Quick, Nutrient-Dense Meal Ideas Every Busy Professional Needs

In this episode, Healthspan Coach Aaron Shaw dives into the science of brain fuel—why the brain, despite being just 2% of our body weight, demands a whopping 20% of our daily energy. Aaron shares firsthand experiences from his rehab clinic and relatable stories from other high-stakes professions, like pilots and veterinarians, who struggle to keep up with quality nutrition during a hectic workday. Learn why skipping meals or grabbing sugary snacks can lead to poor decisions, mistakes, and even long-term metabolic issues.

Discover practical, nutritious snacks and mini-meals that deliver steady energy and cognitive clarity when time is scarce. Aaron explains why eating protein-rich, balanced snacks throughout the day can prevent the 10-15% drop in cognitive performance linked to low blood sugar and helps reduce the chances of reaching for high-sugar treats when you’re “hangry.”

This episode covers:

•Brain Fuel Basics: Why balanced nutrition matters for energy, mood, and decision-making.

•Go-To Snacks: Specific ideas like Greek yogurt with berries, hummus with veggies, and roasted chickpeas for a quick, nutrient-dense boost.

•Meal Prep Tips for the Busy Professional: How to batch-prep grab-and-go meals like overnight oats, quinoa bowls, and homemade smoothies.

•The Business Case for Nutrition: Why both employees and business owners benefit from prioritizing healthy food at work to improve performance, reduce errors, and enhance well-being.

Whether you’re a busy professional, manager, or business owner, this episode will give you actionable strategies to eat well on the go, prevent cognitive dips, and support your healthspan. Don’t let the demands of the day sacrifice your nutrition or productivity—tune in to learn how to fuel your brain and body for peak performance.

Keywords: brain fuel, cognitive performance, healthy snacks, meal prep for busy professionals, on-the-go nutrition, workplace wellness, energy-boosting snacks, healthspan, Aaron Shaw, avoiding mistakes at work

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Transcript

We're starting with a quiz. What organ makes up around 2 % of total body weight but uses 20 % of the body's energy intake? Well, the answer is our brain. Our brain, is small compared to the size of the rest of our body, but it consumes 20 % of the body's energy, which is fascinating. But of course, our brain is decision-making, it's coordination, it's how we function.

And unless we consistently fuel our brain, we're going to have problems. There's going to be real consequences to that. I'll you an example. So I am working in a rehab clinic. It's about quarter past 11, 1130 in the morning. I ate around five hours or so ago. I am hungry. It's been a busy morning. I'm behind on documenting from my morning patients. And right when I'm dreaming of lunch,

A new patient comes in with a physician and the physician says, hey, I need you to see this patient right now. I need you to make this brace. Can you do this thing? Can you do that? And so of course, by the culture of human healthcare and the human physical and occupational therapy world, the answer is always, of course I can do that right now. But by saying, yes, I can do that, that means that I'm not going to have a proper lunch and I'm really not going to have anything more than a quick snack. Somehow.

squeezed in over the next five to six hours. So my brain is starving for sugar, for fuel, for glucose. My stomach is grumbling and this is the culture. This is the industry. And so how can I get through this? And I'm sure that you can relate to that if you work in any sort of business, any sort of space that is often busy, it's unpredictable, it can be unstructured at times. And there's some curve balls that kind of get thrown at us and

We are left in a sense, kind of sacrificing our own needs to fulfill the job requirement and to fulfill the demands, to bring home a paycheck. So the question is, how do we get nutrition when time is scarce, when we're busy, where, know, the busy professional hustling around and we need to fuel our brain, we need to fuel our body to continue functioning throughout the day and

How do we, but how do do that? And we've all been stuck in probably a similar scenario to the one I just described where we have little to no time to prepare or sit down and have proper meals during the day. And of course medicine is near and dear to my heart. Cause that's what I've been doing for many decades now. So this is human medicine. is veterinary medicine, which really is kind of under the same model of caring for everybody else before we care for ourselves. Think about other, you know, high.

