Human beings don’t need that much food to be healthy. Despite having never met you, I bet you could get by on half of what you’re eating now and thrive. Because, well, most of us could. Look around. You see many skinny people around? No, me neither.
You know the clothes manufacturers just let their sizes out too, right? I talk about this in my book. You know that a size 12 of 2020 is not remotely the same measurements as a size 12 from circa 1995? We’re all just getting chubbier and chubbier as our dishes get cheesier and more enormous with each passing year.
The reason we all go along with it is, well, firstly we LOVE eating, we love cheese, we love the neurochemical buzz we get from a huge plate of high carb / high sugar food – I’m thinking sandwiches like doorstops and baguettes the size of actual human legs. But also because we are terrified of “being hungry later”.
We don’t eat just to take our present moment hunger away and give us a few calories to see us through the next part of the day, we eat to prevent our future hunger. Our potential hunger 3 hours from now.
So we have another cheese sandwich, we have another helping of soup (and a bit more bread to go with it, because soup on it’s own? Ew, gross). Or we have a couple of teaspoons of peanut butter to finish off our lunch – as a kind of dessert, if you will. We don’t eat until we’re merely satisfied in other words, we eat until we’re fit to bursting, rubbing our bellies like a fat Buddha.
Terrible idea.
Totally unnecessary too. I mean, what are apples for if not for a quick top-up mid-afternoon? Why are almonds on this planet if not for eating in groups of 6 at around 4pm?
Hunger isn’t a foe, it’s your friend. It’s to be nurtured. You want to feel it during the day – it’s our signal to eat. You never want to feel as though you could eat the table cloth you’re so starving, but you also don’t want to squash hunger entirely with enormous plates of lunchtime fayre so it doesn’t have a chance of resurfacing before the evening.
Hunger is supposed to be kept at bay, not extinguished or slain. Apart from anything else, sitting down to a meal with a good appetite is one of life’s great pleasures – and we get the option of doing it 2 to 3 times per day. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, pumpkin (and certainly don’t stuff it with another piece of bread and butter).
And you know what else? Having *just that little bit more* doesn’t help anyway. It improves nothing. You’re still going to want more even after that. No matter how much of the loaf of bread you have for lunch, you’re still going to be left wanting, so you may as quit while you’re ahead, no?
Bottom line: If you stick to taking only your hunger in the moment away and don’t bleed into the dreaded “preventative eating” (as I call it), as a natural consequence your portions will reduce, your supermarket food bill will reduce, your ass will reduce and even your environmental impact will reduce. Everything will reduce except your quality of life.
So next time you’ve finished but you want to go back for *just a little bit more* (because you won’t be eating again for HOURS), just think: nope, less is more.
Because in these uncertain times there is one thing of which I am certain: large quantities of food will frog march you straight into a low quality of life.
Photo by Manuel Meurisse on Unsplash