Being hungry is tiring. It’s exhausting. I am only really able to concentrate on school work for small amounts of time because my mind is always moving to thoughts of food. I’m also less able to think rationally about things and I am finding emotions affect me more intensely when my brain and body are not being adequately fuelled. This experience has made me think about how hunger affects mental health. How do people who are chronically hungry face every day challenges and annoyances? If you suffer from mental health issues, how does hunger exacerbate them? Chances are, if you’re suffering from chronic hunger, you have challenges that far exceed any I have ever experienced. But still, in my comfortable home and my fortunate life, small things are affecting me much more intensely than they otherwise would. I am not in a good mood lately. How could I be? My brain is hungry and my body is begging for more nutrition. Irritability, restlessness and a short temper are what plague me today. Other than for a few hours this morning, I haven’t left the house all day. Mental health is a very real concern for many people, many of whom are also under-nourished. If I were already struggling with mental health issues, this insatiable hunger would only exacerbate my feelings and mood.

I am feeling apathetic and can’t figure out what to do with myself today. My brain is hungry, so my ability to make decisions is impaired. For me this is just a week. What happens when your ability to make decisions is chronically impaired, because you’re never really fed? Hungry people can be difficult to deal with; we’ve all heard the term “hangry”, used to describe someone who is angry and quick to irritate when hungry. When you are hungry you cannot act rationally and “socially appropriately”, because your body is focusing on just keeping the brain going. With this comes a cyclical issue: You’re hungry, so you’re not always great to be around. Will you be the person that gets the job? Will you get treated well by strangers? If not, would that isolate you more? It makes me stop to think about people I have encountered in my life, people who have acted strangely or aggressively on the street, at school or in a shop. Are they just hungry? Proteins are the building blocks of your body, including neurotransmitters in the brain. Dopamine and serotonin are important neurotransmitters that regulate mood. If I were chronically malnourished eventually the levels of mood regulators in my brain would fall, leading to low mood and irritability. And that’s just one example of one macronutrient, and one part of your body.

So here I find myself, creating a list of issues that plague people who are chronically hungry. Are they living in a safe, comfortable and warm environment? Do they have a kitchen at all? How many people do they share a kitchen with? Do they have cooking utensils? Kitchen equipment? What if someone receiving welfare is struggling with mental health issues, as many of us do? The list goes on and on. $610 per month tells someone that they don’t matter. Their physical health doesn’t matter. Their mental health doesn’t matter. It’s quite the statement, wouldn’t you say? We need to stand up and say that everyone matters. The health and happiness of our communities matter. People need to be able to afford to eat. Period.

Today I had oats and yogurt for breakfast around 8:30am. I was happy to be able to sleep in a bit so that my day wouldn’t be as long. Long days make me hungrier. By the time I got home around noon I was quite hungry. I waited an hour and a half to eat more chili and rice with Kaleigh. It’s been a cold day so we boiled some hot water to have with our lunch. My budget doesn’t allow for luxuries like coffee, tea or hot chocolate. We tried our best to keep ourselves busy between lunch and dinner. I did some school work and Kaleigh knit. After a while we watched a movie and then made dinner. Our conversations today have been about the timing of our food, which is getting more difficult. We’re trying to space out the ‘big’ meals as much as we can so that we have things like chili and fish for the last few days. Today we ate pasta with tuna for dinner. That’s it for the pasta.

Even though I have been careful not to expend too much energy, my pants are starting to get loose. I’m really looking forward to a scoop of peanut butter tonight.