high-stake positions. Think about an airline pilot. So the last thing you want to do is buckle into your seatbelt and have the pilot come on board or come over to the speaker and say, hey, enjoy your flight. by the way, I am just starving. I forgot my lunch today. didn't have much time to eat in between flights. so I'll do the best I can, but man, I'm a little bit fuzzy headed. You're like, whoa, hang on a second. Somebody give the pilot, somebody give the surgeon, somebody give the therapist.

something to eat, give them some nutrition, please for the safety of all of us around, because we know that without eating enough, we all get hangry, and that's that combination of hungry and angry. And when that happens, our mood changes, our decisions are impaired, yet we're still too busy to eat. So you're not okay with that. I'm not okay with that. And what we're going to talk about today is just this. We're going to talk about how to fit in.

really meals on the go, snacks on the go. And if there's a goal for this today's episode, in a sense, want to say, I want to teach you how to eat while walking. I would love to say, hard stop every day, have a mid-morning break and have a sit down at the lunch table during the middle of your workday and tuck your napkin into your shirt collar and have your fork and knife and have this beautiful meals spread out in front of you. But that doesn't happen. Or at least I've never.

I don't know anybody that's able to do that. you are, then awesome, more power to you. The rest of us are eating on the go at best, probably multitasking, trying to eat while for me, it's like trying to do some documentation, trying to catch up on emails. All the while, my body is craving nutrition to live, to function. So today we will talk about, yes, eating on the go. I'm going to go over some specific meals, specific snacks, specifically

the kind of like the ideal quick and easy things that you can take with you on your busy day and eat on the run. Maybe eat while walking, maybe eat while standing. We've all done it. And we're also going to talk about some strategies. Like how can you not just have that snack, but how do you get it from your snack bag or from your lunch bag into your mouth? How do you actually get that in a real practical sense into your body to make sure that these

dense, kind of go to snacks, go to meals, get to your body so it will support your energy, your cognitive function and your wellbeing throughout the whole work day. And literally, I'll even add this, that when your brain is functioning better, when your brain is well fed, you will make fewer errors. So you can almost say by learning how to snack, eating mini meals on the go in your busy work setting, there's a correlation. Like you could

arguably make more money. You will have fewer mistakes. You will have better performance. You will feel better. You'll have actually a lower risk for diabetes, a lower risk for heart disease, probably a lower risk for early death just by learning how to eat healthy, nutritious snacks slash mini meals on the go because that's the reality of the work environment that many of us work in.

My name is Aaron Shaw. am a healthspan coach for nearly three decades. I've been focusing on rehabilitation, injury prevention, exercise performance. I'm an occupational therapist and a hand therapist by training. also a certified strength and conditioning specialist. And my passion is pursuing healthspan. Healthspan is the length of time within our lifespan that we are healthy, active, vibrant, have a good attitude, have a brain that's well fed.

making good decisions and really are ideally free of any sort of diseases that we can prevent. know, genetics sort of like, we all have a genetic lottery that we have to play in. Some people hit it some people don't, but there are so many problems. In fact, the vast majority of health problems, at least in the U S are preventable. The vast majority are preventable. And so it is my passion, my drive to help educate myself and anybody who's willing to listen.

on ways that we can, in a real practical sense, become healthier, extend our healthspan, be healthier for longer, and really engage in life. So my clients, all of my clients are very busy, are eating on the go, miss meals, have a hard time fitting things in. And so I spend a lot of time strategizing very practical ways to be as healthy as possible. For example,

We need to figure out a way to prevent a 10 to 15 % drop in cognitive performance when you have low blood sugar, when you have hunger. So, and this is science. So there's a 10 to 15 % drop in cognitive performance when you have low blood sugar. And we also know when we have low blood sugar that our bodies crave, you know, will crave sugar. So literally, if you walk by the lunchroom table or the desk at the office or something,

that cupcake, when you have low blood sugar, is gonna look so amazingly good. Now, you are, I cupcakes always look good, first of all, but your ability to resist grabbing that cupcake and shoving it in your mouth and getting that big dose of sugar into your body, your tolerance, your ability to resist that is gonna be pretty low if you have low blood sugar, because your body just...

telling you, you have to eat this. The brain needs this to function. Alternatively, if we are well fed, have great balance of macronutrients, and we're feeling really good, you can glance at it and not think twice about it it's not a big deal. And especially because objectively, we know that having these spikes, these peaks and valleys of blood sugar is a recipe for diabetes. And so that is not part of our career plan.

