UAE
7 nutrition mistakes that could be hurting your productivity and performance at work in Dubai
Busy professionals often overlook the link between food, hydration and brain function, says Dubai-based fitness and nutrition coach. Here’s how to fix it.
By Sanya NayeemPublished: 2026-06-30T12:04:00+04:009 min read
Dubai: Have you ever sat in a meeting and tried to say a certain word – just to draw a blank? Or felt irritable and short-tempered with your colleagues without really knowing why? The reason behind it may surprise you.
According to Hannah Lucy Murphy, founder of Hannah Lucy Fitness and Nutrition in Dubai, such performance issues have everything to do with proper nutrition and hydration.
The British nutritionist and body composition coach said: “What people [don’t] understand is the version of you who walks into a 9am meeting having already moved your body and eaten something real is operating on a completely different level than the version who rolled out of bed and went straight from car to desk to coffee. One of you is thinking quicker, reading the room better, making sharper calls and ultimately getting the outcomes they want. The other is running on fumes, struggling to think, and behind the game.”
Murphy has seen this time and again. She has a degree in sports studies, Level 4 qualifications in nutrition and personal training – the gold standard in fitness and dietary programming, according to UK-based Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) – and has won five titles in bodybuilding, including the Pro European Championship in 2022 and Pro Universe Championship in 2023.
Most importantly, Murphy knows the struggle to stay fit when you’re juggling being a mum of two, and working in a high-stakes corporate environment. She worked for 16 years as the chief operating officer of a company, and managed a team of 75. She said: “I understand my clients as I worked it myself!”
Murphy has since become an entrepreneur, designing nutrition and fitness programmes for women professionals over 35, who want strength, confidence, and a lifestyle change. Both Murphy and her business are new to the city; she moved here from the Isle of Man, and completes one year in Dubai in September, this year.
She said: “I set up [my business] in September [2025], as soon as I arrived. I love Dubai. I love how encouraging everyone is, connecting you and wanting you to succeed.”
The science behind nutrition and brain function
Today, Murphy deals with very busy clients – from busy CEOs to business owners and corporate leaders. She said the biggest misconception she sees with high-achieving professionals, men and women alike, is that nutrition is filed under ‘health goals’ rather than ‘performance tools’.
This is ironic, because food and water “are the literal inputs your brain runs on. Glucose is your brain’s primary fuel source, water makes up roughly 75% of brain tissue, and focus, mood, and decision-making all come down to neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers (dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, among others) that carry signals between brain cells. Every one of them is built from nutrients you ate that day. So, when someone tells me they want to fall asleep in a 2pm meeting, or were short-tempered with their team, I’m not looking at their calendar first. I’m looking at what they ate (or didn’t at all), and whether they’re dehydrated.”
With Murphy’s help, Emirates 24/7 broke down exactly how your input (food, water) impacts your output (performance), and how to achieve a balance that lets you deliver optimally, every single time.
1. Drink enough water
According to a March 2025 study published in the global journal International Journal of Academic Medicine and Pharmacy, even mild dehydration – one to two percent loss of body weight due to fluid deficit – has been shown to affect cognitive performance, mood regulation, and reaction time.
Murphy said: “At a recent presentation, this statistic made a room full of executives reach for their water glasses. Mild dehydration… is less than a litre of fluid for most people, and has been shown to impair concentration, alertness, short-term memory, and to slow reaction time. In practical office terms, that’s the meeting where you can’t quite land on the word you want, the email you read three times before it makes sense. People assume that’s tiredness or stress. Often, it’s just lack of water or salt in the body.”
One reason why you might be dehydrated is because you’re likely working in an air-conditioned environment for eight to ten hours a day. Murphy said: “It’s underestimated. Air conditioning takes moisture from the air, increasing what’s called insensible water loss – fluid lost through breathing and skin without ever feeling thirsty for it. Living in [a desert climate], you go from dehydrating heat the second you step outside, to a cold, dry office for nine hours. Thirst is also a notoriously late signal. By the time you feel it, you’re already behind.”
So, how do you catch up? You don’t. Murphy advises staying ahead, instead.
She explained: “The best thing to do is front-load hydration rather than chasing it later in the day: a large glass of water with electrolytes to start the day. I find buying a reusable bottle to drink through the day rather than trying to have a glass of water here and there [works best]. My goal is to drink two to three litres per day.”
The standard eight glasses of water a day rule you might have heard, equates to about two litres. A January 2026 report by the US-based Mayo Clinic, however, says that’s general advice, and not a real rule. The amount of water a person’s body needs changes, depending on your health, age, how active you are, where you live, and the weather.
According to the Mayo Clinic report, some studies suggest that the average healthy adult will get enough water if they take in about 11.5 cups (2.7 litres) to 15.5 cups (3.7 litres) of total fluid in a day.
2. Don’t mistake thirst for hunger
There may have been times in the past, when you’ve declared you’re feeling ‘hangry’ – a combination of hungry and angry. In such moments, it’s likely you’re just thirsty, instead.
Murphy explained: “The part of the brain that controls thirst and the part that controls hunger sit right next to each other and use overlapping signals, which means dehydration very often presents as hunger. That 4pm urge to raid the snack drawer is, more often than people realise, a glass of water in disguise. Drink first, wait ten minutes, and the ‘hunger’ frequently disappears on its own.”
