The surprising emotional power of food
Okay, first of all let’s get a couple of things out of the way: I am not a doctor, this post does not constitute medical or nutritional advice, and is entirely anecdotal. Though there is most likely a plethora of papers out there that I could cite to support my stance, there are also no doubt just as many studies ‘proving’ the opposite. Unfortunately we live in a time when it’s all too easy to come across as well-researched and thorough in your delivery, when really all you did was pick the study that supports your position. So this is just a reflection of my experience, and the conclusion I have come to based off of that experience. Namely: if you are someone prone to feeling like your world is ending, you should seriously consider the possibility that you are eating the wrong stuff.
I spent three years as a vegan. I wrote my university dissertation on animal rights literature. I went on marches. I attended a hunt sabotage, I criticised friends and family for their food choices, and believed I was justified in doing so. I was fully and unequivocally convinced that this was The Way.
My diet fluctuated in terms of its macronutrient content. I started out vaguely on board with the high-carb, low-fat brigade, but quickly abandoned that when I realised that my stomach (and my budget) just couldn’t cope with that much fruit. I then opted for the centrist, safe-sounding ‘plant-based whole foods’ approach, which I stuck with for a number of years. Plenty of veggies, fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and enough tofu to take down a small soy-intolerant elephant. Gotta getcha prodeen, bruh.
Over time, though, I found it more and more difficult to maintain mental clarity, physical energy, and emotional stability. I was frequently irritable, hungry, and unable to focus on the task at hand, be it work, house chores, or just a conversation. I would eat, feel okay for a few hours, and then begin to crash. Around this time I began to look into high-fat approaches like the Maffetone Method and the Primal Blueprint, which I heard about through my interest endurance sports. I decided to try and adopt a high-fat vegan diet myself. I upped my intake of avocado, nuts and seeds, and coconut products, and kept the sugar and processed grains down.
The result? I felt… okay. I had practiced intermittent fasting before and felt it really worked for me and my lean, ectomorphic body type. I began to suspect that sugar and excess carbohydrates were giving me issues, but was still tied up in the vegan movement. It wasn’t just my ethics on the line, but a huge chunk of my identity was wrapped up in being vegan, my girlfriend was vegan (and never seemed to have any issues with the diet) and abandoning the vegan lifestyle felt like committing social suicide.
A few months into a high-fat vegan diet and I was began to run into the same problems of mood swings, gut issues, and mild depression. It was around this time that I read a book, now an international bestseller, called Twelve Rules for Life: an Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson. For some readers, the mere mention of his name will be enough for you to discredit my story. To you I say: goodbye, and good luck.
I think it’s a testament to the deep roots of Peterson’s ideas (or his expression of older ideas) that they are applicable across a wide range of lifestyle arenas, such as work, relationships, leisure, and, in this case at least, diet. Specifically, I am talking about his second rule, ‘Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.’ It’s a beautiful and frank meditation on the ways in which we often treat ourselves worse than we would treat others, punishing ourselves for our mistakes and holding grudges against ourselves, even unconsciously, that we would never hold for long against others. Peterson points out that people are by and large far better at delivering prescribed and life-saving medication to their pets than they are to themselves, an observation that on the one hand makes complete emotional sense and yet on the other is clearly madness.
When I began to try and put this rule into practice, it became clear to me that I was not treating myself with much kindness or respect, in numerous areas, one of which was my diet. If a friend came to me and said he was struggling with the same issues I was, and he suspected they had something to do with his vegan diet, I would not consider him a Bad Person for experimenting and reintroducing animal products back on to his plate, at least temporarily, to see if things improved.
And so, after a few months of umm-ing and ah-ing, I decided to bite the bullet. Except in this case the bullet was an egg. I ate some eggs.
For many ex-vegans, eggs are the first port of call when they decide to de-convert. They’re tasty, affordable, and considerably lower on ick-factor than dairy and meat for many people, despite vegan propagandist efforts to reduce them to ‘chicken periods’. Eggs are also a compact grenade of nutrients, full of satiating fats, proteins, vitamins and nutrients, many of which, such as B12 and omega-3 fatty acids, are difficult or impossible to find on a whole-foods plant-based diet.
