Healthy Eating Tips for Busy Entrepreneurs: How to Stay Energized and Focused
Maintaining a healthy diet can feel impossible when you're a busy business owner juggling endless responsibilities. Between back-to-back meetings, deadlines, and managing a team, it's easy to grab whatever's quick—often at the expense of your health.
But fueling your body with nutritious food isn't just about staying healthy; it's the key to sustaining energy, improving focus, and boosting your productivity. Pierrette Hong Chi, a dietitian specializing in holistic nutrition and chronic disease management, shares practical tips for busy professionals to simplify healthy eating, build sustainable habits, and stay energized throughout the workday. With her expert advice, you'll learn how to make nutrition work for your lifestyle, no matter how packed your schedule is.
Choose a Healthy Breakfast, and Repeat It
Simplifying meals can make healthy eating more manageable without sacrificing nutrition. Pierrette emphasizes the power of repetition for efficiency, especially on hectic workdays.
She suggests sticking to the same breakfast Monday through Friday, like eggs, toast, and an orange, then switching it up the following week. This approach reduces decision-making during busy mornings while keeping meals consistent and nutritious.
The same strategy applies to lunch. Pierrette recommends batch-prepping meals in advance, such as making a large quinoa salad for the week. This way, lunches are ready to go, saving time and effort during the workday.
By simplifying breakfast and lunch, you can reduce decision fatigue and make healthy options the easy choice, even when your day gets hectic.
Save Variety for Dinners
While simplicity works well for breakfast and lunch, Pierrette emphasizes the importance of variety for dinners to keep meals enjoyable and nutritionally balanced. She explains that while rigid repetitive eating for every meal sometimes works for a short time, people often encounter "taste fatigue" that makes the practice unsustainable for the long term.
By using dinner as an opportunity to experiment with new recipes or flavors, you can keep meals exciting, while still saving time on breakfast and lunch plans. Variety is not only good for your palate but also essential for getting a broader range of nutrients.
Make Planning Non-Negotiable
Effective meal planning is the cornerstone of making healthy dinners happen, even on the busiest days. Pierrette emphasizes the importance of carving out time to plan and prepare: "Without a plan, you get into trouble."
Start by dedicating a consistent time each week—weekends often work well—to plan your meals and create a grocery list. Before shopping, you should also do a quick inventory of your fridge and pantry to avoid overbuying or wasting food.
Grocery Shop Once a Week, at the Same Store
Pierrette recommends streamlining your grocery shopping routine by limiting trips to the store to just once a week.
"Shopping just once a week at the same store will save you time," she explains. By shopping consistently at the same store, you'll become familiar with the layout, making the process faster and more efficient. You can also use grocery delivery or pickup to save even more time.
Planning ahead and sticking to a weekly schedule helps reduce the temptation of midweek trips, which can be time-consuming and lead to impulse purchases. This simple habit not only saves time but also keeps you organized and ensures you have everything you need for balanced, home-cooked meals.
Prep Ingredients Ahead of Time
Once you've shopped, set aside time for prep work. "When you come home, give yourself some time to clean out your fridge and prep anything you can ahead of time," she suggests. This might include washing and chopping vegetables, portioning proteins, or even cooking certain components of meals in advance.
Small steps, like peeling carrots or pre-washing produce, make a big difference during hectic evenings.
By planning ahead and doing a bit of prep work upfront, you'll eliminate the stress of last-minute decisions and ensure that healthy, delicious dinners are always within reach.
Ditch the "High Performer" Mindset
For high-performing, successful individuals, the mindset around healthy eating can often be the biggest hurdle. Pierrette explains that many of her clients are used to setting ambitious goals and achieving them quickly, but this approach doesn't always work when it comes to lifestyle or dietary changes.
"Many of my clients who are very successful, like those who run their own businesses, think, 'Oh, I should be able to just do this,'" she shares. However, this mindset can lead to frustration when results don't come as quickly as expected.
Instead, Pierrette encourages focusing on small, actionable changes rather than aggressive, outcome-based goals. For example, rather than aiming to "lose 20 pounds," set a goal like including one vegetable in most meals or turning your phone off at 8pm on weekdays to improve your sleep.
She also emphasizes the importance of acknowledging how hard it can be to make even small changes. High achievers often underestimate the psychological components of food, such as emotional eating or unrealistic expectations. The first few weeks of working with a dietitian, Pierrette says, are often about redefining goals and building a foundation for sustainable habits.
While ambitious goals and strict discipline may serve you in other areas of your life, it's not necessarily the right strategy for building a healthy lifestyle that is sustainable for the long term. "It's better to make it super easy because what you're trying to do is fit this into your busy, busy schedule and life," she explains.
Shifting your mindset to embrace gradual, manageable changes can create long-term habits that support your health without adding unnecessary pressure to your already demanding life.
The Bottom Line: Small Habits, Big Impact
Healthy eating doesn't have to be complicated, even for the busiest business owners. By simplifying your meals, planning ahead, and shifting your mindset to embrace small, sustainable changes, you can fuel your body and mind for peak performance.
Pierrette's practical strategies—like sticking to a consistent grocery shopping routine, prepping ingredients in advance, and finding variety at dinner—make it easier to integrate nutrition into a packed schedule. Remember, the key is to focus on progress, not perfection, and to create habits that support both your health and your demanding lifestyle.
Pierrette Hong Chi is a registered dietitian and health coach based in Edmonton, AB. She helps clients gain a better understanding of nutrition and how food can impact their physical, mental and emotional health.