Eating is a problem. Eating is complicated. It’s about everything except going from feeling hungry to feeling full. In fact, it turns out, you are better off never feeling like you’ve eaten enough. And anyone who eats until he/she is stuffed gorged sated is going to be fat, sick or, at the very least, socially incorrect.
I am trying to figure out the right times, types and tastes for me since my stomach is too sensitive for everyday life to roll on as smoothly as I would like. Fortunately there’s lot of information out there and some of it seems to make a lot of sense. Two recent articles in the NYT have become my gastro-guides.
The first advised me to not eat or drink late in the day. We all sort of know that but ignore it for the momentary pleasure of 8pm enchiladas and margaritas with friends or a few cookies and a glass of wine before bedtime. That may work for you; such small indulgences frequently awaken me with post-midnight stomach aches.
Rule number one: do not eat after 5pm unless it is a very special occasion—perhaps tea and biscuits with Downton Abbey or something even better with out-of-town guests—in which case be sparing. And take Prilosec.
I don’t remember the details of the second article as well as I should but basically it is this—reputable studies with mice prove that (at least for the mice) if food is consumed over somewhat limited hours, say a ten or twelve hour time block, it leads to better weight control and generally better overall health than if you spread the same amount of food out over longer time periods—such as 15 or more hours. Or, put another way, no nibbling after hours.
Rule number two is limit eating hours, even for small things.
The two rules fit together very well into Marjorie’s Big Time-Based Eating Rule: I have ten hours to eat from the first milky morning coffee which means stopping all food intake after 3 or 4PM. I might lose the five pounds I’ve been working on for the last five years but, better yet, I will not be awakened at 2AM with a nervous aching upset stomach.
If there is a purpose to posting this humdrum bit of information it is the possibility that someone else may have similar issues and find the information useful.
More than that though, this is an age-story. It is all about making the changes that will keep you relatively content during the process of eliminating actions or substances that were, at one time, important to your perceived happiness!
These are only two of the items on my ‘healthy’ list. More to follow.