Diet and Behaviour

Your Food, Mood, Behaviour are Linked

Part of a healthy and productive work culture or any culture is a healthy attitude toward food and breaks.

Meal times are important as they fuel our energy, help us to manage our stress, allow us social time with team members allowing for relationship building and establishing trust as well confidence, support our sleep and decision making and impact greatly the way we communicate.

Culture is set by habits and beliefs, these habits and beliefs are reflected in behaviour, decision making and communication further compounding the habit and belief cycle.

Our beliefs and habits around food and nutrition fuel our behaviour which impacts how we think, feel and communicate. People who sell diets often create a culture around their idea which people buy into with a belief before acting upon and buying into that through behaviour. This impacts thought and habit and the way that person sees things outside that diet culture now that they have a found a culture they have emotionally bought into. This is a high steaks investment- when challenged may result in defensive behaviours, because people do not feel safe in confronting their belief system in a negative way. Or more simply put- they are scared that they may have been wrong which can have disastrous mental health consequences leading people to lose trust and confidence in themselves and the world around them.

Diets that lead to mood dysregulation but result in weight loss are a good example of a bought in belief system for good reason that when challenged holds a lot of fear and insecurity.

This is the same when we trade meal times for busyness reasoning that it’s ok for whatever reason one can make up in their head, weight loss, usually being the more common one.

If this becomes the belief system that forms a habit and becomes a cultural behaviour then a business could end up with a workplace full of people using passive-aggressive communications which fester into overall well-being and people taking time off, needing mediation and potential high staff turnover costing a business a lot more than an investment in a functional and human approach to employees being able to meet their basic needs. Meal skipping will affect energy, stress, mood regulation, sleep, and eventually overall personal health.

The minimum intervention requirement here would be a properly facilitated lunch break away from the working desk. Going to extra mile to facilitate this as a cultural wellbeing and employee appreciation exercise would be to include proper lunch time facilities and break schedules allowing for a social aspect around meal times for daily team bonding- relationship building, lowering staff turnover all saving a business thousands in revenue with very little, if any upfront investment.

If you want to go the extra mile to facilitate this in your workplace get in touch and we can help you build a healthy inclusive nutrition-driven meal and break time strategy to help you and your employee’s build a lasting productive work environment.