This article begins a series that is inspired by the recent event on Leadership & Health with Longevity Expert Ellen Nagel we hosted at Alive School. We talked about the four longevity pillars: nutrition, sleep, movement and mental health — and why they directly influence leadership capacity.
My History With Food (and Control)
For most of my life, food was connected to control. I was never one of those people who could simply eat intuitively and remain stable in weight. At the same time, I genuinely love food: long dinners, pasta evenings, a glass of wine, conversation, hospitality. I never wanted eating to become purely functional.
Yet there was another side. Stress and eating were closely linked. During demanding phases at work I easily become a “snack person”. So, like many people, I tried to regulate this with discipline: diets, rules, watching weight, being strict. And every time I approached nutrition through numbers or restriction, something paradoxical happened: my attention moved even more toward food. Cravings increased, mental energy decreased, and the topic occupied far more mental space than before.
Looking back today, this makes perfect sense. I was trying to control a regulatory system instead of understanding it. A body is not a machine that obeys orders — it is an adaptive system that reacts.
The Shift: From Weight to Wellbeing
Something shifted when we founded Alive School in 2025. Our work revolves around embodied leadership — the idea that leadership effectiveness is not primarily a cognitive performance, but a wholistic way of being. It starts with feeling alive and the question “How can I increase my energy to perform what is actual meaningful to me?”. In that context, a different question emerged to me: Not “How do I control weight?” but “How does my way of eating influence how alive and focused I feel?”
Around the same time, I began reading more about metabolism and long-term health. I realized it’s not about a specific diet recommendation; nutrition is fundamentally individual. There is no universally correct nutritional ideology — only principles interacting with a specific organism, a specific life, a specific workload. So instead of following a concept, I started observing feedback:
- When do I feel energetic?
- When do I become impatient?
- When do I lose clarity and focus?
And slowly, patterns emerged.
What Supports My Energy
One of the most impactful changes was introducing a daily fasting window of roughly fourteen to sixteen hours. I usually finish dinner around 7 or 8 pm and eat my first meal around 10 or 11 the next morning, always fruit and nuts. What changed was not discipline — it was mental clarity. Mornings became calmer and more focused, and I used my best cognitive hours for deep work instead of digestion.
The second change was reducing dairy products and refined carbohydrates, especially wheat products and large amounts of rice, and replacing them with vegetables and healthy fats. What is important to me: I did not eliminate things I enjoy completely – that never works for me: I did not forbid cake; I did not eliminate pasta; I did not remove wine from social evenings. But I changed proportions and developed routines – more structured eating during the week, more enjoyment on weekends. The effect was unmistakable: no more afternoon crash. Workshops required less effort, and my listening quality improved simply because my brain had stable fuel. Any yes, as a sidenote: My weight changed — about seven kilograms — without being the goal.
Why This Matters for Leadership
This is where my personal story becomes relevant professionally. In coaching and leadership development we often train behaviors while ignoring the biological capacity required to perform them. Leaders know they should listen, stay calm in conflict, think strategically and communicate clearly — but therefor we can’t ignore the baseline:
- Stable attention requires metabolic stability.
- Emotional regulation requires nervous system safety.
- Perspective-taking requires cognitive energy availability.
If energy fluctuates strongly throughout the day, leadership inevitably fluctuates with it — independent of training. This is why at Alive School we increasingly integrate physiology into leadership development — not as wellness, but as performance infrastructure. Embodied leadership means the body supports leadership behaviors instead of constantly working against them.
In the next article I will write about the pillar that amplified all of this even more: Sleep — the invisible multiplier of leadership capacity.
Looking for a Leadership or Business Coaching in Berlin?
In my coaching studio in Berlin-Charlottenburg, as well as through online/remote coaching, I support my clients in exploring their unique leadership style. Leadership coaching and business coaching are effective, scientifically proven ways to improve performance as a leader. To ensure the quality of my coaching, I am a member of the DBVC, Germany’s largest professional coaching association.