Body Budgets & Running a Body Deficit

Written by Michelle Shelton

Feb 13, 2024

You’ve possibly heard the analogy that your brain is like the CEO of your body, coordinating all the complex systems in your body so that they work well together. Did you know that your brain is also your chief financial officer? 

I’ve recently been inspired by the work of Lisa Feldman Barret, PhD and researcher of feelings and emotions. One of the things she writes about is your body budget. 

Your brain is constantly running a budget for your body. Its main forms of currency are glucose, water, electrolytes, amino acids, fats, vitamins, minerals - all the resources your body needs to survive.  It allocates these currencies throughout the body based on availability and need. When the bank is full, things run pretty smoothly. You feel healthy, strong, and resilient. When the bank is depleted, you will feel the drag in your system, translating to negative affect and poor mood. Often, when we are feeling down or having a hard day, we look to our external environment to explain our mood. Certainly our external environments affect us. But maybe, just maybe, we over index on external and forget or neglect things much closer to home, including our body budget and the reserve in our bank to keep things running well. This matters because one of the simplest things you can do to affect your mood and overall well being - one thing that is totally in your control - is to keep your body bank well stocked.

Deposits fill up the bank with all the things we need to run well. They include all of our basic needs, such as: 

1. Good Nutrition. While there is room for all foods of wide variety in a balanced diet, what you eat matters. It’s important that you get enough healthy fats, carb, and protein to fuel your body and support repair after periods of stress. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables ensure you have all the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other phytonutrients to maintain health and physical resilience.  

2. Adequate Sleep. Sleep gives your body time for repair, and it is in the repair and recovery that we develop our greatest strength. Sleep allows your body to cool its engines and prepare for what may come the following day.

3. Adequate Hydration. The human body is roughly 55 - 60% water. Without adequate hydration, your body is deprived of one of its most important nutrients!

4. Strong connection with people who make us feel seen and safe. Studies have shown that social connection is a stronger predictor of long term health and wellbeing than even known risk factors such as diet and smoking. But not all connections are created equal. As humans, we have a desire to feel safe and seen in a close relationship. We need to be able to remain connected with others even while we maintain our sense of a differentiated and distinct self with distinct needs, experiences, and perspective. 

We can also make investments into our bank. Investments are initially a withdrawal, but they result in an overall positive return on our investment and a healthier, more resilient and efficient budget overall. These include:

1. Learning something new. It takes a lot of brain power to learn new things! Your brain is one of your most metabolically expensive organs. Your brain is only about 2% of your body weight, but it accounts for roughly 20% of your resting metabolic rate. As you exert mental effort to learn new things, it withdraws from your body bank. But the knowledge you acquire increases the overall size of your bank as this new knowledge equates to more options and more ways to navigate the world.

2. Personal development and growth. It takes a lot of effort and energy be new at something! When you are in your growth space, things are hard and often awkward. You make mistakes and have to try again. You haven’t developed the efficiencies of tasks you’ve mastered. Think about how much energy it takes a baby to learn to walk. They are constantly falling, pulling themselves back up, concentrating very hard to do it better the next time, and falling again. Now you walk effortlessly, with very little need for any thought around it at all. These efficiencies that you gain with experience decrease the size of the withdrawal for that activity in the future. Think about how hard it would be to get around now if you never put in the effort to learn to walk all those years ago!

3. Exercise. Exercise and movement in general can pull a lot of resources from your body bank. But without this regular effort, muscles that are not used will slowly atrophy. Using that atrophied muscle takes even more effort than before because it is weaker and smaller. With exercise, that same muscle becomes stronger and more capable and requires less effort for future tasks. 

And, of course, like all banks, you can make withdrawals. Going through all the normal daily tasks will withdraw from your bank - walking, working, playing. Just keeping your body going - your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your brain thinking, your digestion going - withdraws from your bank. In addition, things that create an addition draw or tax from your bank include:

1. Inadequate sleep. Without adequate sleep, your body has not had the chance to recharge. You are carrying the drag from yesterday with you into today, potentially borrowing from your reserves for tomorrow. 

2. Poor nutrition. If you don’t get enough of the essential nutrients your body needs it will not run as well. At the same time, eating too much of certain foods can lead to drag in your system, fats and plaques are deposited throughout your body.

3. Fighting a virus or infection. Sometimes the thing your body needs the most is rest and time to fight off infections that are causing drag in our system.

4. Connection or interaction with people who do not make you feel safe. Just like healthy connections fill us up, unhealthy relationships can become a tax on our bank. 

Take a minute to reflect on your body budget and the routines you have to replenish every day. Are you running on a full bank? What might change for you if you made more of an investment into keeping a full bank? You don’t need to make big changes to see a big difference. Simply be consistent with small deposits in each area and see how it feels to run from a full bank.