Eat as fast as you can whenever you can.
That was the med student mindset around food, as Catherine Harmon Toomer, MD, discovered during her school years. “Without a good system in place to counter that,” she explains, “unhealthy eating can get out of control, and that’s what happened to me.”
After med school, things got worse for Dr. Toomer. By her second year in practice as a family medicine physician, she’d gained a lot of weight and had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and cardiomyopathy. At 36, she went into congestive heart failure and was told she likely had 5 years to live.
A moment she described as “a huge wake-up call.”
Dr. Toomer is far from alone in her struggles to balance working in medicine and eating healthfully.
internist and cofounder of ChefMD and founder of Chef Clinic.
There is also the culture of medicine, which Dr. Toomer said looks down on self-care. “Even with break times, patient needs come before our own.” So, you sit down to eat, and there’s an emergency. Your clinic closes for lunch, but the phones still ring, and patients continue to email questions. Charting is also so time-consuming that “everything else gets put on the back burner.”
Sticking to a nutritious diet in this context can feel hopeless. But it isn’t. Really. Here are some doctor-tested, real-life ways you can nourish yourself while getting it all done.
Something Is Always Better Than Nothing
Sure, you might not be able to eat a balanced lunch or dinner while at work, conceded Amy Margulies, RD, LDN, owner of The Rebellious RD. But try to focus on the bigger picture and take small steps.
First, make sure you eat something, Ms. Margulies advised. “Skipping meals can lead to overeating later and negatively impact energy levels and concentration.”
Lisa Andrews, MEd, RD, LD, owner of Sound Bites Nutrition, recalled one of her patients, a gastrointestinal surgeon with reactive hypoglycemia and fatigue. “She was experiencing energy crashes mid-afternoon,” she said. It was only after starting to eat every 4-5 hours that her patient felt better.
Of course, this is easier said than done. “When you are running from one patient to the other and trying to keep on time with your schedule, there is very little time for eating and no time at all for cooking or even heating up food,” recalled Hélène Bertrand, MD, author of Low Back Pain: 3 Steps to Relief in 2 Minutes.
But during her 55 years as a family medicine physician, Dr. Bertrand found ways to improve (if not perfect) the situation. She lunched on nuts or seeds during the day or grabbed a 95% cacao chocolate bar — higher in antioxidants and lower in sugar than a candy bar.
If you don’t have time for breakfast, try drinking a complete protein shake while driving to work, Dr. Toomer recommended. “It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing.” Similarly, if the only way you’ll eat a high-protein, lower-carb snack like hummus is with potato chips, go for it, she said.
Basically, don’t be type A striving for perfection. Take good enough when you can and balance the rest when you have time.