Sometimes, you may misread dehydration as stress, as well. Murphy said: “Headaches, irritability, that mid-afternoon wall, difficulty concentrating, all classic dehydration symptoms are routinely misread as burnout.”
3. That sweet craving you’re having is your body needing energy
Blood sugar stability also plays a “huge” role in workplace performance, according to Murphy. She said: “Blood sugar swings directly affect cognitive function and impulse control. When glucose spikes and crashes, so does your ability to think clearly and resist the path of least resistance. It helps to understand why sugar cravings feel so strong: your brain needs energy constantly, and sugar is simply the fastest route to get it.”
At that moment, your brain isn’t weighing long-term consequences – it just knows your body needs fuel. Right now.
Murphy explained: “It’s not malicious, it’s just not built to think ahead. Immediate need overrides any sense of future consequence. That’s exactly why the 11am sugar dip leads to a rushed decision, and why a carb-heavy, protein-light lunch makes a 3pm strategy call feel impossible. To keep blood sugars stable, think protein, fibre, and healthy fats at each meal alongside your carbohydrates.”
There’s a social layer to the intake of high-carb products in the workplace that Murphy highlights: “If someone brings fruit into the office, nobody bats an eye when a colleague says “No thanks”. But if someone brings in a cake or a box of pastries, suddenly declining requires an explanation.”
The dynamic gets more consequential the more senior the person bringing the food is. That’s why, if you’re a manager or team leader, knowing how blood sugar swings can affect your staff is vital.
Murphy said: “A manager who runs a weekly high-fat breakfast for the team thinks they’re doing something generous and the gesture is genuinely well-intentioned. But the effect is a few minutes of taste, followed by the entire team running sluggish for the rest of the day. If you’re in a leadership position and you actually want to look after your team, the more useful question is: what would genuinely support their output and reduce sick days, not just feel like a nice moment on a Monday? Wellness initiatives that protect energy and focus return far more to the business than a pastry box ever will.”
4. Never skip protein
So, what should you be eating at breakfast, instead of that croissant your colleague brought in? According to Murphy, whatever you choose to eat, make sure it has enough protein.
According to a June 2023 report published in US-based Harvard Medical School’s health publication, the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) – the amount of a nutrient you need to meet your basic nutritional requirements – for protein is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogramme of body weight.
Murphy said: “Protein at every meal is non-negotiable, it stabilises blood sugar and supplies the amino acids your brain uses to build those same focus-related neurotransmitters. Omega-3s from fatty fish, walnuts, and flaxseed support cognitive function. Complex carbohydrates, oats, quinoa, and sweet potato give a slower, steadier glucose release than refined carbs. And hydration with electrolytes, especially in this climate, counts as a nutrient in its own right.”
5. Don’t skip breakfast, and never replace it with coffee
A June 2020 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that drinking black coffee before breakfast can have a negative effect on blood glucose control – it increases its levels by around 50%.
It’s why Murphy strongly advises avoiding relying on caffeine as a meal replacement. She said: “Drink a large glass of water with a pinch of salt or an electrolyte sachet before your first coffee of the day. It interrupts the single most common pattern I see: going straight to caffeine on a dehydrated, depleted system. Given the climate here, it does more for sustained energy than almost anything else I could recommend.”
Other things she would avoid include “regularly eating sugary pastries that spike and crash you within the hour, and skipping meals entirely under the illusion that it’s more efficient. It isn’t. Research has found that those who skip breakfast are far more likely to eat an extra 400 calories per day, compared to those who eat a protein-rich breakfast.”
6. Have a plan for your meals
If you want to be a high achiever, who is always operating at peak performance, you have to treat nutrition differently.
Murphy explained: “The ones who do it well remove decisions entirely. They don’t decide what to eat each day, they’ve built a structure that decides for them. Protein-forward breakfasts, batch-prepped lunches, water as a default rather than an afterthought. They treat nutrition the same way they treat their calendar: planned in advance, not improvised under pressure.”
Many of her clients have ‘anchor meals’ – consistent, reliable and high-protein meals. Murphy explained: “These are their go-to meals that they don’t need to think about, and have at hand to grab at any time, knowing the meal will fuel their day and support their fitness and nutrition goals.”
Anchor meals centre around a reliable protein source, like eggs, Greek yoghurt, chicken, or tofu, that gives you roughly around 25 to 40g of protein per meal. The carbohydrates and fats that go along with it are adjustable. For instance, you can swap rice for sweet potatoes, or avocado for olive oil.
7. Nutrition is not an afterthought, it’s the foundation
The next time you feel lethargic, stressed or irritable, consider what you ate and drank that day. It impacts you more than you think.
According to Murphy, most professionals neglect nutrition because “it’s not measured the way everything else in their life is. High achievers optimise what shows up on a dashboard – revenue, deadlines, key performance indicators (KPIs). Nutrition has no dashboard… so it gets deprioritised daily until the cumulative cost shows up as burnout or a performance plateau nobody can explain.”
Murphy stressed that nutrition is the foundation that everything else is built on: “Identity and performance aren’t only built in the boardroom. They’re built three times a day, every time you choose what goes on your plate or whether you pick up that glass of water.”