So what we do need to know and what we need to figure out are other ways, other things we can do besides grabbing that cupcake in the break room.

So here's why a thoughtful nutrition plan will extend your healthspan, extend your career span. First of all, we know that quality balanced meals that have a nice balance of macronutrients will support your energy. So you'll feel pretty level and energetic throughout the day. It'll improve our concentration. It will actually improve our immune system and improve our long-term health, or at least maintain our long-term health.

And there are small things we can do to support these habits. And these habits all support the pillars of healthspan, is, I have five pillars of healthspan that I always talk about, which include exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional wellbeing, and preventative care. These five pillars are supported through health, through healthy eating, through nutrition. So here are some non-negotiables for

our snacks or for our meals. the nutrients within our snacks have to contain protein. So protein helps, keeps us full. It helps with muscle function and it can actually help level out energy levels as opposed to, you know, carbohydrates and sugars, which tends to be kind of these spikes and valleys, peaks and valleys. So protein is great for, again, feeling kind of satiated.

There is a caveat to this that I want to point out that protein, I think, again, in American culture, protein is, you know, more protein is better and everybody wants more protein. And we got to remember that protein can be really useful if, you know, and to be clear, like if there's a choice between like a protein shake or a soda, by all means have a protein shake. But protein is really designed, it does its best work in repairing the wear and tear of tissues. It's really great for people who

exercise or perform physically demanding tasks that cause wear and tear in the muscles and the tissue and the protein is great at fortifying and building that back up. If you think that simply by consuming protein, you are going to be stronger, you're wrong. You're mistaken. If you think that consuming protein is going to make you be healthier in and of itself, you're mistaken.

It's still a better choice than some other things on the go, but protein, the best thing you can do with protein is give it something to do. And that would be to repair muscles that you have worked that the protein will help make stronger, make you more durable, more injury-proof. But overall, make sure that you have snacks and meals that have really protein-forward makeup of them. Healthy fats.

you know, healthy fats, good for brain health, good for sustaining energy. We want to make sure we have fiber. So fiber really aids in digestion and fiber is really good at preventing blood sugar spikes as well. So you can look on the back of, you know, any sort of pre-packaged food. They should have fiber listed and make sure that there is fiber in it.

And of course we have vitamins and minerals. We want to make sure that there are, you know, whatever we're putting in our mouth does have some vitamins and minerals, which will support our immune function and our cognitive performance.

But let's get into some practical tips here. So we're talking about consuming food on the go. So in my world, in an office sort of setting, when things are kind of hustle bustle, I want to make sure that I can take a bite of something and then walk away. I can eat while walking. I can eat while standing up. And is this ideal? No, of course not. But I'm going to throw ideal out the window. If nothing else, I want to make sure this podcast and the messaging that I'm giving people is real. And so again, if you have the time to sit down and have a proper meal and

you know, take an hour to do it and to digest, please do. The rest of us were eating on the run. So this has to be really practical. So I want us to think about snacks as mini meals. So anything that you consume, even if it's just a bite or two, think of it as a component of an entire meal, which means the following are not considered mini meals. Cupcakes. You would not have a meal of cupcakes. You would not have a meal

of candy. You would not have a meal of a candy bar and a soda. That's not a meal. so therefore, we don't want our snacks to be this foreign concept. Our snacks should be really healthy pairings of nutrition that really look like it's just a tiny portion of an otherwise well-balanced meal. So we do want to have protein and fiber in there to stabilize energy. We want to make sure that it's not super packed with sugar.

and garbage that may and really will give us a very small window of feeling satisfied, but we're going to with interest shortly when those sugar spike crashes and we're fighting off being overweight with diabetes. I that's just not worth it. So think of our snacks as mini meals.

