On Eating Yourself to Death

The other day I was at my local supermarket waiting my turn for service at the deli counter, and there was an elderly gentleman standing next to me who was ahead of me in the queue. When he ordered the Mickleberry baked ham that I was about to order, I struck up a conversation with him about how good that particular brand of ham is. I did this for a couple of reasons the first of which is my appreciation for the ham and the second of which is I like talking to elderly people. This guy looked to be close to the age my dad was when he passed away, 82, and I guess it just strikes a sympathetic chord with me when I see someone in that age group. His response to me was that it had a little fat on it, but that at this stage of the game it did not matter to him. I replied that it is the fat that makes it taste good, and from there the thread went on about how people think they're getting a good piece of meat when it is very red with no fat in it, and we both agreed that meat with no fat is nothing but a piece of shoe leather once it is cooked. The majority of the public have been conditioned to think just the opposite and shy away from meat with any fat in it. Not me! I look for meat with fat, and if I spot a cut with little rivulets of fat laced throughout it, I pounce on it like a Puma just in case there are any other fat lovers nearby waiting to do the same. When you get a steak, or any other type of meat like that, it's like eating Prime grade meat but without the steep price tag, which makes it all the more enjoyable!

Back to my conversation with the seasoned citizen, his comment about allowing himself to indulge in a little fat consumption because of his advanced age led him to volunteer the story about his friend who recently passed away. After his friend retired all he did was sit on the couch and watch television day and night. That would be enough to make you want to end your life if not drive you absolutely starkers. The whole while what do you think he was doing? You guessed it, eating constantly, probably as a defense mechanism to keep from going insane. His weight balooned up to 290 lbs, and with that came a whole host of problems, not the least of which was Type-2 Diabetes. From there, as they say, it was all down hill, because he only lasted three years out of retirement. This is sad on at least a couple of levels: the guy obviously had no other interest outside of work and coming home to eat, watch television and sleep was all he did. When the work component was taken out of the equation, well he just did what he knew and that was watch TV, and eat. The guy did not have the initiative to find something other to do with himself than waste away on the couch. That is too bad, but, really, he's to blame for his own untimely demise, and, who knows, maybe he had a secret death-wish, and this was just his way of going out happy. Although I don't know how happy you could be once you contract Type-2; I don't believe that it's a picnic by any stretch. Anyone see the irony there?

This little anecdote shared with me by a complete stranger, although one I felt a kinship with, just got me thinking about the over importance we as humans attach to eating. My God, is it that important to just keep gorging yourself when it's so evident what it's doing to you? It's hard for me to fathom, but I guess not everyone shares my philosophy about eating. The question we all need to ask ourselves is very simple, and that is "Why?" Why do we eat the way we do? Then try to divine what your own special relationship with food is, and maybe you can gain some greater understanding why you eat the way you do. Once achieved you will have gone a long way towards not eating yourself to death!
 Tip #5 would apply here...

On Not Letting Your Eyes Get Too Big for Your Stomach

This is so important because what you load-up on your plate can create an obligation for you to overeat. I think we can all agree that the great majority of us were "trained" as pups to eat everything we put on our plates. Now maybe it took us awhile for that lesson to be drummed into our little heads, but once we learned it we were programmed for life. I know that's the way it was for me because I was a pretty fussy eater when I was a kid and left food on my plate plenty of times. Once I grew up enough to appreciate what my well intentioned parents were trying to teach me, the light bulb went off in my head and all of a sudden I had this new respect for all things food. Hence forth, if it was on my plate it did not stand a chance of being left on it when the sparks stopped flying. Now, finishing my food became a badge of honor and a matter of great pride, as I preened myself on how much I was growing and how "big" I was getting. How big you got when you're growing up was more important if you're a guy, because it stood to reason that if you got big than no one was going to mess with you, and you'd automatically be able to fend for yourself, at least that was the underlying logic of the process. There's probably a scintilla of truth to that, because if you're big it will make most people think twice about treading on you. Problem is, we subconsciously carry that eating philosophy with us into adulthood.

My point here is to make you aware of your programming, so that you can make a conscious decision to override it. If you can do that you will have taken a big step towards taking control of your eating habits. The place to start is not creating an obligation, even if it's in your mind only, that is going to cause you to do something that runs contrary to what you are trying to achieve and your new way of being. You just make it so much easier on yourself when you exercise some restraint upfront rather than after you've loaded up your plate and now your faced with this huge guilt-laden burden of finishing what you took. You can always go back for seconds, that is if you are really still hungry and not going back for more out of pure gluttony!
Refer to Tip #1
Also, see Tip #5

Learning from Your Mistakes

In my last post I shared with you the mistake I made resulting from the head of steam I had going into making a batch of blueberry pancakes for myself the other morning. This "head-of-steam" got built up because of my excitement over finding a new whole-grain based pancake mix from a venerable brand like Quaker Oats, which I'm a big fan of because I eat their oatmeal at least three times a week. I do this mainly to soak up the cholesterol waiting in my digestive tract to be assimilated into my blood supply. However, I also have come to enjoy eating those oats very much, and they really fill you up and stick with you. They will hold you till it's time to eat lunch unlike cereals you add milk to that leave you wolfish after just an hour. A side benefit of eating oatmeal is the "morning constitutional" you have a short time later. There's something to be said about a good healthy evacuation in the morning! Enough about that here though because I digress.

The purpose of this post is to share with you how I learned from the previous day's mistake and resultant stuffing of myself to start out the day. I still had some batter left over and decided to have some pancakes again a couple of days later. There was enough to make a couple more cakes of about the same size when I first whipped-up the batch. Well I was about to repeat the same thing I did two days earlier just as a matter of routine. I got the first one cooking and had the second dollop ready to slap on the griddle when I pulled myself up short and asked "do I really want or need to do this again"? The answer was "no, I did not", because I was not that hungry to begin with, and even if I was, it would probably still have left me with that uncomfortable feeling of being stuffed again. Something I surely did not need to start the day off again. So I opted just to have the one I already had going on the griddle and be done with it. This left me a breakfast for another day and a good way to economize, which has become quite necessary in this do-with-less economy that we are in.

As it turned out that one pancake was plenty for me. It left me full but without that stuffed feeling. To think how close I came to repeating the same error I had made just a couple of days earlier gives me pause. Pause to think how many times we all just do things as a matter of rote, that mindless programming we all operate on a majority of the time. If we can just be more aware of what it is we are about to do, then that alone will go a long way to curtail our excesses. We just need to stop ourselves and ask "Do I really need to do this?". You have to be vigilant about whether or not what you are about to undertake squares with what your ultimate objective is. If it is contrary to that then I think you know what the right decision is. DON'T DO IT! 
Tip #1