On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 3

So, say you've managed to figure out that a certain "weird" sensation in your head most likely means you are either hungry, thirsty, or both -- or that (on the less optimistic side of things) you've once again found yourself practically falling over at your desk because somehow nine or more hours have managed to pass since that energy bar you had for breakfast.

At this point, figuring out why whatever unpleasant thing is happening to you is happening is only one part of the equation -- the other is determining how to do something about it.



Three major components may come into play at this point:

- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you may not have the "brain bandwidth" or cognitive energy (or whatever you want to call it) at that point to initiate anything beyond a short, simple set of steps, if that.

- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you may not be able to readily task-switch from whatever else you happen to be doing at the time you realize this.

- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you might be missing some cue or environmental prompt that you generally need in order to actually prepare and/or eat food.

Needless to say, all of these components can factor into one's nutritional-intake challenges, though people will certainly vary in how intensely they experience any one of them, or in whether they ever experience just one or all three or different ones at different times, and so on. But they all essentially deal with the situation described above: that is, the "OK, I'm hungry, now how the heck do I get to food?"

Now, everyone alive probably experiences transition issues to some extent.

But I am mainly gearing this piece toward people who can relate to things like, say

...having a refrigerator full of food but ending up skipping dinner because you are in the living room and the fridge isn't where you can see it,

...or going "WTF, brain?" upon realizing you've managed to read half a book and build up a Lego kit but somehow can't figure out how to make yourself a sandwich, even though you've made sandwiches before and know intellectually what steps are involved.

...or repeatedly going "I'll eat right after I finish [thing]", even when [thing] ends up stretching over a period of many hours, as you know that you risk losing a ton of work and not being able to jump back into the task readily if you take a break.

If you've never experienced anything like this then you might have trouble imagining how anyone could (without it being something as simple as a "willpower issue"). But if you have experienced it you will likely know exactly what I mean when I say that transition issues are not really related to willpower (and can actually be exacerbated by trying to "push" too hard in a particular direction), and that they can exist even when someone is totally intellectually aware of the importance of proper nutrition, and highly motivated to live in a healthy manner.

In other words, I am writing this from the standpoint of someone who has been in the position of having figured out I'm hungry, knowing full well I should eat, knowing that I need a certain amount of water and nutrients to survive and function optimally, and having tremendous motivation -- and yet still not eating well. Clearly if a person is in that situation, the issue is not going to be addressed by reading a book on willpower or studying up on vitamin ratios! But what will it be addressed by?

Well, personally (meaning the usual "this applies to me but may not to you" disclaimer applies) identifying transitions and inertia (in the cognitive sense as opposed to the physics sense) as factors impacting multiple areas of my life has been tremendously helpful in giving me a starting point for dealing at least partly with problems that seemed frustratingly recurrent prior to this realization.

I.e., I've learned that when I am able to minimize the number of transitions I experience during a given time period, I am:

- More effective at doing any individual task
- Better able to make sense of my environment (e.g., less likely to experience cognitive/sensory overload)
- Better able to gauge my actual ability at doing certain things (as I am not burning up all my energy dealing with transitions)
- Better at dealing with unexpected transitions

And so on.

In terms of specific eating-related advice, again I cannot emphasize enough that this will not apply to everyone, but I've found the following useful to keep in mind:

- Prepare meals in advance (and in quantity) when possible

Now this could be you preparing the meals if you have the ability to do so, or it could be someone else (i.e., a carer, personal attendant, or parent), but in any case, if preparation is not something you can do yourself or get help doing on an everyday basis, it can be extremely helpful to (for instance) have all your lunches for the coming week packed and sitting in the fridge by Sunday afternoon.

Quite recently, for a variety of reasons (in particular more transitions than usual...), my own lunch regimen went pretty horribly downhill -- a few weeks ago it had gotten to the point where I was scarcely packing anything at all in the morning and consequently ending up going the whole work day on perhaps a granola bar or two. Yipe! When I realized that was going on, I took it as yet another reminder that it is beyond silly for me to just assume "oh I'll make myself a lunch" every evening the way I was doing.

