thing, and it happened to someone on our team. It’s not worth it to not eat well. If you still want potato chips, fine, but be sure you had yogurt and some kind of plant prior. And at least provide yourself with proteins and healthy fats that don’t weigh you down. Balance is key, but energy management is the only way to build a solid business from the ground up.
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