Siize Punabantu

My 2 cents on food. The Real Problem is not Obesity. It's Bigger: It's Food Addiction

I'd rather be obese yet self-confident, happy and
have high self esteem, than have a perfect bmi and yet be depressed, easily intimidated
and have low self esteem.

A person should be comfortable in their own skin, comfortable in their own size. However, being comfortable does not mean you can't do more to improve your health. Most of us struggle to maintain a steady weight that is close to the recommended bmi. When we eat too much food consistently it becomes obvious as we gain weight and when it's excessive any of us can become obese. When we eat too little food it shows in that we become thin or in worse cases become emaciated. The problem is that society has become fixated on the impact food has on the visual aspect of our lives when it may be more important to focus on the role of "food addiction" which leans heavily on the quantity and frequency of food consumption rather than just the quality of food being eaten. When a person has an addiction to tobacco for instance, we don't ask them to get on tread mill because they are over-weight. Why then do we ask people suffering from food addiction to do the same? Similarly exercise and dieting are very useful but are not comprehensive solutions to obesity if we treat food with the same respect as other addictive products. After all food triggers some of the very same pleasure centers and biological responses as hard drugs. Usually the first question asked is how do we wean this person of this addiction and keep them clean? Its not how do we make this fat person thinner. Nine out of ten people who begin a diet to loose weight or become healthier will most likely either relapse or fail because the approach does not tackle countering food addiction and making staying clean a lifestyle choice.

Food addiction is a very serious modern day problem. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) admits obesity is growing into a modern day pandemic and yet obesity is not the problem, its just a symptom. When the focus is weight gain, its exactly like giving a junky a make-over so they don't look like an addict without addressing the addiction itself. When you look the right size society does not believe you can still be addicted to food. But can you comfortably abstain from food for 24hrs or more without suffering from cravings and withdrawal symptoms? If you can't then you may not be clean even if you think you are, you may be a junky in disguise and therefore unwittingly be at risk. Consequently, food addiction is not given the respect and attention it deserves. It remains a vague area of human health care to the extent that people don't even address if they are addicted to food or not, they ignore the addiction and instead focus on dress size and fitness which is quite ludicrous even though they are noble objectives. Food addiction is not addressed by switching to special diets or dietary preferences, such as the advice to cut down on carbs and eat more apples or vegetables. Food is food. This is cosmetic, with weight loss as the objective. A junkie hooked on heroine is not sent home after switching heroine with cocaine or meth as an successfully identified solution to their heroine addiction.

Food addiction, as observed in the one meal policy requires weaning the addiction off food itself, there are no special exceptions, food is food. When a person is sufficiently hungry a salad, fruit or vegetable can trigger the very same physiological responses as a greasy double burger and chips or chocolate chip cookies; and if a person overeats on fruit and vegetable they can find they suffer from some of the very same food addiction symptoms and complications as a person who lives predominantly on unhealthy fast foods. Addiction is not selective, whether its morphine or heroine, cocaine or prescription drugs. The same principle applies to food. Indeed foods with higher calories have a higher health risk factor, but it may also be important to consider that it doesn't matter if its a salad or steak from the standpoint of addiction when it comes to dealing with cravings. When you are hungry enough your mouth will start to drool from watching someone chomp on a humble calorie deficient cabbage, a symptom that addiction has not been dealt with. Degrees of severity when it comes to hunger means that there is no such thing as a "healthy food" per say, from the stand point of food addiction, the approach has to be comprehensive to appropriately address the problem and not mislead the public.

One of the differences between food and addictive drugs that makes food even more dangerous is that human society from birth is conditioned to know the pleasure associated with eating. This is why merely whiffing a meal being cooked, seeing food or people eating, or just seeing the hands of a clock tick towards lunch time can trigger a craving response associated with addiction that is purely psychological that comes about in anticipation of the pleasure of eating. The majority of people do not get this same response from seeing drugs or addicts shooting up, but an addict who sees this knows the pleasure and these visuals can trigger a similar response. They are a minority whereas people exposed to the dangers of food addiction are incredible in number and consist of entire populations. This is not an exaggeration.

