You probably hear about overeating all (alllllllllllllllllllll) the time because to be honest our society is a little obsessed with painting eating as a bad thing or a weakness and the focus of what it means to eat “healthy” seems to be excessively on all the things to not eat and the latest “tricks, “hacks” and “tips” for how to eat less. Personally, I think it’s rarely even questioned anymore it’s just become the stock standard to deliver very generic, non-creative and non-useful eat less messages. Oh, that and of course the unavoidable reality that the diet industry sells.
Anyhow with that bright and chirpy introduction out of the way… in this post we’re actually going to take a quick look at the other side of the equation and that is undereating.
You’d probably be surprised to learn how common undereating is but as a dietitian working with numerous people of all ages and all walks of life daily, I can assure you it’s real and it’s meaningful.
What is undereating? Not eating the amount of energy (calories) your body would like you to eat for whatever reason (and you don’t have to be losing weight or visibly skinny to be undereating).
Why does undereating even matter? Because not meeting your body’s energy needs drastically messes with your health and happiness and gosh, we have enough things messing with our health and happiness as it is than to unnecessarily and often unknowingly (or even more commonly with the best of intentions) add yet another hinderance! You truly may be surprised and delighted to experience how much of a difference getting your nutrition on track can make to your enjoyment (and likely length) of life!
So, without further ado here are 6 signs your brain is trying to send you a very important message – “eat some more please!”
- Are You More Tired, Lethargic or Emotionally Down Than You’d Like?
One of the first things your body will do when you’re not getting enough energy is to prioritise the energy you are eating to go towards the areas of your body where it is absolutely needed (aka your vital organs including your heart and lungs).
What this means is that you naturally become less interested in non-essential movement and interests. This is not a deliberate choice it’s a call your body makes out of your conscious awareness and control which means it is not something you can willpower your way out of or into feeling happy or doing more. If not eating enough is a component in any way to your depression, low mood, low interest or low energy the only way to regain your energy, vitality and interest is though eating more energy dense and nourishing foods (for examples of such foods see my earlier post “What Is Healthy Eating Anyway?”).
2. Do You Often Find Yourself Irritable Or Quick to Anger?
Your blood glucose (or sugar) levels (BGLs/BSLs) affect your mood tremendously, perhaps more than anything else in the short term.
Normally between meals your body is quite adept at releasing glucose (from previous meals stored in your liver in the form of glycogen) to maintain your BGLs within a narrow range that your brain and body like but if you’re not eating enough at those meals or not eating enough carbohydrates or energy in general (any of the three macros) you won’t have enough glycogen stores to release adequate glucose.
When your BGLs drop this plays all sorts of havoc on your mental functioning including making you feel irritable and get angry more quickly than you’d like. All just because you haven’t eaten well which is sad but also super interesting because it makes you question how much of what people do is their “personality” or just that they’re not eating good!?… There are plenty of studies done in prisons where they’ve changed the prisoner’s diets to healthy diets and the results have been monumental changes in not just anger levels but other measures of hostility we’d often label as personality traits or choices. What does this mean? Eating well allows us to be calmer and exert higher levels of free will. In a nutshell eat well and be kinder. Awesome!
3. Do You Find You Are Easily Distracted And Find It Hard to Concentrate?
Your short term BGLs affect your ability to focus and concentrate and therefore your ability to learn and be productive!
To me that’s huge because focus, concentration and clarity are invaluable to the success of the work I do. I have to be present and at the top of my game 100% of the time I am with a client. Is focus, concentration and clear thinking important in your work?
If you were more focused and had higher concentration, didn’t experience that brain fog or afternoon slump can you imagine how much more you could achieve in a day, week, month, year, years?
Having a brain that does what you want is the greatest skill you can learn because that thing is powerful af and that thing is with you for life. Its powerfulness will forever be a hinderance until you learn how to use it and being well fed allows you to be in a position to truly use it because the learning and the work to master your brain are literally impossible from a state of suboptimal nutrition. Optimal nutrition turns on capabilities you didn’t know you had. Eat well and you give yourself a chance.
4. Has Your Interest in Sex Dropped Or Are You Finding It Hard to Conceive?
Undereating is a major cause of infertility both in men and women.
