Your boss finally agreed that you work away from the office. Now, you can get your laptop set up on the kitchen table, and you’re ready to take on the long list of tasks you need to accomplish. Eight hours later, you find yourself staring at your screen with nothing knocked off your list. What have you been doing all day?
You don’t have to beat yourself up for falling into the black hole of Florence Pugh casual cooking videos and Adam Driver interviews. In most cases, improper nutrition is to blame when your brain is not working as it should. Sure—nothing’s wrong with eating while working, but it doesn’t mean that you can eat Snickers and Cheetos all day. At least make sure you try to promote healthy eating at work.
Healthy eating even when you’re at home can help fuel your brain properly while letting you avoid energy crashes. It is extremely important to choose healthy foods to increase focus during remote work. Incredibly, food can impact your focus, concentration, and productivity at work.
If you need to improve your concentration and increase productivity, here are some healthy foods that can help.
Coffee Can Help Me Focus, Right?
It has been a cultural norm to drink coffee to keep yourself productive and alert all day long. However, getting a caffeinated fix every day can wreak havoc on your body. Now, before you light a torch and call your friends with pitchforks to attack us, listen to what we have to say.
Remember that caffeine is plainly a stimulant. What it does is raise your cortisol levels, which is the natural ‘stress’ hormone that your body generates to keep you awake. When you drink large amounts of coffee, your cortisol levels go above the normal range.
A healthier solution is to eat the best foods that help you focus. Remember the vitamins that your mother always told you to take? Well, it turns out they are what will give your brain the fuel to perform at an optimum level. So, make sure you read through this post to discover the foods to boost brain function.
Omega-3
Not all types of fat are bad for your health. Omega-3, the healthy kind of fat, can improve your wellbeing and brain power. A deficiency in DHA can hamper your brain development, even causing premature cognitive decline and brain aging. So, if you’re looking for healthy snacks you can eat throughout the day, consider eating walnuts and avocados. You can also get healthy fatty acids from salmon, chia seeds, and fish oil.
Antioxidants
Don’t punch your keyboard just because you can’t eat Snickers all day. There’s a good kind of candy that can also help boost your focus and concentration. If you have a sweet tooth, you can eat dark chocolate and benefit from its antioxidant properties. It also has some caffeine content to help keep you active until you finish your work.
If you want a healthier substitute, find a sugar-free dark chocolate bar that uses stevia as a sweetener. In this way, you can still get your endorphins poppin’ like Cardi B at a party without raising your blood sugar levels.
Thiamine
B vitamins are excellent for good brain health, and among them, thiamine is the most efficient in keeping your mental strength up. If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the day with keyboard marks on your cheek, then you should get your brain cells working with thiamine-rich snacks.
While remote working can be flexible and deeply rewarding, don’t forget to take care of your mental and physical wellbeing. To avoid fatigue, irritability, and confusion, we recommend eating macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, and black beans.
Magnesium
Getting stressed and feeling like you’re ready to punch your computer monitor when you work from home? Well, it’s high time you took ‘Nature’s Natural Valium!’ Magnesium has been given this title due to its ability to calm the brain and the nervous system.
It has anti-inflammatory properties that can be beneficial for your brain. It can reduce anxiety, help lift depression and make you feel better. Some of the best magnesium sources include brown rice, almonds, cashews, and avocados.
Vitamin B6
Now, you might ask, “What is the best food to help you focus?” Well, anything you can eat that is rich in Vitamin B6 can help you combat mental fatigue. It can even help boost your concentration and improve your workplace productivity. If you don’t get adequate Vitamin B6, you may experience a decline in your performance.
This may be the reason why you find yourself randomly popping your pimples or staring at the ceiling several times during work hours. So, if you want to avoid memory trouble, your diet should be rich in tuna, grass-fed beef, pistachios, turkey breast, and, once again, avocados.
Vitamin B9
Is your boss turning into a potato during your Zoom meetings, or is your brain getting foggy? If you always have to snap out of a daydream while remote working, then you’re probably not getting enough Vitamin B9 or folate. Low folate levels can cause brain fog, increased irritability, chronic fatigue, and even anxiety. So, if you’re thinking of a home diet that’s sure to give you mental clarity, you should shop for beef liver, spinach, asparagus, broccoli, and romaine lettuce.
