I know, I know, writers are meant to live on booze and cigarettes, but honestly, some of those authors might have written an awful lot more, and for a lot longer, if they had looked after their diet a bit more. I want to look at how to optimise your writing ability through good nutrition.
The Saucy stuff
I have no doubt that people are quite able to write while eating junk food, and over short periods of time they may even do it better - pulling an all-nighter for an essay or similar. But that's not sustainable if you want a career of writing. It does not equip you to sit down day after day without falling asleep after your midday meal or crashing from low blood sugar. Good health only comes with good nutrition.
Hunger vs Willpower
Hunger eats away at willpower, with the result forcing yourself to do something when you're hungry is nigh on impossible. Simple solution: don't let yourself get hungry. Don't wait to eat until it is too late. One of the biggest traps I've found while writing is that you get caught up in what you are doing, and then suddenly realise you're starving. Looking around the kitchen everything seems too difficult, so you end up grabbing some chips or just live on toast. Now toast might get you through the short term, but you'll look back at the week and realise you've not eaten anything but processed carbs. The salad materials you bought have now gone brown and your poor digestive system hasn't seen a vitamin in days. So plan ahead! ... and maybe stock a few meals you've frozen for those inevitable slip ups.
Break your fast in the morning, and break it well. I know, I know, some of you don't like breakfast. You feel as though you're not hungry at that time, and think that it's in-built. But you can train yourself to prefer and even crave a healthy meal to start your day. Start with something, even if it is just a piece of fruit (but if you do only eat fruit, be aware of 'sugar crashes' that can follow natural fruit sugars in the same way it stalks a cake or biscuit).
Plan simple and brain appropriate breakfasts that won't be stressful to make. Plan them now, and add the ingredients to the shopping list. My breakfast ranges from porridge with cinnamon and brown sugar in winter, which is comforting and makes the world seem better, to natural yogurt and a homemade oat and dried apricot granola. I find yogurt too cold for winter, but refreshing and light in summer. Also, both meals are not at all difficult to whip together, and not having to make the choice of what to eat every morning saves some of my decision making power for later. Whatever works for you, organise it and use it.
Assuming you get up early enough to leave time between breakfast and lunch, I agree with the Hobbits on the importance of elevenses. Taking a break in mid-morning to have a snack breaks the workload into manageable pieces and gives you something to look forward to. Moreover, I'm not one of those people who say you should only eat fruit, unless you feel like it. Personally I find fruit one of the greatest things in the universe, however I am also in favour of a bit of cake - when it's the good solid homemade variety. You know, something to excite you about the upcoming break, without leaving you pinging off the walls. Cheese and biscuits is another good snack. It is just a matter of all things in moderation.
Lunchtime
Ah, lunch. It is a brilliant meal. So many options! Almost anything is acceptable at lunch, unlike dinner and breakfast that tend to be more traditional and rigid in their definitions. The thought of lunch, what I might be having and how it will taste, gets me through a tough morning writing session. I am not above negotiating or bribing myself when necessary. However, you do need to think about the consequences.
Many people complain about a tiredness and heaviness after lunch that makes tasks such as writing feel impossible. This wipes out a good three hours of possible writing time, for no real benefit. Therefore, do everything in your power to stop this mid-afternoon crash. This is going to take some experimentation, and I don't think I agree with some practitioners who argue that it is due to carbohydrate intolerance and can be solved by eating carb-free. That might be partly true for some people, but there are a whole range of factors that affect that afternoon dip.
Some Steps You Can Take To Avoid the After-Lunch Slump
1. Avoid eating too much. That 'stuffed' feeling is a bad sign. It means that more blood is going to be diverted to your digestive system to deal with the overload, and that you are going to feel sleepy and weak as a result.
2. After-lunch meditation. Well, if your body is going to need some down time to process the food you have given it, you might as well help it and give your brain a rest as well. After lunch, try finding a relaxing spot and listening to a meditation or relaxation tape for 20 minutes. This lets your body digest and refresh as you use that near sleep state to further your creative processes.
3. Meditating for 20 minutes is excellent, but afterwards you need to kick your body back into gear, so try going for a walk to get the blood flowing again to the rest of your body. Also, getting out into the sunlight will let your body know it should be awake.
4. Think about your sleep. If you are feeling sleepy mid-afternoon, it is often a good indication that you aren't get enough quality sleep at night. Spending an extra hour at night to prepare for a great sleep is better than three hours wasted due to tiredness in the afternoon.
5. Don't rely on stimulants to pick you up. This might work on occasion, but in the end your body will just come to rely on them, meaning they are less effective and without them you feel even worse than you did before! Caffeine is an emergency drug.