If you’re a woman and undereating you can lose your period (amenorrhoea) which means that you’re not ovulating and therefore can’t fall pregnant. Your body knows that if you can’t feed yourself there’s no point in falling pregnant because you couldn’t provide the nutrition necessary to grow a baby (that s*it’s a lot of work!).
The other sad thing about undereating that I help people with regularly is that the excitement, fun and play of sex and even flirting and foreplay go out the window. Usually one person in the couple feels rejected and the one with little interest feels embarrassed, ashamed or just plain annoyed when the reality is it’s not personal! Not for either because when you’re undereating your body is prioritising stability, predictability and rigidity over play. You need your energy just to do the things you have to do and fun takes extra calories. If this is extra calories you don’t have it means no flirting and romping with your beloved!
Eat more, laugh more and have better sex. It feels like a no brainer… For some quick tips on the best foods to include for an epic love life have a little peruse of my earlier blog post “8 Top Foods for Mind Blowing Sex”.
5. Do You Feel On Edge, Anxious, Stressed Or Regularly Overwhelmed?
When you are underfed your body is in a constant state of stress and hyper alertness.
When you are underfed you are on the lookout for food at an unconscious level which means that even when you don’t know that is what you’re doing, or this is what you’re anxious about it is.
Studies show that people who are more prone to anxiety function a whole lot better when their BGLs are maintained through having regular meals and snacks throughout the day. Not a super hard thing to do but with all the “snacking is bad” messages and more recently the focus on intermittent fasting (see my blog “Is Fasting Good for You?” for more info on this) this can get a little complicated. Therefore, it comes back to you knowing you. If you recognise that you are prone to being on the anxiety and excessive worry end of the spectrum more than you’d like it might be worth experimenting with carrying a few extra snacks because while some people can go hours between meals this may not be you and that’s ok! There’s plenty of us snackers out there I promise you but also who cares honestly because you don’t have to spend all that time with any snackers or non-snackers but you do have to spend all that time with you! Eat well and be your own best friend instead of your own personal catastrophe fortune teller!
6. Do You Think About The Same Thing Over And Over Or Find It Hard to Make Decisions?
The dilemmas you’re faced with as a modern human and the decisions you’re expected to make are quite extraordinary.
An underfed brain is in stress mode and you know how much harder it is to make decisions under stress, even the simple ones become overwhelming. There is no way that you would be capable of making successful and swift decisions without a well-functioning prefrontal cortex (the front and most newly evolved part of your brain).
To give you an idea you may have heard that your brain takes 20-30% of the calories you eat in any one day just to function and brain scans show that the areas of your brain being used use up more glucose than those not being used and while this makes sense what it means in real life is that eating well actually means you can use more of your brain. You’re more creative and able to generate new possibilities and that’s pretty important depending of course on how well you want to make decisions. What’s the moral of the story? Feed your brain so that all parts of it can do their job effectively and efficiently.
Take Home Messages
There is nothing more fundamental to our survival than energy regulation therefore, your body takes any form of perceived food scarcity damn seriously!
One of the hugest shames of undereating is the effects it has on your mental health and wellbeing. When you don’t eat enough it detracts from your ability to play, be creative, connect with others and generally be passionately engaged in the experience of your life because it is energy which allows you to experience passion and be fully engaged in your life and energy comes from what you fuel your body with (aka food).
If your nutrition is unknowingly holding you back from experiencing the level of joyous engagement in your life you desire no amount of therapy, no strategy, tool, plan, self-insight, knowledge or goal setting no matter how great will be of help because at the end of the day you actually don’t have the capability to experience those things. It’s not personal and there’s nothing wrong with you it’s biological.
Well-fed people are kind people, well fed people are generous people, well-fed people are productive people and we need more of those in this world.
If you suspect you’re not one that’s awesome because it means you can become one! The only reason we hate confronting our flaws and what’s wrong in our life (including our thoughts and feelings) is if we are in the mindset that we can’t change. To identify things, you don’t like about your life, even about yourself and then “know” you can’t change them is depressing by any definition whereas when you know you can change (no matter how small) that’s when it’s exciting. What you eat is something you can change and if you want to do it well and learn how to use your brain at the same time get in touch with me because you can’t know the value until you’ve experienced it. So, the choice is in your hands, now.
With my whole heart I trust you found this information useful and inspiring
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
