A Book I Won't Review & Body-Clocks

So, I read a book that I’m not going to review here.  I’d feel guilty, but that would be pointless.  It’s non-fiction, and it’s about health, body composition, getting/getting rid of fat, etc.  I, like many other moms of young children, am working on the “baby fat” as it were.  Since this is the sort of thing that gets personal rather quickly, I’m just not going to give you the details, ok?

So, why’d I bring it up?  Well, it ties in to my writing (I know, everything does, right?).

I picked up the book out of curiosity (it’s chock full of science, and there’s even the odd statistic in there), but it got me thinking about all the various things our bodies do and how we use them and work either with or against them.

I’d been trying to get up early to write, but I just couldn’t do it.  I even put out chocolate to have in the morning when I crawled out of bed.  No dice.   Didn’t happen.  So, I’ve been thinking about when else might work.  I decided to try staying up later.

Just like my biochemistry impacts my energy levels, so does my sleep.  If I’m mucking up the way my body works by not listening to it, then I’m not going to do anything as well as I otherwise could.  I’ll be working below my peak ability.  If I’m spiking my blood sugar, I’m going to crash when it goes down.  If I’m trying to force myself into a sleep pattern that doesn’t work for me, I’m just going to be cranky.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out what is good for you.  Not to say that there’s debate about whether  spinach is healthy, but there are other things that are more subtle.  For instance, it seems the later it is light out, the later my body gets tired – right now.  This wasn’t true a few years ago.  So, we know what is “good” can change over time.  Similarly, I used to do quite well eating certain foods.  Now some give me indigestion.  Things change.  Moreover, some people react differently than others.  None of us (save identical twins) metabolizes in exactly the same way.

So, I’ve been making an effort to do what is good for my body.  At the very least, I’m trying things that I think will be improvements, and looking at the responses I get.

So far, I’m out of bed longer (I’d been staring at the ceiling a lot lately) and feeling just as rested if not more so.  I’m also not quite so cranky in the morning.  The down side is I’m having mild heartburn, but I think that is transitional.

The good news is that I am now feeling less pulled apart by the various writing projects I’ve got going on (blog, twitter, FB, novel, flash fiction) as well as all my other projects (garden work, reading, raising kids).  This may not be reality, but I probably work better when I’m not stressed than when I am.

Time will tell, but I’m glad I started to think about this.

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