Balance your body budget
Similar to a finance department, your brain manages the budget for your body. Is your budget well-balanced or in the red?
One recent afternoon, a founder slumped into the chair across from me, cradling his coffee. He let out a tired laugh. “You ever feel like you’re running on empty?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. I nodded, sensing how deeply worn down he was. He wasn’t just tired—he was drained, his reserves stretched thin. And it made me wonder how often we unknowingly push ourselves like this, spending our energy faster than we can restore it
Every second of every day, your brain performs an infinitely complex series of tasks. It calculates and coordinates, predicts and interprets, supervises and allocates—all in service of keeping you alive and in good working order. To put it another way, your brain is constantly running a budget for your body, an intricate accounting exercise that manages gains and losses across multiple systems: cardiovascular, respiratory, nervous, endocrine and so on.
This concept of “body budget” was devised by Lisa Feldman Barrett, a renowned neuroscientist and psychologist who has shared her evidence-based findings in books such as Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain and How Emotions Are Made.
This week, let’s explore the effects of an overdrawn body budget and find ways to replenish this invaluable account.
"Dr. Barrett tells us to picture the body budget as a bank account. Deposits consist of anything that replenishes resources, like eating and sleeping, whereas withdrawals include anything that spends resources, like working, exercising or fighting off infections. Savings are things that make your budget more efficient, like receiving support from loved ones and colleagues. And finally, taxes include items that make your budget less efficient, like stress, isolation and uncertainty.
An unbalanced budget
Like any account, if deposits and savings are outpaced by withdrawals and taxes, there’s trouble in store. When your body budget is in the red, you feel overwhelmed, anxious and exhausted. What’s more, you become physically vulnerable to picking up infections and falling sick. As Dr. Barrett notes:
“Like a financial budget, a body budget can run a deficit, and over the long term, a bankrupt body budget results in illness.”
An overstretched budget also makes you prone to cognitive bias and creates resistance to learning. Absorbing and analyzing new information is costly for the brain—sticking with what you already know is cheaper and more attractive when resources are running low. (This is why it’s so hard to learn new things when you’re ill or highly stressed.)
The uncertainty tax
Uncertainty poses a threat to any budget—and we live in very uncertain times! From public health emergencies to geo-political upheaval, from climate change to technological disruption, the ground beneath our feet is constantly shifting.
One of the main jobs of the brain is to predictively manage our body budget, deciding where, when and how to spend resources to keep things running smoothly. In an environment marked by flux, this guesswork becomes even more expensive, further depleting our account.
We feel this deficit in the form of discomfort, fatigue and dejection. (Remember the widespread lethargy and gloom during COVID-19?) Mood is a barometer of body budget, explains Dr. Barrett. As the brain regulates the body, the body sends back sensory signals that make their presence felt through basic feelings—this is what we experience as “mood”, and it can give us a pretty good indication of what’s going on in our body.
When it comes to uncertainty, we can’t fight fire with fire. We can’t decide, “Ok, I’ll just eat whatever’s around, sleep when I get a chance, recharge if an opportunity presents itself.” We know this doesn’t work; in fact, it’s the quickest way to bankrupting ourselves all the way to burnout. The best antidote to external fluctuation is a healthy routine, one that replenishes your account each day.
Lifestyle challenges
Besides uncertainty, other realities of modern life make it hard for us maintain our body budget. Sleep deprivation, overwork, dehydration and unhealthy diets have become part and parcel of life in a 21st-century city. To add to that, most of us don’t exercise regularly and spend too much time online (another resource-drainer). Social isolation is another growing concern. No wonder people’s body budgets are in a perpetual state of “overdrawn”. It’s almost as if our lifestyles are designed for imbalance!
Maintaining a healthy account
In body budgeting, predictability is your best friend. Your brain relies on foreseeable information to make decisions for your body. By focusing on what you can control and injecting a generous dose of predictability into your daily life, you can compensate for external uncertainties and support your brain in doing its job well.
Here are six recommendations to help you balance your body budget:
1. Build a healthy routine—slowly.
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of essentials like good sleep, a nutritious diet, sufficient water intake and efficient workouts—on a regular basis. The problem is that while people often have the best of intentions, they go about it the wrong way. They start off with a grand flourish (New Year resolutions, anyone?), then as enthusiasm wanes, the over-ambitious plan falls apart. My suggestion is to start small and build up slowly, using the power of incremental gains. (The 1% method is a great way to sustain momentum.)
2. Practice kindness and consistency.
Research shows that being kind and compassionate helps your body budget (as well as the budgets of those around you). Consistent behaviour is another key asset. Do you have a colleague or friend who is wonderfully warm one day and inexplicably cold the next? If yes, you already know how volatile behaviour can strain interpersonal dynamics and, in turn, trigger unpredictable responses in other people. When you’re consistent towards the people in your life, they’re likely to be consistent towards you, thereby creating stability and reducing the burden on your body budget.
3. Ground yourself.
When you find yourself in a chaotic situation, full of unknowns, your body budget can get rapidly depleted. Grounding practices can foster a sense of serenity and slow down the incessant withdrawals. Try deep breathing or meditation or go for a walk in nature. Some people find cooking to be calming, while others like mind-body workouts like yoga or tai chi. Select a grounding activity that resonates with you and makes you feel deeply relaxed.
4. Cultivate awe.
Awe is a powerful experience. Not only does it deliver much-needed perspective, but it also gives your nervous system a temporary time-out, allowing your body budget to recuperate. Simple things like watching the sunset, appreciating the beauty of plants and flowers, or gazing at the night sky can be incredible replenishers. If spending time in nature isn’t feasible, you could access moments of awe via books, documentaries, poetry, art and photography.
As your brain becomes more familiar with awe, it also becomes more open to it. The human mind relies heavily on past memory to make meaning and construct emotion. To put it simply, what you choose to experience today can change the way your brain makes sense of tomorrow. (It’s also helpful to remember this when deciding what media to consume: what stories, visuals, and ideas do you want to plant in your brain?)
5. Prioritise sleep.
If you’re not getting enough quality sleep, it doesn’t matter how well you eat, how much you exercise, how long you meditate—your body budget will remain out of whack. Lack of sleep has such a profound impact on health that many doctors now call it “the new smoking”. Most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep a night; this is what allows your brain to recover and reset for the next day.
“Catching up” on sleep over weekends isn’t good enough. As sleep debt accumulates over days, cognitive function progressively worsens. Simple steps to getting better sleep include going to bed and waking up at the same time every day and going tech-free at least one hour before bedtime.
6. Make high-return investments.
Making certain key investments is crucial for the long-term health of your body budget. Examples include working out, learning, socialising with loved ones, and pursuing hobbies that spark joy. These activities offer huge psychological and physiological gains, which in turn bolster your brain’s ability to manage the various “accounts” in your body.
Still, your brain may resist these investments at first because they involve making a “withdrawal”. You can overcome this mental reluctance by making these activities a habit and focusing on their ROI. Once you actually start experiencing the returns, like feeling stronger, more skilled or happier, the mind will become more willing to make such investments in the future.
Like a financial budget, your body budget isn’t supposed to remain static. Any account will naturally experience gains and losses, but the goal should be to always maintain a good balance. This is what enables your brain to do its job properly, so you can live a healthy, vibrant and full life.
