Body and Mind
This isn’t going to be your usual feed your body, feed your mind sort of post. Those things usually fall into one of two categories; eat this food or that for your brain, you know, the way your mother would tell you to eat your fish, it’s brain food.
Then there’s the touchy feely nonsense about being mindful of your food. That’s not to say I’m not mindful of my food, I mean, whenever I’m eating I concentrate hard enough to get it into my mouth.
No, I’m talking about something completely different. Food is fuel, fuel is energy and you need energy for both body and mind.
I’ve written about the shit bag of a week I’ve had, fighting one of my periodic depressions. I passed the worst of it a few days ago, and was pretty much out the other side yesterday. This morning, I decided to do an experiment.
I fasted.
After breakfast, I got to work, without realizing that pickings were a little slim for lunch. By the time I realized this, it was a bit late to bake a couple of loaves of bread for my normal lunchtime sammiches. There were some leftovers from last night, but I wanted to make sure the boys had enough lunch, and this little experiment occurred to me:
- What if I fasted for a few hours? What would that do to my recovery? Would it slow it down, or have no effect?
Well, it turns out the result was fairly easy to feel. Not only did it slow my recovery down, it actually moved me backwards along the recovery curve. Later in the afternoon, after I had baked some bread and was able to eat my lunch, the backslide stopped.
I didn’t get back to where I was this morning just by eating a late lunch, but it certainly stopped the recurring depression in its tracks.
So today’s lesson in nutrition is:
Food for your body is food for your mind. Your brain is an organ of your body, and your psychological well-being depends on keeping it properly fueled. Fuel you body, fuel your mind, and keep yourself on an even keel.
