Importance of a 1-Day Food Vacation
Your hunter-gatherer genetic
system is geared to the occasional day when you won't be able to eat anything.
It's also considered beneficial for your health to have the occasional day off
from eating. But there's something everyone forgot: A day of
skipping meals -- in moderation and on occasion, and only if you're healthy and
old enough to do so, no kids, please -- gives you a wonderful chance to really
get something done for a change. You'd be surprised how much time you need
for your necessary meals each day. So once a week, if you can do it, to
heck with the silly food!
Be careful. Then if you're good to go, take a day off from eating. Relax, it's
not a religious fast, so there's nothing to get self-righteous about. And if you
get hungry remember how fast a day goes. It'll soon be tomorrow.
You need something small for your first meal the next day. Perhaps just that --
some "meal" such as cereal or oatmeal. A small portion.
A Czech doctor discovered that one could lose weight simply by taking three
square meals a day combining those portions into one amount, and then breaking
that amount of into eight sections, thereby eating those three square meals a
day eight times a day! Boy, that'd mean that you really eight some food!
Now, during your day off from eating, it's important to monitor yourself. If
you're feeling really uncomfortable, or especially hungry, or even if there are
some actual warning signs, like dizziness, to heck with that fast. Just start to
eat something, but don't go on a binge. You're going to have to settle for a
little snack and then a little two hour wait until you eat a meal. This is I
always say, better wait than never.
But if you start to get a little experience under your belt, yuck yuck, and
you're becoming a regular at this fasting bit, remembering not overdo it, of
course, then if you do feel a little light but you know you're OK, then keep
plenty of orange juice on hand, and just quaf a glass of OJ. As far things like
fruit juices and liquids go, just go ahead and drink as much as you want.
Fruit juice is really brain food, since it has what the brain really needs, and
that is glucose. If you're in school, you should get a couple of nonperishable
packs of Apple juice, or some other affordable fruit juice, and drink one
between periods, or between classes, or even during class, if permitted. Just
one thing about the fruit juice. You're actually can overdo it while on fast
because it raises the pH in your body, because fruit juice is what the scientist
term acidic -- mildly, that is, it's not like it's going to burn a hole through
the table if you spill some -- and when that happens, your body can develop
subsequent complications, such as gout.
But that only applies if you're going to drink huge volumes of fruit juice. It's
just that it tends to get more pronounced if that's your only intake during the
day. Also remember that regular fruit juice can be high in calories, which is a
good way to get a lot of your body fuel unless you're already chubby.
But you'll generally be OK if you can just simply, during your meal days,
balance your diet and eat plenty of that green leafy stuff, such as collard
greens, spinach, chard, and so on, that will help balance the pH in your
bloodstream because the green leafy stuff helps take your blood pH the opposite
direction towards what the scientist call alkaline. As in alkaline in time saves
nine.
Now you get a few advantages from taking a day off from eating. By the way,
regarding your intake of liquids, for these fasts it's quite OK to drink liquids
with a lot of protein in them and things, such as milk, so-called soy milk,
high-protein weight-training shakes and so on. But one advantage you're going to
get from your one day off a week from eating meals and snacks, is that your
stomach will tend to shrink to a more normal size, and that will help to curb an
inordinate appetite, one of the sure guarantees of obesity. It's important to be
careful that you don't go too far and go the other way, because once you
graduate from the food infatuation and binge-eating obsession, it's important
not to ride a pendulum, as it were, ending up in the opposite position of eating
disorders.
But it's really neat when you can walk a couple of miles through an outdoor
market, with all of that beautiful food prepared and sitting out there in those
gorgeous arrangements, and not only not freaking out, but also having the
complete freedom and liberty of choosing to and being able to ignore them,
especially if you're busy and you've got other things to do. Besides obesity can
be really expensive, as in "owe-besity".
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A fast one day a week is a food
vacation.
Copyright (c) 2005 by Paul A. L. Hall. All rights reserved.
If you get hungry remember how fast a day goes; it'll soon be tomorrow.
29 March, 2005
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