A Piece Of My Heart

Diet and Mental Health

How does your diet affect your mental health? Do things like caffeine, fried foods, or high sugar snacks impact your mental health at all? What do you think the connection is between physical and mental health?

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I was thinking about this last night as a matter of fact. The thought came up because I’ve recently been feeling very lethargic and unmotivated. Even things I used to find fun are boring now and my work has been a struggle every day. My to-do list is getting longer and longer and I’m having a difficult time focusing on anything long enough to get it done. I used to never be this way. I used to have an even level of motivation throughout the day and be able to work on something, even something boring, for a long period of time. I was highly motivated to work on undesirable tasks, if only to get them out of the way. I was always one to do the things I dreaded the most first so that I didn’t have to stress about them any more once they were off my plate. That was a really satisfactory way to live and it was helpful to my mentality because I was able to preserve the regular mental breaks I needed so I wouldn’t get burned out. Now though, something has changed. I’ve been dwelling on hard tasks, but not working on them at all. It’s more than procrastination. I know I need to work on them, but I just don’t. And I think last night, I had an epiphany about why.

Caffeine.

I never used to drink coffee or any other type of energy drink. I drank water, and that was it. For some reason, I really couldn’t tell you why, I started drinking the leftover coffee in the pot that my bf makes in the morning. I think it has had a negative effect on my productivity. I’m jittery when I drink too much, and so lethargic as soon as 1pm rolls around that all I can think about it going home from work early. I long for days I have the privilege of working from home, but when those days come, I hardly work at all and convince myself I’ll make up the time later. I sleep way more than I used to and have a wretched time getting up in the morning. I used to consider myself a morning person able to be fresh and ready in the morning without needing much time to wake up. Now, I go to sleep early, wake up late, and still feel tired. With coffee, I can get a solid 4 hours of productive work in before I start to crash, and then I don’t want to drink more coffee since I know it will affect my sleep and make me more tired.

This is all bringing up another thought in my mind about impulse control related to food. When there is food available that I want to eat, especially when the fear exists that if I don’t eat it right then, someone else will eat it, I will eat it even if I’m not hungry. When there is a piece of pizza left in the fridge in the morning, I will eat it for breakfast even when I don’t want to because I worry it will be gone by the time I do want to eat it. I believe this is what happened in my mind when I saw the leftover coffee in the pot. My bf used to make his coffee in the Keurig (only making as much as he needed), but with the pot, there was enough left over for me, and so I drank it! For no other reason than that I didn’t want it to be wasted and I didn’t want someone else to have it. It makes no sense why I feel this way about food. I always had food security as a child. The only potential reasoning I can see for my behavior is that I grew up with a younger sister who stole my food and a constantly dieting mom.

As for other bad-for-you foods like fatty foods or fried foods, they do affect my mental health in that they make me feel bloated and upset with myself for eating them. Physically, they make my body feel heavy, which negatively affects my self-esteem. I know that when I feel good about my body, my mental self-image is more positive as well, so in that way, I do believe physical health and mental health are related.

After writing this post, I’m going to try to focus more intentionally on my food intake again. I lost 30 pounds at the end of last year, but now my weight has plateaued and I’m feeling frustrated again. Maybe cutting the caffeine out will put me back on track.

-Emily