Welcome to the nutrition and productivity blog!

This blog is here to educate you on how clean and smart nutrition is linked to uber productivity, whether this be having focus and being in flow at work, having energy to play sports effectively or being present in social situations.

Hello, I’m Paddy – welcome to my blog

So a bit about me: I’ve been working in retail banking since 2007 and cut my teeth in the midst of the credit crunch and I’m still hanging on. In terms of interests outside of work – I love house music, keeping fit (mentally and physically), eating clean and love reading science and philosophy.

I wasn’t always such a health nut: I’ve lived a bit of dual life of being a hedonistic party animal on one hand and diligently grinding out the numbers in the day job on the other hand. I had a sh!t diet, boozy lifestyle and clubbing being the only exercise I got. This isn’t the kind of balance you want for longevity and this lifestyle doesn’t optimise for productivity. This way of living led me to struggle with:

• Poor ability to deal with stress
• Lack of focus at work
• Tiredness, lack of drive and energy
• Anxiety
• Harsh inner critic
• Addictions

It ultimately lead to an episode of being in a little bit of a shitty state. To get myself out of the rut I read up on a lot of health, nutrition and fitness. Little by little starting making changes: exercising, eating a bit more cleanly, educating myself on nutrition and experimenting with various meditation techniques. It lead me to the world of biohacking and quantified self – an interesting and exciting space where citizen scientists use the latest science, software and tech to improve aspects of their health and themselves. I experiment with nutrition, meditations and tech to improve my energy levels, cognitive ability, creativity and flow state.

Why am I doing this? Why nutrition?

Here are my reasons:

• Experimentation and improving oneself is a highly exciting adventure and I want to document this for a). myself, for when I need to come back and refresh myself on it and b). for others who could benefit from this as well.
• By teaching others, I will learn even more
• The world needs it. Some of our existing practices and health education are maladaptive. The evidence? Obesity¹, diabetes² and bad health are on the rise globally.
• Nutrition is the first step in taking control of your health and therefore your productivity. You can’t out exercise a bad diet. You can’t be present and focused in the middle of a food coma.
• Eating the right foods leads to a healthy balance of hormones and neurotransmitters – both of which work synergistically to improve performance.
• Eating the wrong foods can reduce performance by disrupting hormone balance, blood sugar levels and can distract through food intolerances.

Watch this space…

Throughout this blog I will dig deeper into the effects of nutrition on productivity and report on the latest science. Bookmark to follow my adventures in self-experimentation and improving my productivity and performance through smart nutrition.

In the mean time… keep hustling

Paddy.

I’d love to hear your thoughts – please leave me a comment below.

If you are interested in trying out a FREE 7-day meal plan you can grab a copy of that here. Just add your details and we’ll get that over to you. 

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References

1. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-trends/
2. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/34/6/1249