Tired and Hungry
Our sleep
Worldwide data is hard to come by but a lot of us suffer from poor sleep. Sleep deprivation doesn’t just afflict those who party hard. Or students who study hard. As we try to juggle all the responsibilities of modern life, as the family and the office take up all of our time, the only way we can make time for activities that give us joy is by giving up on sleep.
And the next morning, there are things to do. If we have to fit it all into those few morning hours, we need to get up early. Not only that, health and fitness gurus are constantly asking us to get up just an hour earlier. We hear it so often that by the time we get up in the morning, we are not just sleep-deprived, we are also feeling frightfully guilty.
According to this NHS article, one in three people are affected by poor sleep. The article also discusses the effects of sleep deprivation on our health.
There are no simple answers to complex problems. But in this video by The School of Life, author and philosopher Alain de Botton mentions ways of simplifying our life. If we try to fulfil every expectation of modern society, there can never be enough hours in a day. A stellar career, fame, a fabulous family life, successful children, financial health, and a couple of Pinterest-worthy hobbies. As Oprah Winfrey said:
“You can have it all. Just not all at once.”
In some seasons of our life, we can excel at one aspect, and in another season at something else. But doing everything, every day, all the time is not possible. Even if we were to lose our sanity in the attempt, we would not succeed.
So how much is a person to do in a day? There is no single answer that will be appropriate for everyone. Actually, we should not be posing this question to the experts. We should be asking our body how much it is capable of. And we should be listening to what it says.
Not all people are the same, not all days are the same. Our body will give us clues that it can’t do much more: not only in the form of tiredness, but also in the form of getting irritable, and losing our temper frequently at very minor things. Chronically tired people are sometimes chronically angry people. Our tiredness harms not only us, it also harms our relations with others. The behaviour that our loved ones deserve is our kindest behaviour, not our worst behaviour.
And what time should a person get up in the morning? Evelyn from the Internets answers this question with a lot of clarity in this Crash Course video. She says that some people get up very early and are done with their most important work before others have even started their day. Though the ‘morning larks’ are convinced that the ‘night owls’ are lazy people, the truth is just that different people work differently. She suggests:
“Work with who you are and what you got!”
In fact, taking the motto of letting your body guide you further, I would suggest something radical. My husband suggested it to me, and when he explained his reasoning, I saw his point. I used to have two alarms set for the morning. Quite early. If I didn’t get up with one, the second one was my backup. It worked. I got stuff done. And I was exhausted every day. Day after day.
What he suggested was that I should not use an alarm at all. I should sleep as much as my body needed. And I should re-arrange my life accordingly. Of course, this was not the only thing that simplified my life. But it did help me listen to my body better.
Not all days are the same. Some days are inevitably busy and we need all the hours we can get in that day. But such days cannot be repeated every day without damaging consequences.
Our meals
It is not only in the matter of sleep that we have forgotten to notice the cues of our body. The problem is even worse when it comes to our relation with food.
The process of dissociation of hunger cues from the mind starts very early. We ask our children to finish whatever is on their plate. Or we ask them to consume an arbitrary amount of food: at least two chapatis, at least a glass of milk, and so forth. The appetite of any normal person differs from day to day, from meal to meal. It varies according to the last meal consumed and the activity we engaged in during the day, at the very least. Yet, meals are eaten with guilt looming large at the dinner table. Guilt at leaving the food unfinished, guilt at not eating fast enough, guilt at eating too little food, and guilt at eating too much food.
Guilt has no place in determining the volume or timing of our meals. We should place those decisions firmly in the hands of our hunger cues. We need to start listening to our bodies to tell us when and how much to eat.
There may not always be enough time to lead a life where we can listen to our body all the time. Nevertheless, the more often we can do so, the more our body will thank us.
“When tired, sleep. When hungry, eat.” says the famous Zen proverb. The trouble is that no amount of meditation or yoga can get us the Zen mindset while we insist on continuing our frenetic pace and insist on ignoring what our body is telling us.
