Nurses Who Eat Well, Work Well

How we nourish our bodies directly impacts how well we are able to work. Diet does matter, and those who eat well also work well. But nurses face unique challenges and barriers to good nutrition. This article presents practical guidelines for a truly nourishing diet and considers some of the most common barriers with strategies for overcoming them. 

Long shifts, short meal breaks, and little access to healthy food are some of the barriers we face. More times than I like to admit, I have rushed out the door without a packed lunch (or with only processed food in my bag) and subsisted on energy drinks, black coffee, and snack foods. Then I went home feeling jittery and exhausted and slightly sick to my stomach, only to do it all over again the next night. And that story is far too common among nurses, and other healthcare professionals. 

Ironically, we are the profession looked up to for honesty and trustworthiness. We are the guardians of health and wellness, the experts on common sense solutions and keeping children well. But we as a group tend to be overweight and prone to diabetes and to stress-related illnesses. But this does not need to be your story. 

What can we do? Practical Guidelines for Nourishment 

Let’s start with what it’s not. This is NOT a diet. Not a set of restrictive rules to follow. Not a directive to be miserable and deprived in the name of health. Those things don’t work, don’t last, bring misery and confusion, and are in fact downright harmful. 

Okay, so we aren’t doing a diet. What are we doing? Practical, flexible guidelines that help us nourish our bodies and feel well so that we can work well and give our best to the patients in our care. 

The guidelines are quite simple 

• Eat real food as much as possible. 

• Drink water before you eat. 

• Create an environment that makes healthy easy. .

Let’s look at these one at a time, with examples and a quick look at why this works. 

(A quick note before we dive into the nitty gritty: If you are feeling overwhelmed by the idea of adding yet another thing to an already packed schedule, keep reading. This is addressed in a later section.) 

Eat Real Food 

When you choose real over processed, your body is getting better nutrition, fewer empty calories, more fiber, and less chemical additives. The end result is that you feel nourished, satisfied, and have steady energy. Fiber helps digestive health and appetite control and may even help with emotional regulation. 

Eating real food includes things such as choosing to throw an apple or an orange into your bag instead of gummy snacks, choosing rotisserie chicken instead of chicken nuggets, crunching on carrots instead of chips, eating a salad for one meal a day, eating food that is close to its origins and without additives. 

Eating real food doesn’t mean doing a raw food diet or going vegan, although you may choose to incorporate some of those concepts into your food choices. Real food just means real food. 

Drink Water 

Adequate hydration is key for the optimal function of every single cell in your body. Drinking plenty of pure water is perhaps the single most important thing you can do for your better health. 

Thirst is often mistaken for hunger. Even when you know, logically, that you are dehydrated, it is still easy to give in to cravings for sweet or savory foods. Making a habit of staying hydrated will help you eat less and to choose healthier foods. 

Pure water without additives is best, but many people find that flavored or fruit-infused water is easier to drink and therefore easier to stay hydrated. 

Craft Your Environment 

When you make the healthy choice the easy choice, suddenly healthy choices become so much easier to make. For example, if you habitually shop for fresh fruits and vegetables on your day off and prepare portion size containers with ready-to-eat veggie sticks and dip, you are far more likely to use them for snacking and packing lunches. Keeping a water bottle tucked in an easily accessible spot, such as hiding it in a cupboard at the nurses station or keeping it in the side pocket of your backpack if you are in a community-based position, makes you more likely to stay hydrated. If you have freezer full of single portion whole-food meals ready to be popped into the toaster oven or microwave, then you won’t need to rely on vending machine offerings when you don’t have time to run to the cafeteria, or if it closes before you manage to get there on evening or night shift. 

Crafting your environment is about mindset. Instead of thinking “I can’t”, try asking yourself, “How can I make this work?” The suggestions above work well for me, with occasional tweaks, but your situations will require your own uniquely creative solutions. 

If You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

As a general rule, nurses tend to be overworked and chronically struggling to complete everything on the to-do list. Taking time to eat well can look overwhelming. Often, we don’t even start because we already know that we can’t do all the things that we should be doing. This keeps us stuck in our current unhealthy patterns. 

To break out of this, remember that perfection is not the goal. Progress is. Choose one small change and start doing it consistently. Buy a bag of apples and throw one in your bag each day. Better yet, slice it up so you’re more likely to eat it. Dig out a water bottle and fill it each morning. Or buy a pack of bottled water and keep it on your car so you can grab a few on the way to work. Invest in a stack of healthy-ish freezer meals and make a habit of grabbing on your way out the door instead of ordering fast food; its just as cheap and more healthful. 

Concentrate on making one small change at a time, and on making it easy for you to make the healthier choice. Small changes over time add up to a much healthier lifestyle in a year or so.