When I am too busy, I easily forget meals. I don’t even notice that I’m hungry, or sometimes I do notice but just tell myself that I’ll eat “soon”. Then I suddenly realise that it’s two o’clock and I haven’t had lunch, and my stomach is growling and my blood sugar is far too low. As a result I’ve had trouble keeping my weight – if I don’t take care, I lose weight. (While that may sound like a good thing if you have the opposite problem, trust me, it’s not.) I’m taking special care now that I’m breastfeeding, because I need to eat enough not only for myself but also for Ingrid.

Two things help me make sure I get enough food. One is to ALWAYS have food at hand. If getting food means interrupting whatever interesting and important thing that I’m doing to take the lift down to the cafeteria and queue to get a muffin and then get back up, well, that’s just too much work and won’t happen. But if all I need to do is to open a drawer, the equation changes. Of course this only works if I actually want to eat whatever I have at hand, so there must be choice, which is why I have a well-stocked snacks drawer at work. There’s always at least two kinds of cereal bars, and one or two kinds of dried fruit, and I usually bring fresh fruit or yoghurt with me every morning.

The other is to remind myself to eat. I actually have reminders in Outlook at work that simply say “Eat”. One at 11, one at 13 for lunch, and one at 16. My colleagues have been laughing at me for years about these (different colleagues over different years) but it really works. I call this my food and sleep clock, or in Swedish mat- och sovklocka. (The food and sleep clock was invented by Skalman, a green turtle in a Swedish children’s comic. He listens to his a bit more slavishly than I do, though. I don’t fall asleep in the middle of the day.)