What are social calories? I think we’ve all heard the phrase you are what you eat. This idiom applies not just to food, but also to the words, tone, images, environment, and physical interactions we receive. Just as with our diet, each of us makes choices about what we consume. In particular, the people, ideas, and vibe we purposefully socialize with affects the patterns that develop in our brain and how we, in turn, respond to others. Comparing our social activities to food can help, especially in today’s world, to be a little bit more honest with ourselves about what we are choosing to consume, and how it affects us.

Good Calories

Probably the easiest set of social calories to start with are the good calories. How many times have we heard that we should eat our vegetables, our fruit, our protein? We eat those because they make us feel healthy. We have the physical energy to go do the things we want to do. Good social calories act the same way, building our mental and emotional energy in both the short term and long term much in the way a healthy diet does. We know we are getting good social calories when what we receive is in harmony with the values and ideals that exist inside of ourselves. Doing for others, spending time with loved ones, engaging in a hobby, sometimes even spending time alone can add good, healthy calories to our social battery. We may be tired after spending this time, but it is a “good” tired, like eating exactly the right amount of good food and feeling satisfied.

Bad Calories

Bad calories come in all shapes and sizes. Some of the easiest to feel are when we engage in more socialization than we are ready to handle. We feel mentally and emotionally exhausted or hungover. Alternatively, we may feel icky when bad calories are entering our heart and our mind. These could be ideas, words, tones, or other sensations that just don’t sit right. This feeling is indicative that we are consuming social calories that are bad for us. As children, we were often protected from negative content by ratings systems, parents, teachers, and even by external feedback. Some content may never be age appropriate for our best selves. We may become numb to bad social calories over time in our reactions, yet we may see others around us reacting to the unhealthy impacts just as they might react to the consequences of a long term unhealthy diet.

Empty Calories

Empty social calories are things that we consume that pretend like they are good calories, but are inauthentic. Social media is a common example, where we may have hundreds or thousands of “friends” yet not make real connections with even one of them that gives us the satisfaction that just one source of good calories can provide. Often empty calories take up much of our time without actually affecting us positively or negatively. They are almost more of a holding pattern keeping us in place. In today’s society, single serving friends, AI interactions, are common activities that many people experience as empty calories at best, though they may be bad calories for others. Improving your awareness of how you experience activities both during and after can allow you to differentiate between good, bad, and empty social calories in your life.

Balanced Diet

With a balanced diet in the nutrition world, we are not just eating one type of food all the time for every meal. A balanced diet is also unique to each person and their goals. While a balanced diet for a professional athlete may include tons of food, a balanced diet for an infant may only include a small amount. Our goals and our situation determine the types of social calories we need. We cannot stop bad social calories from entering our eyes and ears from time to time, yet we have control over the majority of calories that enter our body. Reflecting on how experiences, words, and images make us feel in the moment and later can help us recognize their effects. Setting goals for the type of person we want to be and paying attention to where our everyday words, phrases, thoughts, and feelings come from can help us be more picky about what we consume. The intersection of awareness and choice empowers us to manage the diet that supports who we want to be as people, both in food and in life.

Social Calories

Good Calories

Bad Calories

Empty Calories

Balanced Diet