The basic test for food addiction is very simple
Fast for 24hrs (from sunrise to sunrise or sunset to sunset).
During this period take in no calories and only drink water.
If you experience no withdrawal symptoms,
you are most likely clean.
Looking great and being the right bmi does not mean you aren't
at risk for food addiction.

Eating food everyday comes with risks insurance companies need to cover, food addiction is a very pertinent and yet inconspicuous risk. However, unless national health authorities and institutions recognize it as a clinical, genuine and legitimate health issue insurance companies and other formal institutions will remain unable to provide the financial support this problem needs. While there are wellness clinics and detox centers where people can check themselves in months at a time for drug addiction there is very little of this kind of support for food addiction which is so important in the modern day that ideally it should be covered by a person's health insurance plan. It is an area that needs educators, clinics, clinicians, material, publicity and so on but this will never happen without giving it the attention it deserves and the funding it requires. People should be able to get help, leave home if need be and check into an ideal environment like a food addiction clinic a month at a time where they can get the education, training and support they need to overcome the problem and apply this in their home environment and daily lives. Instead the focus is on appearance and weight loss. Losing weight should be a benefit of the policy not the awkward objective. This is the approach of the one meal policy.

Meals today can be highly nutritive and high in calories. The tradition of having three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and supper (now internationally accepted) is easy to abuse and is most likely having a negative impact on health. I have seen people eat nshima with t-bone for breakfast and entirely polish two liters of soda without really being aware of the impact this may have on their well-being, especially if they do this on a daily basis. People who can afford it will generally sit down to a sizeable meal three times a day. They will often eat simply out of habit even when they are not really hungry, well.... "because its lunch time". Though they may have met their full nutritional needs at the first meal (breakfast) they will sit down at a bigger second and third meal at lunch and supper because it has become tradition and they are trained to be psychologically hungry at these intervals. The body usually digests food in four to five hours. If someone has breakfast at 8am they will tend to be psychologically hungry between 12pm and 1pm. Normal hunger is usually an indication of the completion of digestion, which took 4-5 hours. It means that the food you have eaten has been converted into absorbable nutrients and energy. The fact that you “feel” hungry may in fact be an illusion. The intervals between meals and ensuing psychological hunger makes many wonder why they gain so much weight as it deceives people into thinking they eat very little food.

People living on a traditional three meals a day lifestyle think they eat very little food and often wonder why they are over-weight. Since they only eat when they "feel" hungry, hunger deceives them into seeing the one meal (on the left). What they don't see is that its not one meal, its one meal at a time which at the end of the day translates into a large collection of food and unwanted calories (image on the right). This will get you to obesity without you even being sure how you got there.

When you switch to a one meal personal policy, the single meal you have at dinner looks and feels like a full meal, its satisfying yet you gain the upper hand because in reality by only having your "one meal" in real terms you strategically portioned the meal down to one third of its end of day value (Its as if all you ate is the last image on the right).

Many people wonder how their friends or colleagues have large appetites and often eat as much or more than they do at meals yet they annoyingly remain lean or slender. The secret is that, if the friends or colleagues are on a one meal type of lifestyle, though they appear to be eating as much and even more than you at any one time the impact of the meal on their health is only one third of what you see them consume while the same portion you had has three or more times the impact on you since you follow a traditional three meals or more per day policy.

