Obesity Crisis Outweighs Malnutrition Worldwide

A consortium in Australia met recently to discuss the global obesity pandemic. It's everywhere and not just in rich countries anymore. We know that the urban poor in North America are suffering - McDonald's is cheaper and quicker than cooking a healthy meal - but also the rural poor in countries like China are getting fatter. One in 6 people in the world are overweight or obese. That's over 1 billion fat people!!!! Read more here.

What did this gathering of the International Association of Agricultural Economistsd decide? Some of their recommendations are:
- subsidise fruits and vegetables
- impose taxes for unhealthy choices such as soda pop and sugary foods
- encourage more physical activity

These are great suggestions but I think it's going to be tough to impose "unhealthy taxes" on multimillion dollar corporations. If governments and consumers truly believe that eating garbage foods is making us sick, then we may be able to put pressure on fast-food chains and sugary cereal manufacturers to start making healthier food. We can simply stop buying the garbage they try to sell us. But this brings the control back into our own hands. Our health is our own responsibility, and we cannot place this blame on others. We have to take control of how we treat our bodies.

People know that I am a little piggy and I love my desserts. So they always ask me why I am slim. I have genetics on my side, to be sure. My parents are both fairly tall people and have thinner than average frames. But there are 2 reasons for my healthy figure, that are under my control:
1. I love my food but I eat it in moderation. If something is YUMMY delicious but very heavy, low in nutrients or high in calories I either eat it all by itself (with no other food) and make sure that the rest of my food that day is very healthy. Or I save it for a very special treat. A once a week kind of treat.
2. I am physically active every single day. I do not own a car and I walk or bike everwhere. I go to the gym three times a week, do yoga as much as I can, swim or go for bike rides. I like to move around and stretch and my body only feels good when it is being used in this way.

It's pretty simple really. We are so lucky to live in a country where we have so many luxuries. Our food is a luxury; so much more than simply fuel. It's tough to hold back sometimes from all the treats we see around us. But we have to, or we will make ourselves sick. Overeating means giving in to temporary greedy pleasures. It's okay once in a while, but doing it regularly means you do not care about your body or your health. Who feels good with a stuffed belly? Nobody. Who feels good with a body that can run up a flight of stairs without puffing, that can jump around and feel light? Everyone does.

We can blame the corporations for dangling unhealthy treats in our faces, especially when this food is what we're desiged to crave. We can blame corporations for taking advantage of the stress we're all under when they advertise that processed food is easier to prepare, tastier and makes our lives better. But, at a certain point we need to take responsibility for our own eating habits. We put food in our grocery carts, on our plates, into our mouths. We need to be sure that what we put there is what will make us healthy, not fat and sick.

Feeling Empty

The word 'empty' has a negative connotation in today's consumer society. It is used to mean going without, absence, or even convey emotional meanings such as lack of value or loneliness. When we say we have an "empty belly" we're describing an unhappy state of hunger that we want to fix immediately. On the other hand, the word "full belly" has happier connotations of abundance, and a calm and comfortable state.

Most athletes and yogis find a benefit to having an empty stomach before they start their practice. It's very difficult to run and jump or do seated twists or forward bends with food sloshing around in our bellies. The active person has an appreciation of emptiness and in this sense it becomes a positive state.

As North Americans, we are not at risk of starving or going without food for any longer than a few hours. While pangs of hunger may come on strong, there is always something nearby to satisfy our appetites. With that fact in mind, does it make sense to eat the large quantities of food most of us do? Perhaps we could take a lesson from the pre-exercise state of being empty, which comes before hunger. The feeling of knowing you are not hungry, but nor are you full can be a pleasantly neutral place to be. To avoid the extremes of either a heavy, stretched belly or a raging hunger, we need to eat a number of smaller meals throughout the day. So much of what we do is ingrained, routine behaviour, and it takes practice to change the habit of eating too-large meals. The first step, as always, is becoming more aware of our current behaviours.

Here's an awareness exercise to try next time you sit down to a meal where you can control the portion size, ideally at home.

