Looking to score a promotion or impress a client? It may be time to clean up your meals, especially if your idea of a power breakfast is a doughnut and coffee. According to Brigham Young University research, People who rarely eat fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods are less productive at work.
 
Eating healthy doesn’t have to be complicated. Skip the latest diet trend, and opt for mindfulness instead.  Practice clean eating or "a diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants," which according to Yale researchers David Katz and Stephanie Miller is "decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention."
 
Clean eating is not only the key to vibrant health, it also boosts brain power, allowing for more focus and productivity at work. Here’s what clean eating doesn’t entail: counting calories, cutting out food groups, or consuming food-like products. Clean eating is not actually a diet, but an approach to eating that emphasizes consuming real food made from minimally-processed ingredients and reconnecting to your body’s natural cues in order to decide when and how much to eat. It’s the way people ate throughout nearly all of history, but it’s an increasingly rare way to eat today.
 
Keep reading to learn how processed food can be a detriment to your work life, the simple tenets of clean eating, and how healthy, whole foods may help you get a leg up on the job.
 
The Perils of Processed Foods

​While not all processed foods are unhealthy, a majority often contain few nutrients and are packed with ingredients you may want to avoid, such as added sodium and refined sugar. Sugar consumption in the U.S. is up 30% from 40 years ago, and processed food accounts for about 90% of the added sugar people eat today, including sweets, salty snacks, and salad dressings.  Due to an increased consumption of sugar, rates of obesity and diabetes in the U.S. have skyrocketed.  When a culture adopts a diet heavy in processed food, they can see a prevalence of chronic diseases, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, epithelial cell cancers, autoimmune disease, and osteoporosis. Stick to healthy, processed foods like frozen fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and nut butter.
 
Trans fats, another common offender found in many processed foods such as chips, cookies, and crackers, can increase the risk for heart attacks, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. One study found consuming foods with trans fats can actually impair memory. And preservatives, which help keep processed foods shelf stable longer, may increase cancer risk. Nitrates, which are found in many processed meats for instance, have been linked to higher incidences of colorectal cancer.
 
Want to improve your health? Commit to making processed foods a smaller part of your diet, and stick to whole grains, legumes, meat, and fresh vegetables if you want to be more effective at work. Real food is the perfect fuel for the body and the brain, and clean eating boosts energy, makes it easier to focus, and improves memory.
 
Your Brain on Real Food
 
When you eat a balanced snack or meal that combines complex carbohydrates, protein, and fat, you provide your cells with a steady stream of glucose as well as vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, substances that protect the cells from stress.
 
Folic acid, omega-3 oils, and many other nutrients have been shown to improve cognitive function. Real food is the best way to ingest nutrients. Spinach, greens, and citrus fruit are rich in folic acid. Fish, flax seeds, nuts, and green, leafy vegetables are rich in omega-3 fatty acids. But don’t worry too much about which foods contain which nutrients. Clean eating isn’t about munching on the latest superfoods. It’s about eating a wide variety of whole foods.
 
Glucose, a form of sugar, is the substance the body uses to feed every cell, including brain cells. To perform optimally, the brain needs a steady stream of glucose in the blood stream. Clean, minimally processed foods—such as lean meats, fruit, vegetables, and whole grains—provide sustained energy, while a treat from the vending machine only provides a short burst of energy. That’s why it’s common to feel sluggish, lethargic, and even irritable 30 to 45 minutes after eating a sugary snack. People call this a “sugar crash.” To make it worse, most vending-machine snacks (and many other processed foods) provide only empty calories and no actual nourishment. Complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains, convert most easily into the glucose we need to stay energized and productive.
 
Diets that are high in sugar, fat, and omega-6 fatty acids, which are common ingredients in processed food, are associated with reduced cognitive ability. High consumption of sugar and fat is linked to poor cognition and decreased memory. Diets high in omega-6 fatty acids and low in omega-3 fatty acids are associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment.
 
All that said, scientists are increasingly understanding that diet is highly individualized. You may respond differently to the same meal than the person in the cubicle next to you does. You won’t know which foods suit you best unless you pay attention, which is why mindfulness is also an important component of clean eating. 

​Reconnecting with Natural Cues
 
For better health and increased productivity, pay attention to your body’s natural cues and forget diet rules. Hunger is your body’s way of communicating that it needs refueling. When you ignore the message, it’s difficult to concentrate. You may feel lightheaded, irritable, short tempered, shaky, or nervous. Satiety is your body’s built-in calorie regulator. When you ignore it, you may overeat, which may lead to stomach discomfort, nausea, and lethargy.
 
Many people are disconnected from these natural cues because of frequent dieting, disordered eating, or distractions. Learning to heed your body’s communications can help you effortlessly regulate your food and nutrient intake to feel great, and be productive all day. Here’s how to do it: When you feel hungry, step away from work, put away distractions, and enjoy your food in a relaxed environment. Eat slowly and pay attention to how you feel, then stop when you feel satisfied.
 