And here are a couple of examples. One thing when I think of a breakfast meal, I could think of yogurt, yogurt with nuts, yogurt with berries. Yes, having a little container with Greek yogurt, and I don't mean the yogurt that has already like super packed with sugar and it's like, you know, doesn't have anything other than the essence of straight up plain Greek yogurt. And I think people kind of cringe sometimes because it's not super sweet.

but that's okay. You can sweeten it by adding berries and I don't mean berries with sugar. Cause if you get a yogurt that is already pre mixed with fruit in it, 99 % of the time they take that beautiful protein rich Greek yogurt, they mix in some berries and they put a ton of sugar in it to hyper sweeten it. So you're taking like this good concept of a very well balanced

mini meal that will give you energy for a long time and giving you like such an artificial sugar spike that you're just going to crash in an hour from now. So it's not worth it. So this is plain Greek yogurt, throw on some nuts. You'll have fiber, you'll have protein, throw on some berries, you'll get some complex carbs. It is great. you're going to, you know, I put mine in a little plastic container so I can take a scoop or two when it's at my desk, go back to work, do that quickly. So that's, that's a great quick mini meal.

This next one I to mention is sort of cliche, but there's some truth to it. So hummus with veggie sticks. So there's plenty of places, know, most places you can get little containers of pre-made hummus and grab some veggie sticks. again, they're, healthy, it's nutritious, it's a vegetable. get the chickpeas that make up the hummus. And so they're in essence, like they are components of what otherwise could be a proper meal. Great balance. Hard boiled eggs.

Having that with, you some people like those little like cherry tomatoes, something you can kind of, again, you can just grab quick, grab a bite, grab a bite, and you're good to go. And it's well balanced. So let's think about some, portable and nutritious snack options. So these would be things that are nutrient dense and easy to carry around. So some of these things you may be able to even like put in your pocket as you're running around.

And the go-to, which I think is easy for us, especially, you you can't go into any store now without seeing sort of like nutrition bars. So protein bars with minimal sugar. even if you're like, you know, I go to just a typical grocery store here in town and it's amazing. The, the endless array of, you know, health air quote here, like health bars or protein bars, whatever you want to talk about. Take 10 minutes when you're at the store next time.

look at all the ingredients in the back. Take five, six, seven, eight different of these bars, flip it on the back and look and see which ones have the least sugar content, the lowest amount of sugar in each one of those. And take two or three of those and explore eating those, how's your palate, work with those. Ideally, it would be as high of protein as you can get with the least amount of sugar that you can get.

Like trying to find out what that sweet spot is and take anything else that's like, you know, extra sugar added or added sugars and just put it back on the shelf. You don't need that garbage, but protein bars when, kind of a necessary evil. have one, you know, most days in most pretty much every day I'm also exercising. So I feel like there's a need for a little bit of extra fuel. So I'm happy. I'm fine to do that. But if you are not exercising regularly, yes, you want some protein.

Ideally, we would be staying away from these over-processed foods, but it's a good option. Again, especially if you can just throw it in your pocket, grab a bite or two, definitely eat a protein bar over eating a cupcake. I hate to be bashing cupcakes, so just had one yesterday. Nonetheless, you can think about they have some prepackaged nut butters that come in little containers. You can almost zip those open just like...

One particular brand escapes me right now, but there's a brand that is literally just a little packet of almond butter or peanut butter. And, you know, it's nut butter. Should you live off of that? No, but it's a good source of protein. And especially if you mix that with a couple of crackers or something like that, could get you, you know, another couple hours of performance at work with your brain still working, which is great. Roasted chickpeas or edamame, great for a crunchy, high protein snack.

And that could be good alternative to nuts if you're trying to stay away from nuts, because there's certainly some higher fat content in nuts. yeah, roasted chickpeas and edamame is a good option. And if you're really thinking about some low fat options, you can think about air popped popcorn. You can pre slice some apples. So pre slice little apple wedges and mix that with some peanut butter, almond butter.

all of these things are quick, easy, generally speaking, well balanced. Again, for the broad stroke of things, as far as a macronutrients, ideally we'd be looking at about 50 % of macros are carbohydrates, 25 % are proteins and 25 % are fats. But everybody's different and those are, you know, I kind of come up with those because they're kind of easy to remember in a sense, but you know, carbohydrates you could have more or less depending on what your

Physical performance demands are and the same thing with proteins and fats.

