Body Budget: Intelligent Energy Management

What is the primary function of our brain? Most people believe that our brains are primarily responsible for producing our thoughts, feelings, dreams, hopes, and behaviors.

According to neuroscience, and research conducted by Lisa Feldman-Barrett (2020), the brain’s most critical role is to control and regulate our bodies by:

• Striving for allostasis. The process of regulating our emotional response and responding effectively to stressors to maintain stability.
• Predicting our energy needs so we can function effectively and have satisfying lives.

From an evolutionary perspective, our brain’s ability to predict our energy needs was critical to survival. Wasting energy fleeing from predators or storing energy, rather than expending it to find a necessary meal, threatened our survival. Brains need to effectively, and proactively, identify energy needs in order to regulate our bodies for long-term survival. The same is still true in our modern world. Our brains need to accurately predict our energy needs by identifying those things that create energy and those that deplete our energy. Feldman-Barrett (2020) suggests that we should think about our energy needs as a body budget. Activities like sleeping, eating, and connecting with supportive people are deposits. We make withdrawals when we engage in activities that reduce our energy, such as pulling an all-nighter or having a heated argument with a friend. The goal is to have a balanced body budget. For every withdrawal that we make, we need to create a concurrent deposit.

Take a moment to identify the activities, practices, experiences, and relationships that help you make deposits in your body budget and increase your energy. Next, identify the activities, habits, experiences, and relationships that make withdrawals from your body budget and deplete your energy. After you complete your inventory, reflect on the following questions:

• Is your body budget balanced?
• Do you have a deficit? If so, what changes can you make to increase your deposits? What changes can you make to reduce the number of withdrawals?
• Did you notice that specific people in your life were showing up as deposits or withdrawals? What relationships might you need to adjust in order to balance your body budget?
• How might your body budget needs change the way you set your priorities and the way you manage your time?
• Go back to your body budget and identify the deposits and withdrawals that you will change in order to better meet your energy needs.