The majority of people today are not trained or taught to understand how the body works and how to control or manage their relationship with food, consequently society actually encourages them to become food addicts through three or more traditional meals or "hits"a day. The problem arises when people incorrectly interpret "hunger" as a communique from their body "telling" them its time to eat more food and they do. We tend to think if its what my body tells me it must be right, when in fact its a socially induced misinterpretation of a biological function that leads to a food addicted and unhealthy society. As a junkie you are now caught in this social or traditional food trap. Addiction has many triggers at its disposal. There are soft triggers like hunger, cravings and even mental images of your favourite food or something nice to eat. When you think you have beaten hunger and craving these pop up in the mind quite tamely and yet just seeing this image, the length, duration and frequency can produce an impulse to eat that you act upon despite the decision you made to refrain. When soft triggers have been sufficiently overcome, addiction will use hard triggers such as withdrawal symptoms to forcibly make you to eat. Addiction to food is difficult to beat because it has numerous alternate triggers it can apply. When one fails it applies another, and another until, if you are still weak, you'll be putting something, anything to eat in your mouth when know you shouldn't be. You have to face and dismiss each trigger as itcomes, and when you fail dust yourself off and tackle it again until you're no longer the lackey, but the boss.

The point at which you “feel” hungry after a full meal is more likely to be the point at which your body is at its optimum to do work or exercise since it has converted the solids and liquids you consumed to fuel your body. These will pass through the digestive tract and be accessed through your blood stream. In this condition the hunger you feel 4-5 hours later is more likely an indication that your stomach is empty; it is not an indication that your body needs more food – hence it is more like psychological hunger from lingering addiction. What the body is probably doing is anticipating that when the fuel it has just manufactured and stored using digestion runs out you will need more. Consequently, it is asking you to “refill” the tank (stomach) in advance of the nutrients in your bloodstream being used up. However, if you give in to this “hunger” and yet do not fully use up the nutrients or fuel currently in your system then the body is in fact being over efficient and will have to inevitably store this as excess fat. Contrary to belief obese people may have an over efficient digestive storage system rather than an under-efficient system that is not burning enough energy. In the 21st Century an adult person most likely only needs one full well rounded traditional meal of about 2,000 calories or less to meet his or her energy and nutritional requirements for the day. The fact that fast food is readily available and more people are moving into income groups that can afford it entails there are more people who are likely to have trouble controlling their appetite.

Encouraging Children to Keep Fit and Healthy

Recently after a rowdy dip in a swimming pool my teenage boys and nephew took a picture just after. Feeling ripped and proud of their growing muscles they tried to show me up. So I went to the archives and pulled a picture of myself when I was closer to their age and "represented" for all the ballys (Dad's) out there. This is possibly one of the only pictures I had ever taken with my shirt off, I am glad it was never lost or I would have no proof I was in decent shape in my younger days.

Proving to the kids I was just as fit as
they are when I was younger.

It’s great to encourage the younger generation to take fitness seriously, to eat well and most importantly teach them skills they need to have to stay healthy. Of course not every one will agree with the "one meal a day" policy, however, it is unlikely to stop people from eating more than one meal, but it will make them more cautious about what they eat when the one meal has been consumed. Since they will know they have all they need nutritively for the day, they will be more cautious about excess food. Creating this simple baseline can be useful to many people. A one meal policy is not for everyone though. Ideally it should be for healthy adults and should not be carelessly prescribed to children. Children may actually require three meals a day as they are still growing. Some adults require three meals a day for medical reasons. However, aspects of this approach can be used to teach children restraint early on and how to manage eating habits for example by recommending much lighter meals at breakfast and lunch and fuller more appropriately nutritional meals at dinner time. This allows children to go through the day not wanting or expecting a full meal until dinner time.

For fully grown adults the body may only need one good meal a day, but society has turned you into a food junkie or addict by teaching you that as an adult you require 3 or more meals a day: Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Afternoon Snacks, and Dinner. The three meals a day policy is designed to cater to psychological hunger. Psychological hunger is mainly useful to the “hunter gatherer” era of human society where there was no certainty concerning the availability of food or the next meal. To avoid starvation it makes sense that the stomach would induce the feeling of hunger even when the body has sufficient nutrients in order to encourage the storage of energy against the probability that the next meal may not be forthcoming. Today this uncertainty no longer exists for many. This explains why even though the body may become obese with an excessive store of fat psychological hunger continues to drive the appetite and desire for more food. An over-efficient body keeps trying to store unnecessary energy by processing more food than it acquires by inducing hunger in its host. Consequently, it’s likely only one of the three meals a day is necessary. It only takes roughly a month for the body to adjust to having one meal a day. The body begins to naturally revert closer to its correct bmi. After this the weight loss is close to effortless.