It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that simply having an omelette for breakfast each day began to alleviate the worst of my symptoms. Instead of the bloated fullness followed by a blood sugar crash that porridge gave me, and instead of the clean but unsatisfying ‘emptiness’ of intermittent fasting, breakfast was once again a satiating and satisfying meal, and not just something to be suffered through.
I stayed this way, technically an ovo-vegetarian, for some months. I believed it was a justifiable compromise between the vegan ethics I had swallowed whole-heartedly and the uncomfortable realities of biology that my body was making me all too aware of. But whilst I felt somewhat better in terms of my mood and energy, I was still plagued by moderate depression, and I was also still getting injured all the time. In fact, I spent about 18 months of my three years of running as a vegan injured in some way.
Somehow, in my bones, I ‘knew’ that a more primal, low-carb diet was in alignment with my body and mind. I have always been skinny, and unable to gain weight no matter how hard I tried. I can’t really explain how this links to a high-fat diet, but it began to feel more and more inevitable that I had to try.
The time finally came when I was travelling with my girlfriend in South East Asia. We were in Myanmar, after spending a month in Thailand still veggie, and we had been having some arguments due to my frequent irritability and hunger pangs that made me moody and unpleasant to be around. In Mandalay, I decided to finally treat myself like someone I was responsible for helping, and I ordered a seafood dish, some kind of fish curry. It was strange to be chewing on flesh again after so many years convinced I never would. The only word I can use to describe it is primal — it wasn’t pleasant exactly, but it wasn’t unpleasant either. It felt aligned, without feeling indulgent. But the true magic happened after I was finished.
I was used to finishing meals and feeling simultaneously stuffed and empty, like a car that was designed to run on a small amount of high-quality fuel that instead had been filled up with gallons and gallons of cheap diesel. Food would just keep me going until the next meal, but I would be lying if I’d ever said I felt like I was thriving on plants and eggs alone.
After the fish curry, though, my brain felt like it had gone into a completely new dimension. I felt something I had not felt in years — calm. I was a little bit overwhelmed by it, to be honest. I felt like I could handle anything; every word my girlfriend said I understood and listened to with interest. I didn’t feel irritable, I didn’t feel tired, and I didn’t feel like I was going to need to eat again in an hour or two. I can’t really overstate the profundity of the change.
I had come to terms with feeling like shit all the time. I felt like I had spent three years with my head underwater convinced that I was not drowning, and suddenly someone had dragged me into the fresh air. I could have wept, realising that something as huge as existential misery could hinge on something as supposedly simple as food.
Since then, I have reintroduced basically all animal products back into my diet. I have also for the most part eliminated grains, refined sugar, and industrial seed oils. The feeling of clarity that initially came over me after the fish curry faded fast, but since then it has become somewhat permanent as whatever deficiencies I was carrying around have sorted themselves out. The quandaries are still there, but I have had to listen to my own body and my own experience, and try and make the best food choices I can when it comes to sustainability and ethics. I am trying my best to sort out the vegan propaganda from the genuine concerns I have, but fundamentally I am making sure to put myself first when it comes to diet.
Yesterday I experienced something that confirmed for me that a low-carb approach is right for me. My girlfriend and I (who has also started eating meat) decided to try out a local gourmet ice-cream parlour. Normally these days I can take a bit of sugar no problem. My body seems to be fat-adapted enough to take a hit now and then. But this was not ‘a bit of sugar’. A few hours after gorging on a pile of ice cream and fried bread that probably contained enough sugar to take down a small sugar-intolerant elephant, I woke up from a post-feast nap and suffered through what I can only describe as a return to hell.
The anxiety, the depression, the hopelessness that had plagued me for so long (and still sometimes does, in mild forms, of course) roared like a demon in my skull. I lost my temper numerous times, and the failure of a simple chicken enchilada recipe that I was trying to make felt like the failure of all my hopes and dreams. I’m speaking in ridiculous terms because it is ridiculous. Ridiculous that food can have such an impact on me, but there you go. It’s undeniable.
If you often find yourself feeling like the end is nigh, and that nothing has any meaning, and that you are lost at sea in an ocean of hopelessness, try eating a steak, with a side of broccoli and plenty of butter, and see how you feel in 20 minutes. Chances are you will have to sort out a lot of other stuff to feel okay — your sleep schedule, exercise, time online. But I guarantee that after a nice grass-fed steak it won’t all seem so bleak.