If you’ve been loading up on sugar and processed foods, it may take a while for your appetite to shift toward healthier foods. However, many people report they begin to crave healthy foods after improving their diets, and research supports this observation. Eventually, trust your body to know what kind of fuel it needs, how much it needs, and when it needs it.
 

​Conclusion
 
Whole foods are the best fuel for your body and your brain. Make a commitment to eat clean most of the time, and you’ll enjoy better health and increased productivity at work and beyond.

​Should it be called “remote,” “distributed,” “virtual,” or something else? Everyone gives it a different name, but we all share the same question: what does it take to work successfully when you’re not in the same place (or even the same time zone)? At LifeLabs Learning, we’ve set out to find the secret formula for making remote work, work.

Method: We conducted a meta-analysis of research on the remote experience, spoke with heads of L&D and People Operations, and interviewed 38 employees from 13 tech companies, ranging in size from 150 – 30,000 employees. Participants either worked remotely, managed a remote employee, or had a remote manager.

In this ‘lite paper’ we will share 3 insights we’ve gathered so far and a Remote Experience Audit you can use to evaluate and improve the remote experience at your company.

Insight #1: Turning the camera on matters more than you think.

Almost all participants in our study emphasized the importance of seeing their teammates, whether through the screen or in person. Most companies prioritize having time in person, but short, frequent contact via camera leads to greater team trust and better communication. The Mere Exposure Effect reveals that the more familiar we are with our coworkers’ faces, the more we like them (Harmon-Jones & Allen, 2001). A related pro-tip we heard from seasoned remote workers is to position the video screen in a way that makes everyone feel that they are making eye contact. Eye contact builds trust and liking (Montague, 2013; Koike, et al, 2016). 

Insight #2: Autonomy feels like a perk, but only when we set expectations.

A sense of equity is very important to remote employees. Lack of access to onsite perks can feel unfair unless managers clarify that working remotely comes with unique perks – particularly in terms of how much autonomy remote employees get to enjoy. Autonomy matters to all workers (Weinstein, Przybylski & Ryan, 2012), so highlighting that remote employees have a choice in work location, set up, and time can spark greater motivation.

Insight #3: Remote work is spreading across jobs but best practices are not.

Many people assume remote work is done by engineers, but we’re seeing an increasing trend of remote work being done across a wide range of job types. Employees in each job category seem to be creating their own systems for how to work well remotely, but all remote job types can benefit from learning best practices from one another. Companies that extract and share tips and tools create more efficient and effective communication across the org.

Want to see how well your company creates a great remote experience for employees? See how you stack up by completing our Remote Experience Audit:

Organizational level

_ We offer resources to enable remote work (e.g., technology stipend, co-working membership)
_ We have clocks around the office that make it easy to remember other employees’ time zones
_ Our calendar system makes it easy to see availability and request time to meet
_ We provide tech support and training to help managers optimize video-based meetings
_ Our in-person and remote employees have similar access to learning and development opportunities
_ Our leaders and managers have received training in leading remote employees
_ We define output goals (e.g., deliverables) rather than input goals (e.g., counting hours logged)
_ We regularly survey employees to track their level of engagement, clarity, and inclusion
_ We create opportunities for remote employees to be featured at all-hands meetings and skill-shares

Leadership level

_ Influential leaders and decision makers are available to remote employees (e.g., they join team meetings, facilitate skip-level 1-1s, host virtual Ask Me Anything sessions)
_ We communicate the same company information and vision to remote and in-person audiences
_ Our leadership team privately and publicly acknowledges remote employees
_ Our leaders state and model the importance of regular 1-1 meetings

Manager level

_ Managers hold consistent, high-quality 1-1 meetings with their remote reports
_ Managers keep remote employees up-to-date about what’s going on in the office
_ Managers ask remote employees how they prefer to work, communicate, and receive feedback
_ Managers celebrate milestones (e.g., birthdays, work anniversaries, small team wins)
_ Managers establish communication norms (e.g., expected email response times, mutually convenient work hours, what to do if there are technical difficulties during a meeting)
_ Managers create time and space for bonding (e.g., small talk, sharing personal information)
_ Managers set expectations for remote employee equity vs. equality

Individual contributor level

_ Remote employees know how to hold project kick-off conversations that check agreement on deliverables, milestones, project autonomy level, interdependencies, and information flow
_ Remote employees know how to pull for information rather than wait for it to be pushed to them

Download a PDF of the lite paper and checklist here: https://goo.gl/HM8MGA. 

What’s next: This year, we will continue to collect and develop interventions for improving the remote experience by interviewing participants in our virtually-led workshops. To learn more, contact megan@lifelabslearning.com.
​

​About the author: Megan Wheeler is a leadership trainer at LifeLabs Learning, the go-to learning and development resource for innovative companies (like Etsy, Squarespace, Tumblr, and Warby Parker). She oversees the LifeLabs Open Enrollment program, which offers virtual workshops for individual sign-up. She has her Master’s degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and specializes in remote work and managing dispersed teams. ​​