Successful entrepreneurs are amazing individuals. They’re extremely hard-working and supremely dedicated to their endeavors. They’re constantly striving to meet and even surpass their goals and they’re always doing their best to maximize their performance. What they might not realize however, is that one particular bad habit could be sabotaging their success.

We all have deadlines to meet and goals to achieve and we can be so busy that we let our eating slide. Unfortunately, when we sacrifice our nutrition we pay a higher price than we realize. This is especially true when we eat mindlessly for months on end. Ultimately we suffer with a worsening mood, lower or frazzled energy, a negative attitude and possibly, compromised relationships

Entrepreneurs think that they’re being clever cutting corners by skipping meals or subsisting on junk food, but in this way they’re undermining their success. If you think that by not stopping for proper meals you’re going to accomplish more you’re incorrect because ultimately, it’ll catch up with you.

If you’re an entrepreneur who’s eating mindlessly while trying to build your business, your relationships might end up suffering. Poor nutrition has emotional consequences as much as physical ones; making you more irritable and impatient. You might snap at a colleague and undermine a potential new business association. You might lose your cool and look bad when you need to impress an investor.

As an entrepreneur, your creativity, your stamina and your concentration are all essential for your success. But all these things diminish if you don’t have enough high-quality fuel to feed your body and your brain.

If you were a race car driver, you’d want to win every race so you’d never dream of putting poor-quality fuel into your vehicle. It makes sense that if you want to win at your career, you should think more seriously about what you eat.

I understand why people eat mindlessly. There’s so much going on and so much to do that it’s easy to neglect one thing or another. But eating is the one area you can’t afford to neglect. How you choose to fuel yourself affects your energy, focus and follow through as well as your resilience in the face of challenges and your ability to persevere.

Without adequate, high-quality fuel, you can’t be at your best or do your best work. The truth is that you can’t afford to engage in mindless eating if you want to achieve maximum success and maintain it in the long-run.

These days we have some strange attitudes toward food and eating. We seem to have forgotten that the role of food is primarily as a source of fuel, not as a source of pleasure or gratification.

Of course food is delicious. It has to be, for our survival. The problem today is that many of us eat almost exclusively for pleasure or for convenience, with little regard for how the food we eat is affecting our body, our mind and our emotions.

Many entrepreneurs are tired and over-worked, so it’s easy to turn to comfort food. But when you’re working so hard, you need higher quality food; not the junk you’re consuming.

When for example, you eat a fast-food meal full of simple carbs, you get a quick burst of energy, followed by a profound sense of lethargy as the body has to work extra hard to process all the sugar that you ate. That’s where the phrase “carb coma” comes from.

Anyone who has important business goals would want to know if they were doing something to sabotage their success. It’s easier to see a problem if it lies in how you delegate work, manage staff or prioritize tasks. It’s less obvious when it comes to how you eat.

But what if you could do something right now that gave you more energy and greater concentration; enhanced your creativity and put you in a better mood? Wouldn’t you do it? All you have to do is eat more mindfully.

So, what is mindful eating? Mainly it’s being aware of why you’re eating and what you’re eating. For an over-eater, mindful eating is recognizing when you’re eating to deal with your emotions, as opposed to when you’re actually hungry.

For an entrepreneur, mindful eating is considering the kind of fuel that would optimize your performance and lead you more quickly and directly to success. Elite athletes do this all the time. They visit sports nutritionists who figure out the exact ratios of carbs, protein, micro-nutrients and fats that they require in order to perform at the highest level.

The truth is that it’s not only athletes who benefit from good nutrition. Entrepreneurs who eat mindfully can ensure that they’re in the best possible shape to achieve their goals.

Mindful eating for an entrepreneur is making sure that you get high-quality food throughout the day so that your blood sugar remains stable and you’re not having the mid-morning slump from a too-sugary breakfast or the mid-afternoon brain fog from a poor-quality lunch, or no lunch at all.

When you start to eat mindfully, you become more alert and focused, energetic and yet calm. You’re maximally productive and you roll with the punches. All you have to do is put some attention on how you’re eating and what you’re eating and things are really going to change.

So, instead of paying minimal attention to your nutrition, you could choose right now to eat mindfully. This might just be the secret weapon that puts you ahead of the competition.

The smart entrepreneur is always looking to adopt the most powerful new tools that will maximize their success. Mindful eating is one of the most powerful tools to get you to your goals.

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