It is one thing to have intentions, it is quite another to actually be able to follow through with them, and for me, having to deal with choosing, preparing, and packing a lunch every single morning or evening is way too many transitions. So, as of about three weeks ago at the time of my writing this, I've been packing my weekday lunches into small re-usable containers as shown:



...and this is working quite splendidly. Essentially I've eaten the same lunch (raw mixed vegetables, hummus dip, multi-grain pita chips, and an apple) every day for the past three weeks, but as I don't tend to tire of things I like easily, this has been no problem. And I've gotten in a decent amount of midday nutrients since I started doing this again. Eventually I will probably want to rotate in some other victuals, but regardless I will definitely try to keep to the "prepare lunches all at once on the weekend and put them in the fridge" routine.

Anyway, if you are going to try this, you will need to acquire some containers (I use the re-usable plastic ones as shown, but have been considering getting a few bento boxes) for putting the actual foodstuffs in, an insulated lunch bag of some sort if you plan to be taking your lunches anywhere, and of course, food!

Again of course the foods you eat will have to take into consideration what you can tolerate (taste-wise, texture-wise, in light of any food allergies or medical conditions, etc.), so I would not be able to give a definitive list of specific items here, but I can suggest that you acquire things that are going to keep for at least a week in the refrigerator. E.g., fresh raw hardy vegetables like broccoli and carrots, soup, rice with a separate sauce, or anything else you can eat that isn't super perishable or likely to be unappetizing by the fourth or fifth day.

If you don't have regular access to a refrigerator you can look up dehydrated or other highly sturdy items but I don't have a lot of experience in that department aside from the fact that I have actually manage to survive some of the toughest food intervals in my life practically on trail mix alone!

- Keep (healthy, conveniently packaged) food and liquid within reach

If you find that you tend to hang out in one area a lot (e.g., your desk or a particular room), and that one of your main challenges to eating regularly is that this room does not happen to be the kitchen or pantry, then it would logically follow that it makes sense to put food closer to where you usually are.

Not all your food, mind you, but enough (and enough that isn't nutritionally void -- you cannot in fact thrive on Sweet Tarts and Mountain Dew for very long, LAN parties notwithstanding) so that you don't sit there for hours knowing vaguely perhaps that you "should" eat but not having enough sustenance for a gnat in your immediate vicinity. The key is to avoid the vicious circle in which you sort of figure you ought to be eating and then end up not doing so for much, much longer than you might have otherwise because your brain is getting lower and lower on fuel.

E.g., at work I usually keep trail mix or an energy bar within arm's reach of my desk at all times, and at home (though I often need reminders if I am going to be home alone for a bit, which happens infrequently enough such that I don't really have a routine for it), food is usually at least close enough to get rapidly. And I now take a water bottle out with me every day as a matter of habit (though at work I find it's pretty crucial to make sure and take it out of my lunchbox before getting really absorbed in something, lest I forget it exists!).

The diagram below shows a potential "easy-nutritional access layout" (with bonus dish area and wastebasket for clutter-management).



- Watch out for potential nutritional imbalances caused by making a particular thing too available

While most of my own issues have tended toward not eating enough due to task-inertia or brain-stickiness or whatever you want to call it, I've also noted and at times personally experienced the "eat it all because it's there" phenomenon.

Sometimes a particular food (or food-like substance, as certain highly processed items might more properly be called) can be a kind of awesome sensory delight unto itself, leading to your consuming it in quantity even if you aren't very hungry. Other times, it could just be that once you start eating something, you just don't stop until whatever you can see is gone.

Anyway, I have found that in these sorts of situations, I can actually engage in a sort of "intertial hijack" due to being aware that if a package is closed up and in another room, I will likely not deplete its contents rapidly no matter how yummy they are. E.g., I really really really like dark chocolate, and if you put a bag of dark chocolate chips in front of me, I can pretty handily devour the whole thing and not even realize it until my eyeballs start vibrating (from all that caffeine and theobromine!) a while later.

So, knowing this tendency, I now store anything chocolate-chip-like in the kitchen and if I happen to be in there and decide I want some chocolate goodness, I will pour out a small quantity into a bowl, close and seal the bag, and then quickly leave the kitchen, bowl in hand. That way, I get the satisfaction of tasty chocolate but am generally too inertial to go back and get more out of the bag within a given span of time!

- Transition issues and perfectionism can really feed into each other, so it's important to watch this carefully if you tend toward both!

E.g., if you're like this you probably want to avoid using food as an "incentive". You wouldn't tell yourself you needed to finish an assignment before you were allowed to breathe, after all, and food is as essential to animal life as air.

