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When
to Eat for Perfect Health
By
Wallace D. Wattles
Excerpt from "The
Science of Being Well"
You cannot build and maintain a perfectly healthy body by mental action
alone, or by the performance of the unconscious or involuntary functions
alone. There are certain actions, more or less voluntary, which have a
direct and immediate relation with the continuance of life itself. These
are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping.
No matter what a person's thought or mental attitude may be, he cannot
live unless he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps, and, moreover, he cannot
be well if he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps in an unnatural or wrong
manner.
It
is therefore vitally important that you should learn the right way to
perform these voluntary functions, and I shall proceed to show you this
way, beginning with the matter of eating, which is most important.
There has been a vast amount of controversy as to when to eat, what to
eat, how to eat, and how much to eat, and all this controversy is unnecessary,
for the Right Way is very easy to find.
You have only to consider the Law which governs all attainment, whether
of health, wealth, power, or happiness; and that law is that you must
do what you can do now, where you are now; do every separate act in the
most perfect manner possible, and put the power of faith into every action.
The processes of digestion and assimilation are under the supervision
and control of an inner division of a person's mentality, which is generally
called the sub-conscious mind, and I shall use that term here in order
to be understood. The sub-conscious mind is in charge of all the functions
and processes of life, and when more food is needed by the body, it makes
the fact known by causing a sensation called hunger.
Whenever food is needed and can be used, there is hunger, and whenever
there is hunger it is time to eat. When there is no hunger it is unnatural
and wrong to eat, no matter how great may APPEAR to be the need for food.
Even if you are in a condition of apparent starvation, with great emaciation,
if there is no hunger you may know that FOOD CANNOT BE USED, and it will
be unnatural and wrong for you to eat.*
Though you have not eaten for days or weeks, if you have no hunger you
may be perfectly sure that food cannot be used, and will probably not
be used if taken. Whenever food is needed, if there is power to digest
and assimilate it, so that it can be normally used, the sub-conscious
mind will announce the fact by a decided hunger.
Food,
taken when there is no hunger, will sometimes be digested and assimilated,
because Nature makes a special effort to perform the task which is thrust
upon her against her will, but if food is habitually taken when there
is no hunger, the digestive power is at last destroyed, and numberless
evils caused.
If the foregoing be true -- and it is indisputably so -- it is a self-evident
proposition that the natural time (and the healthy time) to eat is when
one is hungry, and that it is never a natural or a healthy action to eat
when one is not hungry.
You see, then, that it is an easy matter to scientifically settle the
question when to eat. ALWAYS eat when you are hungry, and NEVER eat
when you are not hungry. This is obedience to nature, which is obedience
to God.
We must not fail, however, to make clear the distinction between hunger
and appetite. Hunger is the call of the sub-conscious mind for more material
to be used in repairing and renewing the body, and in keeping up the internal
heat. Hunger is never felt unless there is need for more material, and
unless there is power to digest it when taken into the stomach.
Appetite is a desire for the gratification of sensation. The drunkard
has an appetite for liquor, but he cannot have a hunger for it. A normally
fed person cannot have a hunger for candy or sweets. The desire for these
things is an appetite. You cannot hunger for tea, coffee, spiced foods,
or for the various taste-tempting devices of the skilled cook. If you
desire these things, it is with appetite, not with hunger.
Hunger is nature's call for material to be used in building new cells,
and nature never calls for anything which may not be legitimately used
for this purpose. Appetite is often largely a matter of habit. If one
eats or drinks at a certain hour, and especially if one takes sweetened
or spiced and stimulating foods, the desire comes regularly at the same
hour, but this habitual desire for food should never be mistaken for hunger.
Hunger does not appear at specified times. It only comes when work or
exercise has used sufficient energy to make the taking in of new raw material
a necessity.
For instance, if a person has been sufficiently fed on the preceding day,
it is impossible that he should feel a genuine hunger on arising from
refreshing sleep. In sleep the body is recharged with vital power, and
the assimilation of the food which has been taken during the day is completed
-- the system has no need for food immediately after sleep, unless the
person went to his rest in a state of starvation. With a system of feeding
which is even a reasonable approach to a natural one, no one can have
a real hunger for an early morning breakfast. There is no such thing possible
as a normal or genuine hunger immediately after arising from sound sleep.
The early morning breakfast is always taken to gratify appetite, never
to satisfy hunger. No matter who you are, or what your condition is; no
matter how hard you work, or how much you are exposed, unless you go to
your bed starved, you cannot arise from your bed hungry.
Hunger is not caused by sleep, but by work. And it does not matter who
you are, or what your condition, or how hard or easy your work, the so-called
no-breakfast plan is the right plan for you. It is the right plan for
everybody, because it is based on the universal law that hunger never
comes until it is EARNED.
I am aware that a protest against this will come from the large number
of people who enjoy their breakfasts, whose breakfast is their "best
meal," who believe that their work is so hard that they cannot get
through the forenoon on an empty stomach, and so on. But all their arguments
fall down before the facts.
They enjoy their breakfast because it gratifies a habitual appetite and
not because it supplies a natural want. And they CAN get along without
it, because millions of people, of every trade and profession, DO get
along without it, and are vastly better for doing so.
If you are to live according to the Science of Being Well, you must NEVER
EAT UNTIL YOU HAVE AN EARNED HUNGER. But if I do not eat on arising in
the morning, when shall I take my first meal? In 99 cases out of a hundred
twelve o'clock noon is early enough, and it is generally the most convenient
time. If you are doing heavy work, you will get by noon a hunger sufficient
to justify a good-sized meal. And if your work is light, you will probably
still have hunger enough for a moderate meal. The best general rule or
law that can be laid down is that you should eat your first meal of the
day at noon if you are hungry, and if you are not hungry, wait until you
become so.
And when shall I eat my second meal?
Not at all, unless you are hungry for it -- and that with a genuine earned
hunger. If you do get hungry for a second meal, eat at the most convenient
time, but do not eat until you have a really earned hunger.
The reader who wishes to fully inform himself as to the reasons for this
way of arranging the mealtimes will find the best books thereon cited
in the preface to this work. From the foregoing, however, you can easily
see that the Science of Being Well readily answers the question, When,
and how often shall I eat? The answer: Eat when you have an earned hunger,
and never eat at any other time.
Wallace
Whattles is the author of "The Science of Getting Rich," "The
Science of Being Well", and "The Science of Being Great."
Learn more about all three of these classic books at www.mindpowernews.com/AbundantLife.htm
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