Eating What You Want
Silly Goose it's all about the portions
Food post time…! Hell Yeah, it's that spot in my sequence of posts where I divulge my many years of experience in Wellness Eating. Which is a phrase I just made up on the spot. Hope you like it.
No but seriously, one of the most important tenets of a proper diet is not necessarily what you eat. But, how much you eat. For one's height and bone structure, a particular caloric window should be established. Translation, one should not eat too much or too little. Obvious…? In theory yes. But for those that have traveled abroad, it would be apparent that this practice is something American society has struggled with. For many reasons that will be beyond the scope of this post.
If you have read my last post (link below), you would know that I am a YouTube fiend. I was recently watching a vlog of a young American couple that just emigrated to a medium-sized city in Spain. They passed by a bakery which displayed lots of ever so colorful pastries, to which the lady of the couple exclaimed “How are they not all overweight here…?” And to be honest I am paraphrasing.
I have family in Greece and have visited them on a few occasions. I can attest to the fact that most bakeries in Greece make most bakeries in America look like a…well…joke. So many more delicious options, both sweet and savory. To add insult to injury, everything is much more pleasing to the eye and well executed. From what I can tell, again from my YouTube sessions and word of mouth, the same can be said of bakeries from France as well. So better bakeries in Europe by far.
If you have the means, travel to these countries yourself to be the judge. Tell me I am not wrong. Despite this fact, Europe is deplete of an obesity problem like in America, which is well documented and not even arguable at this point.
Speaking of America, there are some bright spots to this discussion. I once saw a news piece, on uh YouTube, where this dude was lauded by a certain popular, and decades old, fast food burger restaurant. Reason being is he claimed to eat one Big Popper (rhymes with…) every day for forty years or something like this. He was a tallish, pencil thin man who claimed to be in perfect health. At least he looked it. For his efforts, he was awarded free burgers for life by the fast food titan.
Around the same time period, I saw a documentary about a man who chose to eat fast food every day for a month. We shall call this documentary B. It was a response to a documentary where a man ate nothing but fast food every day for a month and tracked his health decline, which we shall call documentary A. The whole point of documentary B was about how the man in documentary A was not watching his portion size, or how much he ate. By contrast, the man in documentary B did watch his portion size, and therefore did not over, or undereat. The kicker is documentary B man did not gain any weight, and his health remained in good standing. Which was interesting, but not surprising.
This has been my experience as well. For when I overeat or undereat, my body, physical health, and state of mind suffers. Same is true of the type of food I eat, but that is for another post. Point being is that if you require 2000 calories a day (more or less) to maintain a certain level of standard function, you could get that from eating nothing but donuts and your weight will not be affected to a large extent. Now, I would highly highly suggest a balanced diet for you would be missing lots of nutrition. But as far as your weight is concerned, your body will not entirely care where the calories come from.
Disclaimer: Do not eat donuts all day every day. This was just used as an example.
Yes yes yes, most people will not do this. Although, for a fourth YouTube mention in this post, I did recently see a vlog from a professional athlete, fit and trim in his 20s, who claims to eat nothing but candy all day. The point of his message in this video is that practice is, by his estimation, bad. His words.
It is really easy to over eat even with a balanced diet. Shoot, some people undergoing a stressful experience in life can even undereat. It is really important to keep your weight in an acceptable window for proper health. Over, or undereating will put your body outside of this window over time. Either of which is not good…at all.
So I've just checked the life expectancy of the US vs Spain, France, and Greece. Unfortunately, the US is lagging behind by at least 4 years for both males and females. One thing I do not think you understand about this metric is how much people actual smoke cigarettes in these European lands. Which should put things in perspective.
On the obesity front, over the decades America has gotten better in certain states, and Europe has gotten a little worse. But a quick internet search shall point to tons of data indicating we Americans have more work to do on this front.
The most important thing one must control in terms of their diet is how much they eat. Resist the urge to have a little extra just because you can. Resist the urge to skip breakfast or lunch simply because you are too busy. Take your time and pay attention to how much food you are eating. Your body will thank you…!
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