Women Leaders are Burning Out. Nutrition Can Help.

Women leaders are leaving their organizations in the highest rates in years. Why? Because they’re burnt out. The good news is that nutrition can help prevent this outcome.

Why are women leaders burning out? They take on unrecognized work to support their team members’ well-being. On top of that, women at all levels are far more likely than men to be responsible for most, or all, of their family’s housework and caregiving. Not surprisingly, they burn out.

That’s one of the findings from the 2022 Women in the Workplace study by McKinsey and Company – the largest study to date of women in corporate America. And while, yes, that’s a US study, it’s reasonable to assume that the situation is similar here in Canada.

3 Years of High Stress

Does it feel familiar? If I was a betting woman, I’d bet that you answered “yes”.

It’s certainly what we’ve seen when working with our clients. And, the dial on this extra stress has been cranked up since the pandemic started in March 2020. That’s almost 3 years of sky-high stress!

Sky-high expectations, both on the work-front and on the home-front. It’s no wonder that we’ve been seeing clients turn to stress eating as a relief valve. Digestive symptoms have worsened. Exercise has fallen so far down the mile-long to-do list that it almost never happens. Cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, and blood pressure are rising.

Nutrition Can Help

It’s obvious that change is needed. And yes, nutrition can be a part of the solution. Restrictive diets and 30-day challenges offer seductive, short-term, quick fixes. And while it’s human to be drawn into doing them, the wiser part of us knows that a more practical, long-term solution is the smart answer.  

The answer, in our team’s experience, is to create practical, small changes that you can maintain. While not as sexy as the “before” and “after” photos of those diets and challenges, they create real change. Change in energy levels, change in digestive symptoms, change in focus, change in blood test results, and help in backing away from burn out. Which, in my opinion, is much sexier than another time around what I call the diet-guilt cycle. 

And research supports this too. Studies show positive health outcomes from small, sustained eating changes that result in 5-10% weight loss (even no change in weight). So much so that the newly released (December 15, 2022) position statement on the management of overweight and obesity by the European Association for the Study of Obesity states that nutrition interventions should be personalized, incorporate long-term habits, and created with help from dietitians.  

Further, through our experience with busy, working women, we know that your commitments aren’t stopping any time soon. We need to create practical ways to put your needs back on the table. Not expect you to drop everything in order to put intensive time into dramatic diet changes. Because that’s another problem with diets and short-term challenges. They only consider your needs, as if you only have your needs to consider. Ha, that’s laughable! More likely, as the US workforce study shows, you’re the glue that’s keeping your family together and your work team functioning, never mind your volunteer committees, etc.

So, what are some of the practical solutions that we create for people? I’ll share a couple of them here. Maybe they’ll be a fit for you too.

• Pack Your Lunch When Working From Home: Do you work from home and find that you either skip lunch, or you end up grazing all day? I’ve found that 3 steps of 1) thinking of what to eat, 2) making it, and 3) eating it, can get in the way of eating a healthy lunch. A strategy that’s been successful for a number of clients has been to pack a lunch for yourself when you’re packing your kids’ lunches. That way, the steps of 1) thinking about and 2) making lunch have been moved away from lunchtime. Now all you need to do is take your packed lunch out of the fridge and eat it. While it seems silly, this can remove enough barriers that you actually eat the healthy lunch that you want to eat.

• Have Compromise Meals: Often I see clients who want to eat healthy dinners, but feel that with their picky kiddos, they’re left with only 2 solutions: 1) either eat kid food; or 2) make 2 meals every night. Sound familiar? The answer is in the middle ground. To quote my past mentor Ellyn Satter, when it comes to making family meals “consider, don’t cater, to kids”. What does this look like? Make the dishes that you want to eat. And, include some components of the meal that your kids will eat. For example, make that lentil-vegetable stew that you love and serve it with rice and cut-up fruit or raw veggies on the side. Sure, the kids may only eat rice and fruit/ raw veggies for dinner. Simply serve your kids protein foods at other meals or snacks in the day so that their nutrition needs are met. And, you get to eat your stew that you both enjoy and that meets your nutrition needs.  

Looking for more individualized support? Use this link to book a (free) information call and I’ll match you with the best-fit dietitian on our team.

Also, I’ve been working behind-the-scenes to create a new service package for organizations to support team leaders/managers’ productivity. Tell your HR manager and have them use this link to book a phone call with me. Then I can what’s going on in your organization and they can hear about the service. That way they will have everything they need to make the right decision for your organization

References

https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/528083

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace

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