I found many moments this week, which helped me to realize this is an important topic. Taking food is an essential thing to provide materials to make our body working. But let's stop for a moment at this point!
When was the last time when you were truly hungry?The feeling of hunger and thirst is essential. Also essential to our body, to turn on several protection mechanisms that developed over the thousands of years. Many experts who quest longevity tell us, we need to feast many times to stay longer healthy. It was part of life in ancient times; however, eating was a foremost thing like today.
The abundance that we have today made forgotten these things. People generally go eating because it is time for eating, not because they are hungry.
Last year I attended a class of Ken Wilber to learn the integral mindset. One of the first lessons was around hunger and thirst. It helped me a lot to understand how it works. It is good to understand how these mechanisms work in the most in-depth segments of our brain.
Basically, these two feelings serve the survival of a living being. If someone has a problem with the integration of these feelings, addiction or hate occurs. If addiction occurs, then it develops overweight; if hate, it develops anorexia. Both of them harmful and need treatment. We need to differentiate the hedonism from the addiction. In hedonism, you eat for the joy of the different tastes. The primary lesson: hedonism in a healthy way, doesn't develop overweight.
The major problem with the addiction to hunger is not only limited to food. It also shows a sign of material wealth, like money, car, boat, etc. In this way, you cannot feed enough to fulfill hunger.
Especially at the profit-oriented companies, this addiction shows significant appearance. Most of the cases, this hunger is the barrier, why they cannot unleash the true potential. Not a surprise compared to these mechanic organizations, purpose-driven green or teal organizations do better business. If we look at the Financial sector, a good example is the Grameen Bank. They are far more profitable than mechanic competitors.
We can turn back to the original topic of hunger. Parallel to the psychological dimension, there is a medical one. We are not well educated in nutrition; however, we think it is quite a simple process. I eat food, and I'm done. It is far complicated. For example, if you start your morning with a large amount of carbon hydrate, it pushes your blood sugar level to the skies, and you will be hungry in an hour.
High blood sugar levels erupt the vessels. Not a surprise, on average, at 60, most of us have 3 or 4 significant diseases. That was why I used a blood sugar meter for 2 weeks to better understand how my body reacts to different foods.
I also started to do a 16hours diet on weekdays. It helps my body to recover and give a chance to better understand my feelings around hunger.
This week, I also selected a day for a 22-hour fast. It turns on Autophagy, which is a natural procedure where the body eats senescent cells and accelerate cell level renewal.
Today I close my article with advice:
Find out what makes you hunger, and which side on you!