If you are going to nudge that 50, 25, 25 in any direction at all, I would try to lean into more protein and lower fat. But again, generally speaking, if you've got 50 % from carbs, 25 each from proteins and fats throughout the course of a day, you're probably on point and that's great.

So those are great options. So I just listed off a whole bunch of options that are not super complicated, are healthy, well-balanced and good to eat on the run, on the go without needing to, I mean, again, if you can sit down, please sit down and eat, but if you can't, c'est la vie, eat it, take a bite, go back out to the clinic, go back into the workspace, eat in between meetings as you will, but those are healthy options. how do we do this? How do we prepare ourselves to even have these at our disposal?

This really comes down to meal prepping for the week. So this is the how. And I want us to think about setting aside an hour or two on the weekend, on your days off, to prepare these grab and go items. So this takes a few minutes to prep, but it's an investment in your future, as we should all be doing, investing in our future, financially and health-wise. One that I love to make, or I shouldn't say I love to make, I love to eat.

therefore I've resigned myself to making, are overnight oats. So overnight oats, and actually I've made a video this on my YouTube channel. Overnight oats, the benefit of overnight oats is one, you can kind of mix anything you want with it. So oats are carbohydrates, they're super high in fiber, which is awesome. And when you were using overnight oats, which means they're typically like the whole oats as opposed to the, you know, processed down, you know, if you could microwave it in a minute, it's not overnight. It's not there.

They're almost like pre-digested for you. So these are full oats and I mix them with almond milk or oat milk, whatever you want to do. Let them soak overnight. And then you can actually put, I put flax seed on it and chia seeds. And really even at work, sometimes I'll throw a dollop of Greek yogurt on top of it, but you can take this, it on a Sunday or prep it on whatever your day off is.

and make two or three little containers of it. Let them soak, get up in the morning, grab and go. You can eat it intermittently throughout the day. It's quick. It's easy. It actually only takes just, you know, I've got it down to a science now. So within five minutes, I can make four or five containers of it for both my wife and I and it lasts for a couple of days. And it is slow burning, complex carbohydrates mixed in with some protein. You can flavor it as, whatever floats your boat. But it's quick, easy, and it's best done.

when you have, you know, an hour or two as part of like this bigger task of organizing your meals for the week. Another option would be egg muffin cups. You can make quinoa or rice bowls. And if you are going to make a smoothie or if you are interested in, these protein shakes, if you will, which again, I know I just sort of bash protein shakes a little bit a minute ago, but I think if you, as opposed to grabbing something off the shelf at the store, if you have

the time, if you can make the time, if you can invest the time in yourself to prepare meals for the week, you can create, you can make your own protein smoothie and put it in a container. can make one or two on, again, on your day off, make one or two and have it last you for the next couple of days. Then you can be super precise about what you put in there. You can work with some practice. can really fine tune both for your palate, but also for the nutritional value.

When you're doing it over and over again, you can really kind of fine tune and assess, you know, how did I feel with that? How did my stomach tolerate that? How was my energy throughout the day? When did I eat it? You know, when can I consume it? Having a really good, protein shake. for me, that's, you know, I got a couple of frozen berries in it, frozen blueberries, frozen banana ice. use protein, a protein powder, which is specific brand is on my website, which you can check out, but specific protein powder. I also put in,

creatine, which is a nice supplement for me for exercising and I've ended a little dollop of almond butter and the ratio of all these things and it sounds like a lot, but a ratio of all these things works for me and it's taken me several iterations of it to really find this sweet spot of, this nutrient rich. This smoothie is nutrient rich. can last me throughout the day. can kind of have a few sips mid morning.

It is not going to give me a sugar spike. It's going to give me a good balance of macronutrients. It's great nutritional value. And there isn't any other mysterious garbage, which you'll find if you're in the store and you're getting a protein shake off the shelf. Turn around and look at the back of the container, see the nutritional value and see what is actually in it. And if you're on like the 10th line of reading all the ingredients, it's probably a bunch of unnecessary garbage in there. It's not great for you. So on your

meal prepping for the week, get a blender, zip up a smoothie, explore, explore with that. And I think that it can be a really, if there's anything on the grab and go that's easy, it's just taking a chug or two of a smoothie. So give that a go. For other tips for preparing for the week is thinking about like kind of your no cook staples.