Vitamin D
If you’ve been working from home for quite some time, you may start looking like a vapid vampire who hasn’t drunk human blood for centuries. This is quite understandable because you haven’t been going out to get enough ‘sunshine’ vitamin.
If you want to keep yourself focused throughout the day, you should spend some time outdoors and expose yourself to natural sunlight. On the other hand, if you do not have time to go for a walk, you can still eat foods enriched in Vitamin D. Vitamin D-rich foods linked to better focus include salmon, herring, mushrooms, and soy milk.
Vitamin B12
Do you often find yourself in the kitchen wondering what you were doing there in the first place? Okay, we won’t judge you for your alien abduction conspiracy theories. However, consider the chemicals in your body first. You’re probably experiencing confusion, memory loss, and brain fog at work because you’re low on Vitamin B12.
It is an essential nutrient that can support performance and productivity. What’s more, it plays a crucial role in generating dopamine and serotonin. If you’re feeling demotivated at work, you probably need to get more Vitamin B12 in your system. You can get this vitamin from wild salmon, sardines, beef liver, eggs, and nutritional yeast.
Vitamin E
If you don’t get enough Vitamin E, you may experience cognitive impairment. Aside from that, you may have diarrhea, muscle weakness, and balance issues. Some of the foods that keep you focused include kale, almonds, olives, and parsley. These will keep your brain energetic, young, and high-performing.
Choline
While many remote workers turn to coffee for alertness, it’s only a short-term solution for focus. Choline, on the other hand, is an essential nutrient required for improved brain function. If you have poor memory, cognitive impairments, and poor concentration, your choline levels in your brain cells are probably low.
To boost your memory and cognition, make sure to include eggs, beef liver, chicken liver, salmon, cauliflower, and broccoli in your diet.
Zinc
You’ve checked your Instagram feed hundreds of times throughout the day, and admit it, you’re not really having fun looking at Karen’s flat lays. If you’re having focus and attention problems, it may be because you’re low on zinc. For your neurons to grow and perform well, you need adequate levels of zinc. So, if you want to keep your concentration throughout the day and have the willpower to ignore your Instagram feed, you should eat cashews, grass-fed beef, mushrooms, pumpkin seeds, and spinach.
Protein
If your stomach rumbles every two hours because of hunger, you’re not taking enough foods rich in proteins. Distractions are not just caused by noisy kids, pets, or neighbors. Hunger can sabotage your focus and concentration, and this can be a great impediment to workplace productivity.
Eating protein-rich foods means it takes longer for your body to digest, hence no sudden spike in your energy levels that crash soon thereafter. Protein has many functions in our bodies. It’s especially needed for neurotransmitter synthesis, the brain’s chemical signals that determine its ability to process and focus. Protein will also leave you feeling fuller for longer, thus you won’t be distracted by hunger pangs every two hours.
Foods rich in protein include eggs, lean meats, yogurt, cheese, nuts, poultry, and legumes.
Don’t Downplay the Importance of Proper Nutrition
You should think of your brain as a luxury sports car. If you want to keep it running smoothly, would you use cheap gas to fuel it? Enzo Ferrari would be rolling in his grave if you did so. Your brain is a high-performing machine that needs the right food to boost brainpower. So, if you want to ensure that you have enough brainpower to focus on work and remain productive, you should choose healthy food to eat at work.
Having Healthy Work Habits
The problem with remote work is it tends to be sedentary. It’s so easy to slip into bad habits if the refrigerator is a few steps away from your desk. Also, with no one to invite you to join them for lunch, you may even forget to take a break at times. The best way to circumvent this problem is to have a task tracking app like Traqq. With this tool, you can monitor your work hours, and you will be alerted when you’re overworking.
Traqq will remind you to take a break after a big chunk of work hours. Keep in mind that there is no magic pill for staying healthy while working from home. You have to consciously choose what to eat to improve memory and concentration. Just because canned and microwaveable foods are easier to procure and manage, it doesn’t mean that you should stock your pantry with them. If you want to boost your brainpower, you must make the daily decision of eating foods that help you focus.
