Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Feasting

So I read today (as part of an article on a vaguely related subject) that 30% of USian women are obese. If the salad-eating sex is that overweight, one can only imagine what the current status for men is, but it probably isn't pretty. As someone who's been fighting with his weight for a year or so, I've been paying a lot of attention to this subject for awhile (especially during the Holidays), and we did a lot of eating this December. I remind myself often of the Arab saying "a man who eats when full digs a grave with his teeth", and it came into my head when the article I was reading mentioned that the Japanese say one should eat until about 80% full. Given that it seems every culture has a "leave a little on your plate" saying, I'm thinking that maybe what we need to help with our eating is to bring back the verb-form of "feast". Perhaps we should call feasting "eating until full or stuffed", as opposed to just normal eating, and use that as a self-calibration measure. Especially since "eating until full" leaves an error range from "less than full" to "more than full", and whenever we eat to "more than full", our stomachs attempt to expand to accommodate -- this could be a slippery slope. Regular, "normal" eating, would then be eating such that one's error range doesn't exceed full.

Not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, but I rather like memes and I'm still overweight, so there ya go....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I approached Christmas meals as "feasting," and amazingly enough, didn't gain any weight.

That and hindu squats. Even the Bunny is doing them now.

Coffespaz said...

That sounds like a really good way to look at things! I have also read that using smaller dishes, i.e. a salad plate instead of a dinner plate, for the meal can also help us fool ourselves into thinking that we have eaten enough, especially if we were always told to "clean our plates" when we were growing up.

Russ...as one who is desperately trying to get into a routine, please point me to a good reference on hindu squats. I am always looking for something to add so I don't get as bored doing the dreaded exercising thing.

Anonymous said...

Hit Wikipedia. Do Hindu squats, Hindu pushups. Screw back bridges unless you can learn them under supervision.

It'll take you no more than 3 minutes to start with, and if you can't turn yourself into a sodden, ragged, crawling heap inside ten, you aren't trying. My back's out now, but when it's not, I hit them hard.

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