Mental Calories and Cheezies

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Cheezies are designed to be addictive: corn, oil, salt, and crunch. At least I know how to balance my passion for them with good nutrition.

What takes more effort is managing the ultra-processed algorithms I consume each day. There’s no list of ingredients but they’re engineered to excite, agitate, and keep me chewing.

The hours I spend resigned to screen time are like eating salty snacks for my brain. I often want to check my phone, without stopping to consider what these bright little comforts are doing to me.

Cheezies stain my fingers orange. Junk media indelibly stains in a habit-forming way: my calm, my capacity to think and imagine.

Cheezies leave me bloated after half a bag. But gorging on the unnutritious swirl of “news” leaves me mentally destabilized; so much shock, so overwhelming.

When I was younger, if I went out for the day and someone tried to call me, the office phone simply rang, and I didn't know I'd missed the call. There was no notification, no sense of something unresolved waiting for me.

I didn’t realize the freedom that gave me.

But now my very smart phone keeps me company when I’m bored or lonely. Sometimes I reach for it not out of curiosity, but comfort. What I’m really reaching for is a sense of being busy, and not alone.

It’s a very cherished part of me, I always want to hold it close. And I’m anxious when I don’t have it. OK, this is the part I don’t like admitting:

Sometimes I’m so starved, I take my phone into the bathroom. And when I’m in a group and don’t know my place, I sneak away to be by myself with it. These are usually my cues now, not to shame myself, but to ask what I’m actually hungry for.

It’s only been the last month or so that I’ve been pushing back by trying to start simple routines:

An hour offline in the morning feels like a place of peace and calm: seven-grain oats in my bowl, the warmth of a mug of coffee in my hands, and fifteen minutes of meditation. Then a bike ride to get my brain and body ready for the day.

Evenings are when I’m most prone to grab my phone; tired, short on awareness, and wanting something simple to befriend me. Instead I’ve been learning to reach for community, a sense of home, family warmth, food, and then conversation that doesn’t have to land anywhere.

I’m not quitting Cheezies. And I’m not throwing away my phone.

But I’m learning to notice when I reach for them. Some indulgences are fine in small doses.

It’s the unconscious, endless consumption that leaves me bloated, in body or in mind.

What’s the “junk food” you reach for when you’re tired, uncertain, or lonely?

How do you manage to put the bag down?

And what do you reach for instead?

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I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn or Facebook​

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See you next week,

Grayson

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