Books can be food for the brain. Almost literally. Let me explain.
In January 2014, I challenged myself to read 100 books that year. As I read them, I noted their titles in a creamy, thick-paged sketch book I was using as a writer’s journal.

By September, I was cheating a little, choosing thinner volumes to try and reach my tally. I wanted to read Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch but I looked at its girth and thought, next year. I managed to get to 88: a decent number for a year but it wasn’t 100. I needed slimmer volumes or more time. The benefit of noting the titles is that I recall those books much better than the ones I didn’t write down.

There have been times when I haven’t been able to read at all.

When life devastated, then overwhelmed me, I had no patience to sit with a book, and no headspace for fiction.

I’m fussy about fiction, but even the best had me tossing the book aside and glowering at the walls. I didn’t care whether Briony Tallis experienced redemption in Atonement, Anne Elliot married Wentworth in Persuasion, or Nadia gave Leah Weisz her murdered father’s desk in Great House — my world was falling apart. I had drama and conflict aplenty in my head already. Fiction annoyed me. I wanted biting. Real. Non-fiction got me into reading again: it was a tonic and a joy.

It must have been around that time that I read a book about the brain.
The broadsheet review fascinated me, and the book didn’t disappoint.

In Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon, Rahul Jandial, a pioneering American brain surgeon, describes some of his astonishing surgeries, and through those, we learn about the brain’s plasticity, how and where language is stored, which brain “facts” are myths, and how to keep our brains sharp as we age.

Puzzles and crosswords are fine, but varying our experiences is even better. Jandial and his wife expose their children to new places, sights and cultures, and new foods, because the mind thrives on novelty. Learning instruments and languages, even if we get them wrong, cultivates fresh neurological pathways. Reading a range of writing styles in unusual formats provides new content for the mind.

But it was the section on ketones, and intermittent fasting for attention and focus, that led me to try skipping breakfast twice a week. I ate in the early evening, then had nothing except water, tea and coffee until lunchtime the next day.

It was easier than I thought, so I tried it every day. But it was the summer break: I teach full time, and I was sure that skipping breakfast wouldn’t be sustainable at school. I wake at 5.30am and commute, then it’s go go go with ludicrous intensity — not only all day but also at endless evening meetings and after-school events, week after week — until the term ends and I’m shattered and shaking, and have to lie down for days to recuperate.

But skipping breakfast at school was easier than I thought, too. Goodbye, morning bagel. It turned out that I didn’t need you at all.

Three years on, my body has regulated. Now I rarely want breakfast, unless I haven’t eaten well the night before, I’ve gone on a run, or my routine changes and it makes sense to eat earlier.

I know many can’t fast: medications and ailments mean some bodies need food more regularly. But manageable modifications towards a Mediterranean-style diet are even more important, Jandial says: for optimal brain health, we should eat less red meat and fried food, more fatty fish, fruit and vegetables.

If asked whether I felt my brain feels more efficient now, I’d say yes. I have no way of knowing if it’s true, but the point is, I’ve always treasured experiences and now I feel fully justified in exploring them: investigating courses, buying books, visiting unknown places, trying different recipes and seeking alternate routes.

Maybe I’ll try to read 100 books again this year — that was a fun challenge. But one memorable book that can change your take on life might be all we really need.