This doesn't mean you want to be eating non-stop or that you should be rushing to the refrigerator whenever the mere idea of food occurs to you -- just that you should never make eating at all contingent on finishing an assignment, writing a paper, etc.

If you tend to be inertial, you are going to have enough of a challenge getting up to eat as it is -- and if you have gotten to the point where the only way you can come close to finishing your work, etc., is by delaying basic biological necessities until you're done with the work, you can probably take that as a warning sign that something is seriously wrong with the way you're scheduled!

- Consider Prompting and Cues

A "cue" in this context might be considered something like: being able to see food or drink, being able to reach food or drink, having someone else in the room, having someone else leave the room, etc. etc. A "prompt" might be someone telling you to eat, a checklist item telling you to eat, etc.

It can be difficult to know what kinds of things cue or prompt you into eating and some people may need assistance in figuring this out, but in any case if you can figure it out it's a good thing to take note of.

E.g., I've determined that I need to be extra-systematic about my eating at work because there's so much about that environment that seems to be not conducive to even remembering food exists (similar for when I'm home alone), but when my partner is around I don't need to be quite so vigilant about either checklists or routines because for some reason even just having him sitting across the room for me makes it more likely for me to recall that I have a tasty snack in the kitchen I could presumably go get.

And I don't entertain visitors often, but whenever someone does come over I find that for some reason a "politeness program" kicks in and I am compelled to offer food to the visitors, meaning I am more likely to actually eat something myself!

In terms of actually using this, mostly it has helped me know when I might need to be more or less vigilant, or what situations might tend to lead to needing more reminders, etc.

- Your Plan (and your life) should be Sustainable!

Now, I am quite interested in sustainability in the sense of using natural and industrial resources wisely and with a view of the long term in mind. However, that isn't the kind of sustainability I am referring to here -- rather, I am referring to the measure of how well one can actually maintain decent eating habits over time.

For me and a lot of others who might be able to relate to the kinds of experiences I've discussed herein, one thing that's taken me ages to learn is that there are some things you just shouldn't compromise on, even if you occasionally can. Eating (and moreover, eating well) is one of those things, and I've definitely found that it's very easy to slip back into bad habits if I try to cram too much (and particularly too many transitions) into my life at once.

For example, that period in college wherein I was supposedly peeing out evidence of musculature in the process of being digested, I had actually managed to completely neglect the notion that food was even a priority. I did not build any time for meals into my own schedule, and hence they became an afterthought at best. And I've done similar things even since graduating and getting a job, and I now consider that I will probably need to "watch" these tendencies in myself indefinitely in order to avoid really serious issues from cropping up.

Frankly it was only actually experiencing various levels of "crashing" and serious unpleasantness that got me to realize that I couldn't sustain the kinds of levels I felt like I "should" be sustaining, based on various cultural expectations I'd absorbed coupled with my own perfectionism.

I actually felt guilty almost constantly for the first few years out of college when I started working because I wasn't going out if my way to try and attend night classes or do other Symbolic Gestures of Career Commitment the way some of my co-workers of similar age were -- but the thing was, I just could not summon the...power or energy or whatever necessary to even begin to set up after-work classes, let alone actually attend them. And it took me a long time to determine that part of the problem with this would be that it would entail way more transitions than I could manage, which would impact everything from sleep to food to cognitive regulation.

Hence, I know first-hand how difficult it can be to challenge the prevailing "only people who work 80 hour weeks are responsible and ambitious" mentality that seems to especially proliferate in certain sectors of the USA. But if at all possible I would recommend that you take stock of your life, your schedule, and the number of transitions...you don't want to have to end up melting down in a manager's office babbling about how you "need to learn to emulate human behavior" or semi-incoherently finding your way back to your desk after nearly falling over in the lab due to a crash in blood sugar.

That kind of thing is preventable, and shouldn't happen very often at all if your life is set up in a sustainable manner -- which for many of us can entail making sure we are not tiring ourselves out so much with transitions that we can't find our way to the refrigerator in the evenings! Remember that there are many, many options for pursuing hobbies, projects, and career development (especially for those of us with Internet access and, heck, library access) and that a lot of the time you might very well be able to find a non-standard path toward even a rather ambitious goal that doesn't mean sacrificing your nutritional consumption or any other aspect of self care.