In the afternoon it is easy to start craving carbs and sugar, but now really isn't the best time to have them, as they are just going to make you feel worse. Instead, now is a great time to make sure you have gotten enough veggies for the day. Still a bit low? Try something like carrot sticks with hummus, or even nuts. Once you realise how good getting vitamins can be, your body will be begging you for them.
Dinner
If I'm writing later, I know that I'll need a snack later on. So sometimes you need to be realistic about this. A smaller dinner with a dessert, followed by a supper snack a few hours later will keep you ticking over nicely for an evening writing session.
Making your meals smaller means you're allowed to have more of them. How great is that? Also, you will avoid feeling stuffed, and not feel hungry in between. Just make sure that you do reduce the size of your meals to compensate for having more of them.
Snacking While Writing
I've said it before, I'm not above a bit of bribing to get myself to sit down and write. When I first started writing seriously, I had a great idea. I would beat two willpower problems at once: I would make sure I was never hungry OR fighting major temptation. How did I do this? By allowing myself to eat as much chocolate as I wanted, but only while I was writing. Great plan, huh? If I wanted to eat chocolate, which I did nearly all the time, then I had to be writing.
Uh, there was something I didn't think through there: 4+ hours writing per day, combined with eating chocolate for this entire time is not going to be healthy. And I was like an alcoholic - once I started, I couldn't stop. So the only solution was not to start at all. The chocolate had to go. Painful, but it came down to a point of all or nothing for me.
Aaaannd... Welcome into my life caramel jerseys. Yup, I just replaced them with something else, which didn't solve my problem at all. But I needed something! The hours of just sitting there, not doing anything! And the chewing helped me think, really it did. So then I took a note out of my godmother's book, who had given up smoking. I started chewing gum. What else was I to do?
Chewing gum has a couple of benefits: first, your breath stays minty fresh. Second, the chewing really seems to help the thought process. Third, it stops you putting anything else, like mysteriously appearing pieces of chocolate, into your mouth.
Now I know this sounds like a small, inconsequential piece of advice, but think about it. If chewing gum saves me from devouring chocolate for four hours a day, that saves me hundreds of calories a day. Hundreds of calories a day quickly equals an extra two kilos of weight gain per month. That becomes 24kgs heavier for every year that I write!
Like I said, chew gum.
The Saucy stuff
I have no doubt that people are quite able to write while eating junk food, and over short periods of time they may even do it better - pulling an all-nighter for an essay or similar. But that's not sustainable if you want a career of writing. It does not equip you to sit down day after day without falling asleep after your midday meal or crashing from low blood sugar. Good health only comes with good nutrition.
Hunger vs Willpower
Hunger eats away at willpower, with the result forcing yourself to do something when you're hungry is nigh on impossible. Simple solution: don't let yourself get hungry. Don't wait to eat until it is too late. One of the biggest traps I've found while writing is that you get caught up in what you are doing, and then suddenly realise you're starving. Looking around the kitchen everything seems too difficult, so you end up grabbing some chips or just live on toast. Now toast might get you through the short term, but you'll look back at the week and realise you've not eaten anything but processed carbs. The salad materials you bought have now gone brown and your poor digestive system hasn't seen a vitamin in days. So plan ahead! ... and maybe stock a few meals you've frozen for those inevitable slip ups.
Break your fast in the morning, and break it well. I know, I know, some of you don't like breakfast. You feel as though you're not hungry at that time, and think that it's in-built. But you can train yourself to prefer and even crave a healthy meal to start your day. Start with something, even if it is just a piece of fruit (but if you do only eat fruit, be aware of 'sugar crashes' that can follow natural fruit sugars in the same way it stalks a cake or biscuit).
Plan simple and brain appropriate breakfasts that won't be stressful to make. Plan them now, and add the ingredients to the shopping list. My breakfast ranges from porridge with cinnamon and brown sugar in winter, which is comforting and makes the world seem better, to natural yogurt and a homemade oat and dried apricot granola. I find yogurt too cold for winter, but refreshing and light in summer. Also, both meals are not at all difficult to whip together, and not having to make the choice of what to eat every morning saves some of my decision making power for later. Whatever works for you, organise it and use it.
Assuming you get up early enough to leave time between breakfast and lunch, I agree with the Hobbits on the importance of elevenses. Taking a break in mid-morning to have a snack breaks the workload into manageable pieces and gives you something to look forward to. Moreover, I'm not one of those people who say you should only eat fruit, unless you feel like it. Personally I find fruit one of the greatest things in the universe, however I am also in favour of a bit of cake - when it's the good solid homemade variety. You know, something to excite you about the upcoming break, without leaving you pinging off the walls. Cheese and biscuits is another good snack. It is just a matter of all things in moderation.
