eating habits and creativity
I recently saw this journal article about a study that restricted feeding schedules for mice. They consumed the same calories as the mice who ate anytime, just confined to a window of 9-12 hours during the day. They measured weight differences between groups (which I don't like as a measure of health in general, and isn't relevant to my interests personally, but with tracking physical changes it makes sense) and metabolic diseases (much more compelling for me), and the results seem pretty clear that at least in mice a 9-12-hour eating restriction has positive health effects.
I tend to eat dinner too late a lot, and for a while I've been vaguely meaning to Make A Lifestyle Change with regards to that anyway, so I decided to experiment with this. For the past ten days or so, I've been using "twelve hours after breakfast" as an approximate rule for when to be done eating for the day. (Not going to be stubborn about it if I actually need food later than that, of course, but so far I've managed to time my meals pretty well.) I haven't noticed a difference in my physical energy levels or anything, but something else unexpected happened: my creative muse has been going berserk.
For the record: I am not at all about the anecdotal evidence and this is not anything like enough data to come to any conclusions. Also, this time period spans the All-Star break, and I've noticed in the past that I'm better at focusing on writing when I'm not worrying about hockey. But I can't even remember the last time I felt this full of ideas and had the mental energy to execute them--it may well have been years ago--and I don't think the hockey thing is enough to account for that. And it makes sense for mental energy to be related to metabolism and circadian rhythms. So: no conclusions, but I am beginning to suspect this eating-window thing is doing good things to my brain.
This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/100620.html.
I tend to eat dinner too late a lot, and for a while I've been vaguely meaning to Make A Lifestyle Change with regards to that anyway, so I decided to experiment with this. For the past ten days or so, I've been using "twelve hours after breakfast" as an approximate rule for when to be done eating for the day. (Not going to be stubborn about it if I actually need food later than that, of course, but so far I've managed to time my meals pretty well.) I haven't noticed a difference in my physical energy levels or anything, but something else unexpected happened: my creative muse has been going berserk.
For the record: I am not at all about the anecdotal evidence and this is not anything like enough data to come to any conclusions. Also, this time period spans the All-Star break, and I've noticed in the past that I'm better at focusing on writing when I'm not worrying about hockey. But I can't even remember the last time I felt this full of ideas and had the mental energy to execute them--it may well have been years ago--and I don't think the hockey thing is enough to account for that. And it makes sense for mental energy to be related to metabolism and circadian rhythms. So: no conclusions, but I am beginning to suspect this eating-window thing is doing good things to my brain.
This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/100620.html.