Growing up my son was on the big side. Though he was teased

about it at school, I would exercise with
him and teach him correct techniques for using my weights. The

focus during these sessions was not his weight but educating him on what

foods are ideal, how best to work out, how one method of exercise

was better than another, the correct position your arms should be

when you do press ups, curl or bench press. The focus was

education and it was fun.

Now that he is a teenager he is self motivated and what he learned
when he was younger combined with eating healthy made a difference
for him in a big way. All I did is positively motivate him,
teach him what he needed to know and do. The rest was all him.

Tradition

Probably the best example of the impact of the 3 meals a day tradition is the impact it has on families. Many people enjoy good health in their youth only to have this drastically change after they get married and settle down. Why is this? The pressure in families to over-eat is high as a result of the three meals a day tradition. Parents indoctrinated by this tradition often believe that goading their children to eat more food than they need at these set times is healthy. Growing obesity among children is a growing problem as a result. Weight gain after marriage is usually because in the past when spouses were single they unconsciously followed the one meal a day policy. When you are young and active, you spend the day moving from one activity to the next. You don’t take traditional times for breakfast and lunch seriously so you often skipped these meals or had a very light snack instead and still had a great day. Marriage formalises the three meal tradition and adds ceremony to it. Your spouse may feel it’s necessary to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner and everyone is expected to sit around the table and eat. Concerned parents push their children to eat at these times even when they don't need the excess nutrition. Goading and imploring those at the table to take hefty seconds is an expected part of hospitality. It becomes a traditional setting where the tendency to over-eat is high. On the other hand, if the whole family knows there is only one formal meal a day instead of encouraging over-consumption this could instead encourage families to eat less yet still gain the correct nutrition they need for their daily lives. The one meal would become the new tradition naturally reducing unnecessary consumption. Its not unusual these days to find once healthy couples unrecognizable versions of their former selves after being married for less than three years, too scared to discuss the excess they see in each other, increasingly no longer physically attracted to one another, pretending they don't see the excess and passing on their bad eating habits to their children. Couples would have to make the conscious effort to create a one meal policy that leads to a healthy family.

The Myth about Dinner

You've been taught that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It probably isn't, it’s the least important and most useless meal of the day, followed by Lunch.

When you eat breakfast, it is likely that you are already "overloading" your body which already has unspent nutrients processed from the dinner you ate last night. These are in your blood stream ready to be applied in the work, physical and mental activity you have set out for the day. Despite this, at breakfast you introduce more unnecessary food to your system. What is worse is that this food, eaten in the morning, is a debt in that it is food you eat your body has not and may not pay back through activity or exertion. Worse still what you eat at breakfast will be fully digested by lunch time and "cease to exist". Before you even get a chance to use up this fuel, hunger will overload your body with another unnecessary meal at lunch time. Your body which already had the fuel to power it for the whole day when you woke up in the morning is now overloaded with three times the calories and energy it needs and at this point you haven't even had your supper yet. High blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, fatigue, lack of energy and so on, you then wonder why your health is at risk when it feels as though you eat very little. Hunger deceives many people in this way, turning them into food "slaves",junkies or addicts.

