1-D Food - How much to eat

How much to eat - at each time?

There is a theory in science called calorie theory of food. Well, they say that the food that you take is burned inside and calories are produced out of it. It is this heat energy that actually drives your body, they say. This is a great myth [falsehood] and 100% untrue. You do not require 3,000 to 3,500 calories per day in order to live healthily. What is needed for health is more self-restraint and self-disciplineIt is the quality of food that matters and not the quantity. The calorie theory is all completely wrong.

By and large, people today lack religious approach. When you do not have the total approach, when you look upon the human body as only a machine with no spirit in it to drive it and when you misunderstand and misinterpret human organism as a simple steam engine, you are likely to come upon a very grievous error. Whether you like it or not, the human being is a body backed by mind and spirit. It is this spirit that gives us the energy. There are people who eat plenty of food every day and they are all the time ill. So dismiss the calorie theory.

If food is the source of energy, why should you need to sleep every day, and still feel tired?
When you take the requisite energy through food, where is the need for relaxation?
If every day you supply energy through food, why is there death in world?
If food is what gives life, there are people who take three meals a day, why should they die?

The very theory that food is the source of energy is wrong. Then what for must we eat food? I will tell you about that a little later. But I will tell you not to eat more than what you need. The idea is not to fill the stomach but to eat the right type of food which will give you the enzymes, vitamins, mineral salts, amino acids, and so on. It is quality that matters, not quantity. If a person takes maida, polished rice, white sugar, hydrogenated oil and fried vegetables, the individual may fill his stomach but will not get anything out of them. What are known as the deficiency diseases which are rampant today in society are there in people who eat for calories. So do not go by the calories theory. Eat moderately. Remember that the space inside the body is not unlimited. The space inside the stomach and the intestines is not unlimited. When you fill the stomach completely, you hamper the work.

So how much should you eat? Never more than half the stomach. Why? You fill half the stomach with food; one fourth is for the digestive juices and one fourth you leave empty so that the stomach can contract and expand, so that the mechanical part of digestion can start. If you fill up the stomach with food, if you do not leave any room for contraction how will digestion begin? So, never eat more than half the stomach.

Modern people, somehow or other, are very much after medicine. When allopathy fails they turn their eyes to ayurveda. When that too fails, they turn to another system of medicine. There is a verse in ayurveda. The verse is this:

Disease retraces its steps even without medicine if only one reforms his food. If a person says ‘I am not going to reform my food’, give him hundreds of medicines – there will be no use.

Therefore, eat only half the stomach. Here, a question arises. If we eat only half the stomach each time, and if we eat only twice a day, will not we be starving ourselves? Will not we lose our weight? Will not other people around complain? Will not it lead to further danger? This is the fear in many people. There is fear results in overeating.

The stomach complaints to the over eater: ‘Oh! Please do not over eat. What is half a minute’s work to the mouth is half an hour’s work for me and you go on eating like this and I have tolerated all these nonsense for so many years. Now it has come to a stage that I cannot tolerate it any more. Please stop. .

All the digestive disorders starting from hyperacidity and sour mouth to peptic ulcer and stomach cancer are the results of wrong eating. So let us not intentionally invite disease. So let us all be moderate eaters. The whole nature cure can be simplified in just one sentence. Eat moderately twice a day, that is enough, you will never fall ill and do not be miscarried by the calorie theory.


When to stop eating

As the stomach is getting filled and when the stomach is half full, part of the air which was originally there escapes. This is the first wind. Most of us would have experienced a wind which comes from the stomach when the stomach is half full. We do not bother about it. We go on eating further because there is space in the stomach, there is something left in the plate, and, perhaps, the person who serves food urges you to eat more. Whatever the reason, you go on eating further in spite of the fact that a wind has come up. What does this wind indicate? When the stomach is completely filled, when we begin to over eat, when the stomach cannot expand anymore, the remaining part of the air that was there also escapes. That is the second wind. The first wind comes when the stomach is half empty and half full. The second one comes when the stomach is completely full. When the stomach is completely full, we feel very uneasy. We like to like down. When the stomach is completely filled, we will not feel like reading and writing or moving a bit, because all energy is diverted to the stomach. But when the stomach is completely filled digestion cannot start. Why? Digestion is partly mechanical and partly chemical. The mechanical part of the digestion starts slowly with the churning movement of the stomach. When the stomach is completely filled and cannot contract at all, how can the churning movement take place? It does not. When the mechanical part of the digestion cannot start, chemical part of the digestion also cannot start. The result is indigestion.

The stomach is not a Refrigerator that you store your food there. It has got moisture and heat in it. So if the food that is put into it cannot remain as it is. So it starts decomposing, fermenting, petrifying. So the food, instead of getting digested, starts fermenting. We do not get anything good out of the petrified and decomposed food. As the food cannot remain in the stomach, the petrified food is passed out to the small intestine which is very bad for health. Intestine is the place wherefrom all nutrients are extracted from the food. And when only petrified food is there in the intestine, there are no nutrients to extract from. All that the petrified food offers is unhealthy elements.