A final note on food: I know there are people who specifically include food deprivation as part of their S&M. Obviously, this is totally fine by me as long as it is consensual, but I'd encourage people not to expect themselves -- or their partners -- to react the way they usually do to S&M, as long as they're hungry.
* Weight. I used to be much scrawnier than I am now, and as my health has improved, I've gained weight. Sometimes this freaks me out (it's impossible to be female in our society and not daydream about having cheekbones that can stab people), but it has been worth it. One time, after I'd been having a lot of anxiety about weight gain, my then- boyfriend emailed me the image of an art card printed with the words, "I gained 30 pounds... & sex has never been better!" He perceptively wrote: "Maybe that's why it's easier for you to have orgasms now? I think you should investigate this if you try to lose weight.”
I am not in a position to comment about whether being overweight affects sex. But I can definitely assure you that being underweight is not good for your sexual well-being.
* Sleep. I much prefer to have S&M encounters on days when I've gotten a lot of sleep the night before; this is at least as crucial as eating well before an encounter. There are approximately a billion studies that show the far-reaching effects that getting enough sleep can have on our health, and they seem to usually recommend around 7-8 hours as a good amount per night (more for teenagers).
As with food, I know there are people who include sleep deprivation as part of their S&M encounters. Again, this is obviously fine by me as long as it is consensual, but I'd encourage people not to expect themselves -- or their partners -- to react the way they usually do to S&M, as long as they're tired. I don't know about you, but exhaustion certainly makes me erratic and overly emotional. If you're going to be doing something like S&M that can specifically create an erratic and overly emotional state... well, when overlapping that with exhaustion, it just seems like a good idea to be careful.
* Alcohol. Alcohol definitely decreases my pain tolerance (quite dramatically in fact), and it definitely makes it harder for me to get turned on. There is only one bonus to alcohol, and that's the famous "social lubricant" effect. I personally prefer to limit myself to one glass of wine, maaaaybe two, if I'm planning to hook up with someone; in general, stone-cold sobriety is my preferred state to go into S&M. Good S&M makes me high enough on its own.
I get the impression that some people get drunk before they do S&M because otherwise they feel too anxious to do S&M. As always, I'm not going to tell other people that they shouldn't do consensual things... but drunkenness frequently makes it hard to communicate and hard to know what's going on in your head, which means that drunkenness makes consent hard. Not impossible, just hard. Be careful.
A lot of people say that mixing substances and BDSM is always bad. Personally, I figure that if a person has a lot of experience with a given substance, and a lot of experience with a given BDSM act, and a lot of experience with their partner... then I kind of doubt they're taking a huge risk by doing a familiar BDSM act with a familiar partner in a familiar state of mind. It's a lot to deal with at once, and again, it's worth being careful.
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