No More Leading on Empty: Reclaiming Food as Fuel for Liberated Leadership
- Chinyere Oparah
- Nov 18
- 5 min read
Chinyere Oparah explores the relationship between food, work, stress and leadership, and offers practical ways to reconnect with our bodies as a source of wisdom rather than an afterthought.
A Season of Nourishment and Its Contradictions
Thanksgiving is a time when our minds turn to nourishment. We talk about gratitude, family, community, and the foods that remind us of home. We anticipate joy and delicious meals, and then–almost immediately–we shift into the familiar cycle of guilt, overcorrection, and “making up for it.” The cleanses, detoxes, and diets emerge as a cultural ritual, as though our bodies must be purified after celebration. And in a year when so many–especially low-income families and essential workers–went hungry or faced food insecurity during the recent government shutdown, the conversation about nourishment feels even more meaningful. But the truth is that many of us, especially BIPOC and women leaders, are not actually nourished in the first place.
In my coaching practice, I see a consistent pattern: leaders who work straight through lunch, leaders who attend “working lunches” but are too caught up to eat, and leaders who graze on quick snacks, sugar, or caffeine because there’s no time or energy left for anything more. Many are eating at their desks while simultaneously answering emails or putting out fires. Others finally sit down to a meal at the end of the day, long after work has bled into family time, caregiving, and exhaustion. These habits often have little to do with personal choice. They are, in fact, shaped by workplaces and cultures that have taught us–implicitly and explicitly–to disconnect from our bodies in order to keep producing.
How Urgency Pulls Us Away from Our Bodies
When urgency becomes our operating system, we lose touch with hunger, fatigue, irritability, and the subtle cues that tell us what we need. Trauma can blunt interoception–our ability to sense internal cues like hunger, fullness, thirst, fatigue, or overwhelm. Neurodivergence can make bodily signals harder to interpret. Chronic sleep deprivation, excessive caffeine intake, and the mental load of being the “only one” in senior leadership roles all diminish our capacity to listen inward. I often think about my years as provost, when I would suddenly notice that it was late afternoon and I hadn’t eaten since the early hours. I hadn’t made a deliberate choice to skip lunch; I had simply moved so far away from my own body that hunger only registered once I felt depleted or irritable. Today, I try to eat even when I don’t feel hungry yet because I know that once I start eating, my body reconnects and remembers itself. That reconnection is part of the work.
Of course, nourishment isn’t only about those who forget to eat. Many leaders turn to food as a way to soothe or stabilize themselves in environments filled with pressure, microaggressions, and chronic scrutiny. Late-night comfort eating, midday sugar cravings, or using food as a quick emotional stabilizer often reflect deep exhaustion and relentless stress. Then comes the guilt, the self-judgment, and the narrative of “I’ll do better tomorrow.” These cycles are not personal failures. They are predictable outcomes of environments that have never prioritized our well-being, especially for BIPOC leaders and other nontraditional leaders who are carrying both their responsibilities and the emotional labor of survival.
When high stress, chronic overwork, irregular meals, and insufficient rest collide, the impacts are well documented: increased rates of diabetes, hypertension, anxiety, depression, and burnout. This is a health equity issue as much as a personal well-being issue. To heal our relationship with food is to interrupt a system-level pattern of depletion. Nourishment becomes an act of resistance. Food becomes a form of self and collective care. Nutrition becomes leadership fuel. Instead of reinforcing the old binary between “work” and “body,” we begin to understand that the quality of our leadership is intimately tied to how we tend to the sacred vessel we live in.
Reclaiming Food as Fuel for Liberated Leadership
As leaders, we need practices that help us reconnect with our bodies rather than override them. For some, this might look like creating intentional snack stations with nourishing options or inviting team members to take turns to replenish a “collective nourishment station”. For others, it may be protecting a lunch break to walk around outside or incorporating small movement breaks throughout the day to release tension and reclaim presence. I often invite clients to schedule a short body check every hour: a moment to ask, “Do I need to hydrate? Eat? Move? Breathe? Use the bathroom?” It sounds simple, but for many of us, these small acts signal a profound shift from survival to sustainability. The goal is not perfection; it is reconnection. The goal is not weight loss; it is well-being.
As we enter a season that offers overconsumption as compensation for toxic depletion and self abandonment, I invite you to consider a more liberating approach. What might leadership feel like if nourishment–real nourishment–were a non-negotiable part of your day? Every day, not just on Thanksgiving. What becomes possible when you treat your body not as an inconvenience but as an ally? How might your decisions, relationships, and energy shift if you allowed yourself to be fully fueled?
As you reflect, I offer a few questions to help bring you home to your body:
What patterns do I fall into around food when I am under pressure?
Where in my workday do I disconnect from my body’s signals
What messages about food, productivity, and worth did I inherit or internalize?
How does stress shape what, when, and how I eat?
What forms of nourishment–food, rest, movement, connection, spirituality–does my leadership actually require?
What is one practice I can commit to this week that supports reconnection with my body?
Nourishing yourself is not a reward for surviving the day, or the season. It is a right. And it is a foundation for the kind of liberated leadership that sustains both you and the communities you serve.
Chinyere Oparah is an executive coach, strategist and educator. She has served in senior leadership roles in the nonprofit and higher education sectors, including dean, provost and vice president for academic affairs for over three decades and is the founder and CEO of the Center for Liberated Leadership, and NeuroSpicy Leaders. Sign up for a free leadership consultation with her here.
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About the Center for Liberated Leadership
The Center for Liberated Leadership connects and supports BIPOC, women, LGBTQ and transformational leaders so that they can lead with authenticity, purpose and joy. The Center's executive coaches help leaders navigate uncertain contexts and relentless workloads, beat burnout and maintain sustainable work practices.
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