How Much to Eat to Stay Healthly

How many times have you said to yourself, “Stop eating, you don’t need anymore”?

How easy is it to get up in the morning after a late night meal? How long did it take for you to realize that eating a full meal before a mental task, inhibits your ability to focus and concentrate? Obvious questions with obvious answers pointing to one conclusion:  Too much food and having a clear and sharp mind are antithetical.

Eating Too Much

              When we eat too much, we directly interfere with our energy flow and thus our mind becomes dull and stupefied.  Excess causes loss of vitality, dulls our awareness, blunts our alertness and produces fatigue. Have you ever felt vital after consuming a four-course meal? Eating that much, makes it hard getting up from the table!

              Sometimes we overeat even though on some level we know we would enjoy the food more if we were more moderate. We all know that excess food doesn’t translate into additional nutrients, yet sometimes we still eat to excess. The fifth bit of chocolate cake tastes no different from the first, yet we shovel it into our mouths. Actually, we tend to overeat foods that aren’t’ nourishing, for our brain, for our digestive systems generally find non-nourishing foods nutritionally unsatisfying and so paradoxically we crave more.  By overeating, we put a strain not only on our digestive system, which can’t accommodate the plethora of food, but on our brain, nervous system and our consciousness as well. Trying to operate on any level-physically, creatively, emotionally, intellectually is far more difficult if the body is trying to figure out what to do with the food it has just taken in.

Eating Too Little

              And yet at the same time, I don’t recommend under eating, either, for it leads to a decrease in optimal brain capacity.  By under eating, I mean not getting enough nutrients for proper brain function. This is not the same as cutting down on calories, for caloric restriction can increase life span.  (too much restriction, of course, can decrease it.) I’m talking about skipping meals, and drinking diet soda and coffee in between to curb appetite and take the place of skipped meals. As you’ll see when we starve our brains on a regular basis in an attempt to stay thin, we are actually causing stress to our system. Indeed, over dieting by skipping meals is one of the most hazardous threats to our brain’s vitality.  What we should strive for, is balance, a tuning of the brain and mind so that you can become consciously aware of the process, and feel vital and alive, at full capacity for playing, for thinking, for feeling, for living.

Keep A Journal

Take time an keep a food journal to help you track your food intake and your state of balance.  Your choices will reveal your habits.