Lunchtime
Ah, lunch. It is a brilliant meal. So many options! Almost anything is acceptable at lunch, unlike dinner and breakfast that tend to be more traditional and rigid in their definitions. The thought of lunch, what I might be having and how it will taste, gets me through a tough morning writing session. I am not above negotiating or bribing myself when necessary. However, you do need to think about the consequences.
Many people complain about a tiredness and heaviness after lunch that makes tasks such as writing feel impossible. This wipes out a good three hours of possible writing time, for no real benefit. Therefore, do everything in your power to stop this mid-afternoon crash. This is going to take some experimentation, and I don't think I agree with some practitioners who argue that it is due to carbohydrate intolerance and can be solved by eating carb-free. That might be partly true for some people, but there are a whole range of factors that affect that afternoon dip.
Some Steps You Can Take To Avoid the After-Lunch Slump
1. Avoid eating too much. That 'stuffed' feeling is a bad sign. It means that more blood is going to be diverted to your digestive system to deal with the overload, and that you are going to feel sleepy and weak as a result.
2. After-lunch meditation. Well, if your body is going to need some down time to process the food you have given it, you might as well help it and give your brain a rest as well. After lunch, try finding a relaxing spot and listening to a meditation or relaxation tape for 20 minutes. This lets your body digest and refresh as you use that near sleep state to further your creative processes.
3. Meditating for 20 minutes is excellent, but afterwards you need to kick your body back into gear, so try going for a walk to get the blood flowing again to the rest of your body. Also, getting out into the sunlight will let your body know it should be awake.
4. Think about your sleep. If you are feeling sleepy mid-afternoon, it is often a good indication that you aren't get enough quality sleep at night. Spending an extra hour at night to prepare for a great sleep is better than three hours wasted due to tiredness in the afternoon.
5. Don't rely on stimulants to pick you up. This might work on occasion, but in the end your body will just come to rely on them, meaning they are less effective and without them you feel even worse than you did before! Caffeine is an emergency drug.
In the afternoon it is easy to start craving carbs and sugar, but now really isn't the best time to have them, as they are just going to make you feel worse. Instead, now is a great time to make sure you have gotten enough veggies for the day. Still a bit low? Try something like carrot sticks with hummus, or even nuts. Once you realise how good getting vitamins can be, your body will be begging you for them.
Dinner
If I'm writing later, I know that I'll need a snack later on. So sometimes you need to be realistic about this. A smaller dinner with a dessert, followed by a supper snack a few hours later will keep you ticking over nicely for an evening writing session.
Making your meals smaller means you're allowed to have more of them. How great is that? Also, you will avoid feeling stuffed, and not feel hungry in between. Just make sure that you do reduce the size of your meals to compensate for having more of them.
Snacking While Writing
I've said it before, I'm not above a bit of bribing to get myself to sit down and write. When I first started writing seriously, I had a great idea. I would beat two willpower problems at once: I would make sure I was never hungry OR fighting major temptation. How did I do this? By allowing myself to eat as much chocolate as I wanted, but only while I was writing. Great plan, huh? If I wanted to eat chocolate, which I did nearly all the time, then I had to be writing.
Uh, there was something I didn't think through there: 4+ hours writing per day, combined with eating chocolate for this entire time is not going to be healthy. And I was like an alcoholic - once I started, I couldn't stop. So the only solution was not to start at all. The chocolate had to go. Painful, but it came down to a point of all or nothing for me.
Aaaannd... Welcome into my life caramel jerseys. Yup, I just replaced them with something else, which didn't solve my problem at all. But I needed something! The hours of just sitting there, not doing anything! And the chewing helped me think, really it did. So then I took a note out of my godmother's book, who had given up smoking. I started chewing gum. What else was I to do?
Chewing gum has a couple of benefits: first, your breath stays minty fresh. Second, the chewing really seems to help the thought process. Third, it stops you putting anything else, like mysteriously appearing pieces of chocolate, into your mouth.
Now I know this sounds like a small, inconsequential piece of advice, but think about it. If chewing gum saves me from devouring chocolate for four hours a day, that saves me hundreds of calories a day. Hundreds of calories a day quickly equals an extra two kilos of weight gain per month. That becomes 24kgs heavier for every year that I write!
Like I said, chew gum.
About the Author:
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