1. Take a medium-sized plate and place food on only half of the plate's surface. Do you feel anxious about the fact that your plate only contains a small amount of food? Tell yourself not to worry, that you can eat again in an hour if you are still hungry.
2. Take a deep breath and slowly breathe out. You will now begin to calmly eat.
3. Take a small bite of food and put down your fork/spoon/chopsticks as you slowly chew and then swallow.
4. Continue like this, chewing slowly and placing your utensil down between bites. It should take you at least 10 minutes to eat your meal.
5. When you have finished the food on your plate, push it away from you and take another deep breath. Feel the food in your stomach. Feel how you have nourished your body.

You may still feel hungry, because it takes a lot of chewing and sometimes about 20 minutes to feel satisfied after a meal. But you have just eaten enough food to sustain you for several hours, particularly when you consider what people in other countries survive on each day. And if you are still hungry in an hour, just eat again.

This is an interesting experiment to try occasionally, and it's a good way to avoid feeling overstuffed before you do a physical activity. It may also give you insight into why many of us overeat simply by default. By being more aware of our eating habits, we can build a healthier relationship with food, one that's based on what our bodies need, instead of what advertisers or our hectic schedules might dictate.

Begin Again

I read an article the other day on the late Vanda Scaravelli and her method of teaching yoga. Vanda was well-known for starting yoga in midlife, and being amazingly strong, capable and flexible well into her 80s. This article spoke about a phrase she used commonly: "Begin again" to help her students try to surrender anew into each pose, to not be attached to their experience in the pose last time.

I think this phrase can be applied to so many other aspects of our lives, and I believe it's relevant to our relationship with food too. How many times have we felt we were on a downhill slope with our diet, and that it was all "going to pot"? That we had somehow ruined things by not eating healthy. We all have days where we eat what's too rich, too heavy, just too too much. Yet every next meal is a new start, a new chance to begin again and do what's right for our bodies.

I love the hopefulness of that phrase 'begin again'. It encourages a letting go of what came before, underlines the importance of this moment, and suggests an optimism about what is to come. Start fresh, make this time count, try now.

If we can remember these two words each time we sit down to eat, we can put aside feelings of guilt or remorse and focus on what we're going to give our body for fuel right now. It doesn't matter what we ate (or didn't eat) for breakfast, the point is that each new meal gives us a chance to reach our optimal health. Each time we eat, it's an opportunity to take in the vital nutrients our bodies need to perform well for us all day long. And with each meal, our journey to optimal health can begin again.

Are You Really Hungry?

Recently I've met a few people who don't eat very much, or very often. As someone who's either eating or thinking about food most of the time, I'm amazed by people like this. "Don't you get hungry?!" I asked them. Because to me, hungry people need to eat three times a day or more. Now, of course they do, but the way they deal with their hunger is markedly different from the rest of us.

What I've learned is that these individuals recognise their hunger and seek out food if they have time, or if busy they just put off eating until later. Eventually, they eat, but they rarely overeat, as many of us do when we've put off eating and are starving.

Sitting and eating with these folks, I see that they don't rush to eat food when it's placed in front of them, nor do they eat everything on their plate. They stop when they feel they've had enough. What I observe here is a very relaxed and almost ambivalent approach to food. They don't see their food as anything but something their body needs occasionally, and they rarely have thoughts such as "eating this will make me happy" or "I need to eat this or..." The most surprising revelation? These folks don't like feeling stuffed, so they make sure to stop eating before they get to that stage. "Don't like feeling full?" I ponder. "But it's like a hug from the inside!"

This is complete contrast to my own intense interest and occasionally anxious need for food. I think their style seems very foreign, but it has made me question my own.

From a physiological perspective: food is fuel that keeps us alive. We're programmed to detect when we're low on fuel and are motivated to seek out more. Once we've consumed enough to store some energy away, the idea is to stop eating, assuming there is a sufficient supply nearby for next time the hunger arises. Because, in times of scarcity we're programmed to overeat as a protective measure. Animals in the wild will gorge themselves on a kill, if they're not sure where their next meal will come from.

I wonder sometimes, if many of us have our internal hunger dials mistakenly set to famine mode. Could it be that the highly advertised availability of rich food around us, or the fact that most of us lead stressful lives makes most of us anxiously reach for larger quantities of food than we need?

I'm going to be asking myself this question a lot in the next few weeks: "Am I really hungry?" to bring my attention to times when I'm eating because I'm stressed or unhappy. Also, it may help me to better determine when I'm full. So I can stop and avoid the bloat. Hug or not, it's still a bit uncomfortable, like an unwelcome hug from an overzealous relative.