If you eat
as directed in the last chapter, it is probable that you will begin to feel
satisfied before you have taken half your usual amount; but stop there, all the
same. No matter how delightfully attractive the dessert, or how tempting the
pie or pudding, do not eat a mouthful of it if you find that your hunger has
been in the least degree assuaged by the other foods you have taken.
Whatever
you eat after your hunger begins to abate is taken to gratify taste and
appetite, not hunger and is not called for by nature at all. It is therefore
excess; mere debauchery, and it cannot fail to work mischief.
This is
a point you will need to watch with nice discrimination, for the habit of
eating purely for sensual gratification is very deeply rooted with most of us.
The usual "dessert" of sweet and tempting foods is prepared solely
with a view to inducing people to eat after hunger has been satisfied; and all
the effects are evil.
It is
not that pie and cakes are unwholesome foods; they are usually perfectly
wholesome if eaten to satisfy hunger, and NOT to gratify appetite. If you want
pie, cake, pastry or puddings, it is better to begin your meal with them,
finishing with the plainer and less tasty foods. You will find, however, that
if you eat as directed in the proceeding chapters, the plainest food will soon
come to taste like kingly fare to you; for your sense of taste, like all of
your other senses, will become so acute with the general improvement in your
condition that you will find new delights in common things.
No
glutton ever enjoyed a meal like the man who eats for hunger only, who gets the
most out of every mouthful, and who stops on the instant that he feels the edge
taken from his hunger. The first intimation that hunger is abating is the
signal from the sub-conscious mind that it is time to quit.
The
average person who takes up this plan of living will be greatly surprised to
learn how little food is really required to keep the body in perfect condition.
The amount depends upon the work; upon how much muscular exercise is taken, and
upon the extent to which the person is exposed to cold.
The
woodchopper who goes into the forest in the winter time and swings his axe all
day can eat two full meals; but the brain worker who sits all day on a chair,
in a warm room, does not need one third and often not one tenth as much. Most
woodchoppers eat two or three times as much, and most brain workers from three
to ten times as much as nature calls for; and the elimination of this vast
amount of surplus rubbish from their systems is a tax on vital power which in
time depletes their energy and leaves them an easy prey to so-called disease.
Get all
possible enjoyment out of the taste of your food, but never eat anything merely
because it tastes good; and on the instant that you feel your hunger is less
keen, stop eating.
If you
will consider for a moment, you will see that there is positively no other way
for you to settle these various food questions than by adopting the plan here
laid down for you. As to the proper time to eat, there is no other way to
decide than to say that you should eat whenever you have an EARNED HUNGER.
It is a
self-evident proposition that it is the right time to eat, and that any other
is a wrong time to eat. As to what to eat, the Eternal Wisdom has decided that
the masses of men shall eat the staple products of the zones in which they
live.
The
staple foods of your particular zone are the right foods for you; and the
Eternal Wisdom, working in and through the minds of the masses of men, has taught
them how to best prepare these foods by cooking and otherwise. And as to how to
eat, you know that you must chew your food; and if must be chewed, then reason
tells us that the more thorough and perfect the operation the better.
I repeat
that success in anything is attained by making each separate act a success in
itself. If you make each action, however small and unimportant, a thoroughly
successful action, your day's work as a whole cannot result in failure. If you
make the actions of each day successful, the sum total of your life cannot be
failure. A great success is the result of doing a large number of little
things, and doing each one in a perfectly successful way.
If every
thought is a healthy thought, and if every action of your life is performed in
a healthy way, you must soon attain to perfect health. It is impossible to
devise a way in which you can perform the act of eating more successfully, and
in a manner more in accord with the laws of life, than by chewing every
mouthful to a liquid, enjoying the taste fully, and keeping a cheerful
confidence the while. Nothing can be added to make the process more successful;
while if anything be subtracted, the process will not be a completely healthy
one.
In the
matter of how much to eat, you will also see that there could be no other guide
so natural, so safe, and so reliable as the one I have prescribed - to stop
eating on the instant you feel that your hunger begins to abate. The
sub-conscious mind may be trusted with implicit reliance to inform us when food
is needed; and it may be trusted as implicitly to inform us when the need has
been supplied.
If ALL
food is eaten for hunger, and NO food is taken merely to gratify taste, you
will never eat too much; and if you eat whenever you have an EARNED hunger, you
will always eat enough. By reading carefully the summing up in the following
chapter, you will see that the requirements for eating in a perfectly healthy
way are really very few and simple.
The
matter of drinking in a natural way may be dismissed here with a very few
words. If you wish to be exactly and rigidly scientific, drink nothing but
water; drink only when you are thirsty; drink whenever you are thirsty, and
stop as soon as you feel that your thirst begins to abate. But if you are living
rightly in regard to eating, it will not be necessary to practice asceticism or
great self-denial in the matter of drinking. You can take an occasional cup of
weak coffee without harm; you can, to a reasonable extent, follow the customs
of those around you.