So make sure any salads that you're to have or any greens are pre-washed. can have prep with some canned tuna or canned salmon. You can have rotisserie chicken and, some things that you can prepare, dice up, split up, make bite size. So when the week comes, you can think more about assembling versus cooking. So I think that cooking, even just, cooking to me immediately

you know, a conjure up like a comp and perhaps a complex multi-step ingredients and stuff all over the place and really a task versus assembling. And I know I'm probably playing a wordsmith here a little bit, but assembling is seems more accessible. you have a rotisserie chicken, for example, and you have your pre-washed greens and you have, overnight oats and

your Greek yogurt, whatever it is. You can literally take a handful of pieces of chicken, put it on your pre-washed green salad, pop it in a container, boom, you're done. That's a quick grab and go. You've got your overnight oats, you've got your pre-made smoothie, you're just grabbing these pieces and you're just assembling what you're to consume throughout the day as opposed to thinking, I have to cook because none of us like cooking. Well, I shouldn't say that. We all like eating, so sometimes it's a necessary evil.

I do want to take a second and just reiterate the risks of skipping nutrition during a busy day, the too busy to eat concept. And I would encourage you to please set boundaries like your health depended on it, like your career depended upon it. You have to fuel yourself consistently and fuel yourself well to have the highest level of cognitive function.

a very real positive benefit to taking the time to consume something that's nutritious and to make it as sustainable as possible, make it as quickly, you know, something that you can do over the long term. And sometimes that means you just can't continue to say, was too busy to eat. There are very real health consequences and very real mistakes that can be made in your work, not because you don't know or understand something, it's because your brain isn't functioning at peak performance. And that's how

errors get made and that's how mistakes happen. Then not only are hungry, compromising your health, either not eating enough at all or overeating later or you're eating garbage. On top of all that, you've made a mistake at work or you didn't perform to your best at work. So there's nothing good that comes from it. I say this knowing that at times, myself included, I have been hangry. I'm sure I've not

You know, function that peak performance because I was too hungry and I didn't, you know, prep my snacks right. Or there's been a curve ball that, but that should be absolutely an exception and not just, this is the way it is in my clinic. This is the way it is at my job. This is way it is. I'm not allowed to eat nonsense. We know that. That turning to sugary snacks or caffeine or whatever just absolutely screws up our metabolism, screws up our work performance.

screws up our health, it's not worth it. And then of course, if you deal with that during the day, you're to come home and even your sort of the fortitude to make tough decisions on what I should be eating is kind of out the window. so then, and I say this for both personal experience and a lot of the clients that I work with, that if you've been under fortified throughout the day, if you haven't been eating well,

quality food, enough calories, enough macro balance throughout the day, you're going to come home and the cravings are going to be so intense and your body is just saying like, please give me something. You're going to oftentimes default to poor choices and you kind of give up. We've all done it. We get home, it's like, screw it. Tomorrow is going to be a better day. But I just want to have that snack. I just want to have that ice cream. I just want to have that glass of wine. I just want to have that whatever.

just one or two more pieces of Halloween candy, whatever it may be. And we're sabotaging ourselves just because way back at the beginning of the day, you couldn't say, hey, I'm not going to be too busy to eat. am going to eat. And so the metabolic consequences, the rebounding and poor decisions later, eating high sugar, high fat foods, which may be satisfying in the moment, but we are just like destroying our metabolism.

All this is a precursor to type 2 diabetes, is rampant. It's an epidemic in the US at this point because literally because so many people default to poor choices, whether snacks, whether eating on the run where everybody's too busy to sit down and oftentimes make proper meals, much less sit down and eat a proper meal during a busy day. this is like a billion dollar industry from

eating poorly. So we need to change

Speaking of industry and billion dollar industry, I want to quick little note to people who are either managers or business owners and have an impact or have some decision making over people in the workplace that if you are not setting up a work environment where your employees or the people who work under you, if you're not setting up a work environment that enables them to eat lunch.

