Don't over eat and don't encourage
your family members and friends to over eat - unless you wish to shorten their
healthy living and perhaps die younger!
An interesting article about eating
too full....
"What's wrong with eating too
full?"
"The more you eat, the sooner you
die. The lesser you eat, the longer you live." This is what Dr Lee always
says in his health talk. He also mentions, "Eating too full causes all
sort of health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, stroke, etc."
Why eating too full is so harmful to
your health? What can you do about it?
Mice
experiment
To see how eating habit affects life
span, a professor from University of Texas did an experiment on mice.
For the first group of 100 mice, he
let them eat without any restriction, just like a buffet meal.
The second group was fed only 60%
full. And the third group was given food without restriction too. But this
time, he reduced protein content to half. After 2.5 years, guess how many mice
were still alive out of 100?
* First group (eat without
restriction) - only 13 mice was alive. Opsss...
* Second group (eat 60% full) - 97
mice was still alive. Only 3 mice died.
* Third group (eat without restriction
with protein cut half) - 50 mice still alive.
What
can we learn from these results?
Firstly, eating too full is really
harmful to your body. Secondly, eat 60% full if you want to live longer and
healthier. Thirdly, taking too much protein is harmful to your body too. We
don't need so much protein after all.
Overworking
body
Imagine having a small family car.
Instead of using it for short travel between home and office, you use it for
long distance travel between different cities every day. Instead of using it 1
hour a day, you use it for 10 hours a day. Instead of driving at 70 km/h, you
always speed up to 170 km/h, hitting engine's red line.
Can you estimate your car life span?
Do you expect having various problems with your car after a short time? Driving
your car at high speed for a long time is like always eating too full. You
force your body to always work at its red line.
Do you know digestion is the most
demanding work for your body? Think about the organs involved such as your
mouth, stomach, liver, pancreas, duodenum and intestine. Think about the length
of digestive tract from your mouth to intestine.
By eating too full, your body zaps up
much of your energy for digestion. Otherwise, this energy may be used for other
purpose such as enhancing your immune system.
Do you realize you become very tired
easily after a big meal? That is the sign of your body working hard to digest
all the food you take in.
If you eat an extra bowl of noodle,
your pancreas has to produce extra insulin hormone to process the extra
carbohydrates you take.
Your liver, stomach and intestine also
have to produce extra enzymes to digest and process specific nutrients from
that bowl of noodle.
Therefore the more you eat, the harder
your body has to work to process it. Of course, we must eat to survive. But we
don't have to eat that much!
If you drive your car slowly and
handle it gently, you can use it for along time. But if you always floor the
accelerator and drive like a rally driver, you know the consequence on your car
life span.
Side
effect of eating
Your car engine burns fuel to move
your car and bring you to anywhere you like to go. As a result, the engine
produces exhaust smoke which is toxic. It must be dispersed out from your car.
Similarly, your body cell burns
nutrient for energy to survive. In the process, it produces free radicals.
Since free radical is toxic to your body, it has to be neutralized and
expelled.
"Just metabolizing food
especially fatty and carbohydrate-rich fare causes the body to produce free
radicals, which attack cells and can promote the development of chronic
conditions including heart disease, diabetes and cancer," says Ronald L.
Prior, Ph.D.
Of course, your body can control free
radicals in small quantity. But the more you eat the more free radicals your
body produces. Without adequate control, these free radicals easily attack your
body cells and eventually cause all sort of diseases.
Good
eating habit
After knowing the harmful effect of
eating too full, what's your choice? Do you want to live longer, just like the
second group mice in the experiment? Or do you want to risk ending your life
earlier, just like the first group mice? If you wish to live longer, here are
some tips you can follow:
1. Always eat until 70% full. Do not
exceed 80% full. You may want to stop eating when you feel slightly full.
2. Avoid having buffet style meal
which makes it harder to control how much you eat. Instead, prepare the food
you want to eat in a plate. After finishing it, don't add anymore food.
3. Leaving the dining table earlier
may prevent you from picking some extra food to eat.
4. It is always a good idea to prepare
lesser food in the first place. Some people are afraid of having not enough
food for everyone. Actually, lesser food is beneficial for everyone..
In a restaurant, order in small amount
first. You can always add in some extra order if necessary. But if you can get
by with the original smaller order, that's great.
Remember this: You have higher chance
of overeating if you serve more food on the table.
You have better chance of not
overeating if you serve less food.
5. Avoid stuffing your fridge with ice
cream, chocolate or other dessert. You cannot eat what you do not have.
6. When someone prepares a big plate
of food for you, look at it first. Ask yourself, "Do I want to stuff it
all into my stomach?"
If your answer is no, just put aside
some food to another empty plate first. After finishing your food, look back at
the extra food on that new plate. Say to yourself, "Phew! Luckily I didn't
stuff that portion into my stomach."
7. When you get too hungry before your
meal time, just take some fruit instead of heavy meal.
The tendency to overeat is very high
for modern people.
Source: Unknown
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