Didja read the article I posted about recent research on how timing affects weight? Here’s a snippet that should motivate you to read the whole thing:
[Biologist Satchin] Panda says that mice and humans — and probably most organisms — are not built to simultaneously ingest food and metabolize it. “Everything cannot happen at once,” Panda says. “The body can’t take in calories and break down calories at the same time.”
The focus of the article zooms in on the TAE’s (remember what that means?) tendency to think of food as something that’s available 24/7 (because it is) and that therefore can be consumed at any time (which it shouldn’t be). We don’t have to grow that food; often we don’t have to cook it or indeed prepare it in any way; it’s just there, waiting to be consumed. And so we do. I call this type of thing “recreational eating.” Or, perhaps more unkindly, “mindless munching.” Eating on a full stomach, like sleeping on a full stomach, is pretty deadly. Ideally one should go through a cycle three (or maybe four at most) times a day: you eat, you digest, you feel hungry, you eat. You stop eating well before bedtime. In essence, you end up doing what the WaPo article says to do, which is to confine your eating to a specific window. I try to aim for about 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. (We won’t talk about the chocolate lava cake I ate last night at a family birthday party around 7:30 PM—but hey! How many family birthday parties do I attend? I will say, though, that I had originally planned to use a recipe for the cakes that made just four, so that the three guys would each eat one and my mother-in-law and I would share the fourth one, but I felt more comfortable with the recipe I’d made before that produced six. There was one left over, which I think Jim is going to eat. In retrospect I think my original idea was the way to go.)
Since I’m listening to an audiobook by the French Woman, Mireille Giuliano, I was nudged to go back onto her website and find a post in which she shares her eating for a week. It sounds really lovely to me: well-balanced, delicious meals that are restrained and luxurious at the same time. Take a look and see what you think:
“What Mireille Eats in a Typical Week”
Okay. So much for that. I said in the previous post that this whole concept about eating could apply to more general areas of life, and so it does. I’m reminded, once again, of something my pastor said in a recent sermon, this time about how we modern Americans can’t stand to be bored. We think that we have to be distracted every single waking moment, and so we miss out on time for reflection; for mental digestion, as it were. We’re always taking in, taking in, taking in and never pondering over it all. Hey—maybe my supposedly bad habit of lying awake in the mornings and just idly thinking about whatever happens to enter my mind isn’t so bad after all.
So I plan next to read Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self
And a small PS: The name “Manoush” reminded me of another great name, this time of a fictional character, “Mellersh.” This time it’s a guy, and he’s in the totally great movie Enchanted April
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