or eat midday and maybe even have a snack here or there, you are choosing for your business to perform poorly. You are consciously choosing to make less money. You're consciously choosing to have your employees make more errors, make more mistakes, have poor customer service interactions. All of the bad things that happen when we are hungry and not fed well and are eating garbage.

owners and managers have to please encourage your, not only encourage your staff, but set up an environment, a healthy environment where people can eat and it's, even like eating well, encourage your coworkers to eat well, maybe not always having junk food handy, but maybe have some healthy food available. Again, you know, there are mistakes that can be made and really some mistakes that can be avoided by.

mini meals, healthy snacks, and depending on the kind of work you do, there may be very real consequences to making mistakes. There may be very real consequences to not having mental energy. Again, think of an airline pilot, think of the physician. There are consequences to making mistakes. And if you are a business owner or in a position to influence your department or something, then nutrition for your staff is

a massively high return on investment. Leads to healthier employees, fewer sick days, happier staff, more resilient teams, and that is an environment that we all want to work in.

So both for the business owner, the manager, and you, if you're an employee in a place, your job is to stash snacks, healthy snacks, all the things that I mentioned previously, stash them at work, stash them in the fridge, stash some good snacks in your desk, have them readily available. It's okay to eat smaller meals, make sure they're nutrient dense, eat on the run. I'll give you an example here of what my very real example is for my personal life, which you've already probably heard.

I've given you hints throughout this, but for me, do pre-make my snacks and meals through my breakfast up until dinner. Almost every day, it is overnight oats with a complex mix of special things I put on it. It is Greek yogurt with fruit. It is a homemade protein shake, which I mentioned earlier. It is hummus, and I often use crackers or

sliced cheese and crackers, pretzels, sometimes cut carrots. And all of those things, if you lay them out, first of all, if you look at them in most work settings, then what somebody would say is like, you're the healthy person on staff, Because you have all this, obviously, could be called health food. And yeah, it is. But that also means that if you look around on everybody else's desk, they are eating unhealthy food. And there are going to be consequences to that, which we've already gone over.

That's a quick example of what I would eat during a typical day in an office because I don't want to be hangry and you don't want to be hangry. So let's think about one thing you can do today that would be a really good investment in managing your weight. That would be a good investment in your brain function. That would be a great investment in your career and investment in your relationships. Nobody wants to be around somebody who's hangry. It'd be a good investment in your parenting if you have kids.

It will reduce mistakes and errors that you may make at home and in the office. It improves your attitude. You know, it'd be an investment in your productivity and investment in your career, your revenue potential, all those good things. And it comes down to this one thing. And this one thing is take 15 minutes tonight to plan and pack your snacks for tomorrow. Take 15 minutes to invest in.

knowing that when you go to bed tonight, you know exactly what your snacks are for tomorrow. Keep it simple. know, review the things I've already mentioned multiple times now and get that container, those containers ready to go. So when you get up in the morning, it's just a quick grab and go and start building that habit of investing in your cognitive function, investing in your health, avoiding diabetes, all these other metabolic problems. takes 15 minutes.

So that is your one thing you can do today to extend your healthspan. Eating on the run happens, eating standing up happens, eating and walking down the hall happens. I do it. If you work in any sort of busy environment like I have, you get used to it. This kind of the way it is, but eating on the run is better than not eating at all and eating on the run or on the walk with nutritious, high quality food has a thousand times better impact than eating absolute garbage.

which we would otherwise do because there's far too much garbage food out there and it's always readily available. So please invest in your invest in your healthspan, take 15 minutes tonight, plan your snacks for tomorrow. It may take a little bit of prep time, but that's okay. You're worth the time. Your health is worth the time. And if you want some accountability, if you want some help with that, you can message me directly through the podcast or you're watching this on YouTube, can message me directly. I will respond.

So if you want to shoot me messages, say hey, this is kind of what I've currently eat. What do think I should do? What should I add to it? What should I change? I will respond. So let me know. I'm happy to help you out with that. And as always, if you know anybody else who's eating on the run, maybe needs a little bit of some ideas on some healthy ways to eat, despite having a chaotic job or chaotic work experience, please share this episode with them. I appreciate any likes and follows. And if you have any ideas on future episodes, send me a message. All right. Till next time. Cheers.