Light Cue 23

A good diet and healthy eating habits are critical to a healthy body and stable moods for everyone but it can be particularly important for those of us working in theaters. When you work inside for 10-12 hours a day for weeks on end you are not giving your body the necessary sun exposure it needs to function at top performance levels. That may be beyond our control, but food and diet are totally within our control and it would behoove us to pay close attention to what we put in our bodies.

I’ve noticed a lot of my friends and colleagues resign themselves to an attitude of “well I’m in tech so I can’t eat healthy, I’ll just get fast food takeout and supplement with lots of coffee.” While this might give you a certain kind of energy it does not give us the energy to operate at an optimal level. These ways of raising energy are often supplemented by heavy sugar intake with the ubiquitous candy bowl on the stage manager’s table.

You can get energy from these methods but it is not sustainable. In order to avoid the high/crash cycle of these “foods” we need a constant intake to stave off the crash until the end of the day. The result is a body so wreaked that the next morning we can hardly functions without a massive intake of caffeine, usually in the form of coffee, to get going and do it all over again. The spiral continues and by the end of a show we are burnt out and ready for that day off, desperately hoping it is not a travel day to another show.

I have traditionally been one of the worst in this regard. While my basic diet was vegetarian, thus minimizing the fast food dilemma, my coffee intake was off the charts. Two mugs, not cups but mugs, of espresso before leaving my apartment then constant coffee intake throughout the day. While I don’t typically eat sugar given the choice, I would find it necessary in tech situations to keep my energy levels up. It was not a pretty sight. Add to that the fact that my vegetarian diet was so high in carbs (rice, pasta, sandwiches) that I was making myself very sluggish dealing with those foods I had no energy. Thus I had to up the caffeine intake to compensate and the spiral continues.

Recently I made a few changes to my diet that have not only led to greater energy levels but higher functionality and more creativity. The switch has two main components. The first was a change from coffee to tea. While it does have caffeine, there is a lot less. Further, it does not hit your system as powerfully as coffee does. Within less than a week I discovered that i could be functional in the morning without caffeine. I still drink the tea, but it is a little bonus rather than a necessity.

The second change was from high carb/low protein to high protein/low carb. The first phase of this was simply a few diet changes with my vegetarian mode of eating. Eggs every morning, lunch went from yoghurt to cottage cheese (which has a much higher protein level) with fruit, and dinner reduced the pasta and other carbs. I then experimented with some fish and found the high protein levels to have a radically positive effect on my energy levels. From that experiment with fish I expanded my consumption of animal flesh into my diet to very positive results.

The effect of this new low caffeine, low carb, low sugar, high protein, high fruit, high vegetable diet is that I have high sustainable energy levels all day long. My need for stimulants like sugar and caffeine during heavy endurance times like tech has been radically reduced. Because I have pulled myself out of the high/crash cycle, my moods are much more stable as well. No more grumpy in the morning and late afternoon.

Of greatest interest to me is the discovery that I am more creative now than before. Eating this way gives me sustained energy all day long and as such my problem solving and creating is not subjected to crashes and their necessary recovery time. Not only has my day become more pleasant, as I am not contending with fighting off low energy levels, but my work has gotten better and more productive.

I’m sure there are plenty of people who work in live performance who would argue that such changes are not possible for them. That may be true. It certainly is if you hold that opinion. But considering the benefits I have found, I would strongly encourage you to give it a try, for the sake of making the best art possible, if nothing else.