THE IMPORTANCE OF FUELLING YOUR BODY WITH NUTRITIOUS, HEALTHY FOOD EVEN ON BUSY DAYS

Last week I had a busy day at work and went straight to my Japanese evening course. I hadn’t eaten properly since breakfast. I’ve not formally studied for quite a while and so I need to concentrate to make sure I’m following. The first half of the evening was fine and then hunger and, I imagine, low blood sugar kicked in. I was startled at the change that came over me.

I lost the ability to follow and sentences I had been forming a little while earlier now had me bewildered. The fuzzy mind was not pleasant but what took me by surprise was the shift in my mood. I had been in a positive mind during the day and for the first part of the evening. The course is not easy but I had been motivated to do well and quite proud that I was attempting something new. By the time I left the course and during the hour and a half drive home I became shaky and my mood plummeted. Now all I could think was ‘What’s the point’ and this grew to encompass not only the learning of a new language but a far more expansive view. I was frightened by how powerful the feelings were. I stopped at a garage for food, and I bought both some sweets and some fruit. I ate two sweets and felt drunk – clearly loading up on refined sugar was not the answer. The traffic was crawling, so I had no quick escape from my low mind set. I began eating the fruit slowly, eventually my mind cleared and by the time I got home the low mood had shifted and the fuzziness had gone.

I was left with a clear understanding of how much sugar can affect my body and also my mind. What I also understood was that my somewhat erratic approach to eating and meals was leaving me operating at less than my optimal level. My days are far from structured, but I need to ensure that I have something close at hand that doesn’t give me a ‘high’ but that does provide something healthy and filling to tide me over until my next meal. Bizarrely, even though I make a range of snacks that fit the profile perfectly, it hadn’t dawned on me to make sure I carry a few packs with me as my emergency food.

The whole episode opened a new understanding of the dangers of refined sugar, and an aspect that I feel is not often addressed, the cycle of eating sugar for a lift only to have it followed by a dip a short while afterwards, is not only a problem for the body, the potential for low moods is seriously increased by this cycle. It may be that this is a period of increased stress for me, and this is why I was so badly affected by letting myself get hungry to the point of becoming shaky, This has been a timely lesson for me and I am committed to a much greater awareness of the need to look after my mind through the foods I choose to eat.