Half-Empty or Half-Full?

Not to give away too much information about a book my Japanese companion will be writing over the coming year, but a strange biological fact she claims to be true is that when we are eating, we initially feel "full" when we've eaten about 80% of what is available to us. If we stop at that moment, we'll never be fat.



In other words, according to her, our bodies telegraph subtle signals, which we may obey or deny, that we've eaten enough of whatever is before us, no matter how deliciously tempting, and regardless of the social consequences of leaving the rest on our plate.



In our culture here in the U.S., we have long since adopted the habit of eating everything that we are served. Thanks to the influence of our parents/grandparents/great-grandparents (depending how old we are), we Americans still carry the collective biological memory of the Great Depression of the 1930's.

In my own case, I was born just a decade or so after the Depression started to ease up, thanks to President FDR's "New Deal," and a national economy that started recovering courtesy of massive new government programs. Then came the economic explosion triggered by World War Two, and in its aftermath, a period of global supremecy, whereby every American got his or her chance to actually become rich.

But the point of all this is that I, as the child of parents who lived through the Great Depression, was never allowed to leave the table until I had eaten everything on my plate. No matter how disgusting, as is the case with all children, I found certain foods.

Still, I and my fellow Boomers were never known for obesity. Then, as the age of Fast Food arrived, combined with TV and the ever-more seductive though sedentary options of the Home Entertainment System era, which continues unabated, many of us started to gain weight.

Many of our kids began to gain weight.

Go to any typical American restaurant, Fast Food or not, and you're likely to be served a portion for breakfast, lunch or dinner that is far more than you really need to eat. You can feel the flicker of the 80% factor, but then, of course, the waiter brings out the dessert options.

Hell, I know what I am talking about. I reached the size of an NFL linebacker, albeit a "small" one, by loving food so much and by not leaving anything uneaten. For way too long now.

But, since my companion has introduced me to the 80% rule, I am learning to pay new attention to when my body indicates it's time to stop, as opposed to my eyes. You see, our eyes really can be bigger than our stomachs!

It's up to us to know when that has happened and act accordingly.

(Submitted, lovingly, as we enter the gluttonous Holiday period.)

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