My new philosophy is "Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you have to eat like it". I commented in a previous post about how fat poor people in America tend to be. ( Why poor people are fat ) You’d think poor people would be skinny because they don’t have money so they can’t afford to buy a lot of food, but you don’t necessarily need to be eating tons of food to get fat. It’s not so much the quantity of the food you eat, although that does count, the quality of the food you eat is the real problem; and poor people don’t generally eat quality foods. But what has food to do with making money you ask? Well, the food you eat does affect you mentally whether you’re aware of the effect it is having on you or not. Some things you put into your body have an obvious impact on your behavior. Wine for example can make you act stupid if you drink enough of it to make you drunk, caffeine can make you hyper, sugar can also make you hyper. Some foods can weigh you down, make you feel heavy and slow, some can even make you irritable.

We don’t tend to pay attention to what we eat to see how it affects us once it’s in our system; so we wouldn’t ordinarily attribute a bad mood to something we ate; but our eating habits can have a great deal more to do with our mood than we imagine. If we’re always too tired to think, distracted and unable to focus, depressed, so hyper we can’t sit still long enough to get our work done, angry all the time and hating every minute of what we do, it could be that we’re consuming foods that contain combinations of substances that throw us mentally off-balance. And if you’re mentally off-balance you’re going to have a much tougher time doing your job effectively. And if you’re not doing your job effectively it will usually result, particularly when you’re running your own business, in difficulties making money.

Poor people tend to think cheap, for obvious reasons. When they shop for anything, including food, they look for the cheapest products they can find. They tend to go for quantity over quality. You’ll hear them argue, "Why should I buy 1 item for six bucks when I can get 6 items for a dollar with the six bucks I’d spend on the one item? So they pick up 6 bags of pork rinds in lieu of 1 bag of something healthier.

A few days ago I went grocery shopping with a list compiled after selecting some recipes from a cookbook. I had decided I was going to start treating myself like I deserved to eat well if nothing else. Whatever my situation in life, struggling to make money working for myself, unhappily married, battling depression and anxiety, I figured if there was something I could do to enhance my life in some way I was going to do it. And changing the way I was treating myself as far as my eating is concerned seemed like a good place to start. Why should I punish myself for being poor by eating poorly on top of everything? So I stood at the kitchen counter and I looked through the cookbook and decided on some meals that looked simple enough to prepare. I made my list and I went to buy the groceries. Most of the the things on my list cost more than the things I normally buy, yet, I spent less money and I have in my cupboards the ingredients needed to prepare several meals for at least a few weeks before I will need to go back to the store.

So far I’ve tried two of the meals. The Bombay Rice was a hit, the Apple rice with dates and almonds not so much; but it’s been calming, and I might even say fun, preparing the meals. Having been depressed over my financial situation lately it’s been helpful to step away from computer for a bit and give my attention to something that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m not making money and all the stress that comes with that; to be reminded that there’s more to life and that it’s better to eat for pleasure rather than punishment.