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The daughter of a friend was going through the extremely stressful process of auditioning for a job with an orchestra. She was an accomplished violinist but faced robust competition for a permanent position after finishing her graduate training. In a recent phone call, she asked whether I could help her stop eating too much after an audition was over.
"The only way I seem to be able to get myself to relax afterward and not beat myself up if I made a mistake is to eat. When the adrenaline starts to come down, I become exhausted and start to feel anxious and depressed about how well I did. And I snack on everything in sight."
Being on something of an emotional roller-coaster before, during, and after a performance is something familiar to any of us who have had to perform in front of an audience. It could be as simple as introducing a speaker, or as significant as giving a solo concert at Carnegie Hall. Regardless of the event, it is a rare individual who doesn’t feel at least a little adrenaline during the performance, and at least a little tired afterward as the adrenaline leaks out of our system. Eating during the withdrawal of adrenaline seems almost instinctive. One of the things that adrenaline does is to shift glucose away from our internal organs and to our muscles to prepare them for the 'flight' response. So our need to eat may come from a need to boost our energy stores once adrenaline is diminished.
Advice given to performers suggests, however, a psychological motivation for post-performance eating. An article by Frances Wilson directed toward musicians describes the sudden plunge in mood following, in her words, "...the euphoria of a live performance." Non-musicians, indeed all of us, can also relate to the mental and sometimes physical energy that goes into the preparation for a performance, the excitement during its execution, and then, like a deflating balloon, the exhaustion and even depressed mood after it is all over. A teacher-friend who taught at a local university said the first year she lectured, she used to feel ‘wiped-out’ after each class was over. "I would work compulsively on my lectures to make sure they were interesting and I practiced my presentation. After each lecture I felt almost compelled to eat, and I had to eat some carbohydrate. Salads or yogurt were just not satisfying."
It takes some time for the body and mind to settle down; the adrenaline doesn’t disappear when the applause for the performance stops. Also, not everyone feels the need to eat right after a performance; the need may not arise for several hours, especially if the performer is surrounded by others after the performance is over. My teacher-friend said that if she meets up with other colleagues after the lecture, she can relax in their presence while her adrenaline-fueled energy dissipates.
She doesn’t feel the same urgency to eat that she does when she is alone. But others, like a soloist in a church choir who was one of my weight loss clients, need to eat regardless of how many people may want to talk to her and congratulate her on her singing. "There are always refreshments served after the service, and I go straight to the cookie table. People may try to stop me to talk, but I ignore them until I have munched on two or three cookies. Otherwise I am too strung out to listen to their comments."
Why the seeming compulsion to eat carbohydrates? Given the almost universal advice to performers, especially singers, not to eat too close to the time of the performance and to eat sparingly, one would think that hunger for any food, not just carbohydrates, is behind the need to eat after the performance. There is a story, probably untrue, about an opera singer sitting in a restaurant after a four-hour performance and eating a massive piece of steak. When asked whether she was going to eat it alone (rather than presumably sharing it), she said, "No, I am eating it with a large baked potato."
One explanation for the carbohydrate craving may be the need to self-medicate oneself into a calm, relaxed state. When a sweet or starchy food is consumed with little or no protein, the amino acid tryptophan enters the brain and is rapidly converted to serotonin. The serotonin is able to take the edge off feelings of agitation, restlessness, and mental fatigue, and perhaps counteract the now uncomfortable feelings left by the adrenaline.
Very little carbohydrate has to be eaten to bring about this effect; about 25-30 grams in a fat-free food in a range of 125-130 calories. However, it may be hard for the performer to eat only this small amount of food, because he or she could also be hungry. After all, the previous meal might have been consumed hours earlier and was likely fairly small. So the performer is not only craving carbohydrates, but also responding to the body’s need for more calories.
The solution is to eat a carbohydrate-based meal, and not just a carbohydrate snack like cookies. The entrée should be a starchy carbohydrate along with vegetables and fruit. Baked white or sweet potato, pasta with non-meat sauce, rice and stir-fried vegetables, waffles topped with blueberries or strawberries, couscous and roasted vegetables are all serotonin producing foods. Such meals, which contain mainly low-fat carbohydrate, will allow serotonin to be made rapidly and as a result, will help achieve post-performance tranquility even if, upon reflection, the performance could have been better.
