sad food

A friend at work told me that she's made a few changes to her diet recently, and is finding herself filled with a great deal more energy in the evenings than she used to have.  Those changes are only really in her lunch habits, which she changed to include a fair few more complex carbohydrates (three-bean chili was today's dish, for instance).  Suddenly, she finds herself much more awake into the evening, much more energetic and engaged, she reports.  It's like she's a different person from this tiny change alone.

This is alarming to consider.  It makes me wonder how much of our feelings are us, and how much are simply the chemical reactions occurring in our bloodstreams.  If you can be changed so fundamentally by making a different choice for lunch, what are you?  Are you just what you eat?

It seems it must simply be a thin fabric of personality and feeling, easily broken and easily replaced, over a chunk of memory and habit.  But memory, too, is inconstant, and sometimes seems rather randomly accessible.  At least habit is solid.  Habit is concrete.  Habit, on the margins, is people.

I generally eat a similar diet every day, and the only thing that really alters my mood therefore is how much water I remember to drink.  Enough, and I'm my usually ecstatic, bubbly self.  An insufficient amount, and my mood can become very dour indeed.

Do you think about the effects of the food you eat on your psyche?  Do you wonder at your true nature as you snack on a bagel?  Do the competing demands of your mind and body work together to serve you, or are you their servant?

There is no escape from it.  We are bound to the realities of chemistry.  Our choices can only ever be incremental, and must first seek approval from those chemical bonds.  But there is a way out, with discipline, and common sense, and mutual support.  If that's what you are.