You've been told dinner is the least important meal of the day, because after eating all you'll do after is sleep. Scratch that. The opposite applies. Dinner is the most important meal of the day. Why? Your body functions more efficiently because you are not forcing it to digest and engage in mental or physical activity at the same time. Digestion takes a lot of energy that drains your body so it is least strenuously, most effective and efficiently done when you are asleep; otherwise it subtracts energy from other important mental and physical activities you could be doing during the day making you at times feel groggy, lethargic and unable to focus. Imagine trying to work, sit in class and pay attention, read, do maths, balance books or go for a jog after a big meal. The consumption of large quantities of food during the course of the work day subtracts from rather than adds to efficiency. The best time to eat a good meal is just before you retire to sleep at night. Since your body isn't engaged in any other activity except rest, it’s the best and most efficient time to allow digestion to take place.

A good, nutritious meal eaten at dinner will be effortlessly, almost fully digested by morning. When you wake up in the morning the important nutrients from that meal will be coursing through your blood stream ready for deployment in any, work, mental and physical activity you have planned for the day. You will not need to eat a full meal again until dinner therefore digesting a full meal will not interfere by subtracting energy from other activities you perform that day. Any food you eat between now and then is probably merely excess baggage your body doesn't really need, and since it will require digestion may only add an unnecessary load or strain to the work, mental or physical activity you have to do for that day. If you train your body not to expect a large meal during the day, it is likely to be able to get through the day without hunger or strain.

If you find that, after having eaten an adequate nutritious meal at dinner sufficient to meet your full energy and nutrition requirements for the next day, you still crave food during the course of the day, then you likely have a food addict related problem. Being an addict, you need to accept and come to terms with your problem. Strictly fasting between the one meal at dinner will help you eventually manage and restrain your craving for food you do not need during the day and will eventually break your food addiction. It will be difficult at first, however, after several months when the cravings caused by psychological hunger are gone or under control the fast can be loosened. As long as you keep expecting food at prescribed times, as Pavlov has proven, you will experience psychological hunger, like a junkie craving a hit. Traditional meal times form habits. If you make the conscious effort to retrain your body to remove the expectation of food at these times then your body is likely to play along and also remove the hunger or craving. People try to lose weight by dieting or trying different combinations of foods at breakfast and lunch when what they should do is train themselves to accept there is no breakfast and lunch and their objective will be realized; a the Matrix "there is no spoon" approach so to speak.

Many people think, if I restrain and restrict myself to one full meal a day, namely dinner, then does that mean I will never have cornflakes, sausages and eggs again - all those favourite "breakfasty" foods? No, this is not the case. The "idea" of breakfast is just a meal like any other designed unconsciously by society to turn you into a food junkie, hence you have been psychologically conditioned to think this meal should be eaten in the morning and cannot be done without even when you don't need it. All you probably need in the morning is a cup of tea. A breakfast recipe is just a type of food, you can have the same recipe for dinner. So if you crave bacon and eggs then simply make it a recipe or meal you will have at dinner when you need it, not breakfast when it's useless to you since your nutritional needs are already in your blood stream from the meal you ate at dinner last night.

Does this mean I will never eat breakfast or lunch again? No it doesn't. You will go out to lunch, go out to have breakfast at a take away or have dinner at your favourite restaurant. You will have more fun eating and enjoying it as you no longer have to deal with the guilt of the negative impact it is having on your body. The difference is that when you do so you will be leaner, in good health and the meal you eat will have little impact on your size. One meal will not make you unhealthy if it is not what you do everyday. It means you have made a lifestyle choice to have one meal a day as the norm. You eat one important set meal a day: namely dinner. There may be times you find you are with friends, are at a party or function, or have a working lunch or breakfast. Think of these meals at times as one offs or if particularly large as dinner brought forward where your one meal will therefore not be required later. If they are nutritionally inadequate then have something light at dinner to supplement your "one meal" principle or policy. Unless you are fasting to develop discipline there is no objection to partake of these meals as they are taken in lieu of dinner, but they are one-offs as the next day and for the rest of the week you will be back to your normal daily routine.

When you make the "one meal" policy or choice, you are not dieting or going through a fad; you are making a lifestyle choice. By doing away with the psychological framework or tradition that exposes you to excess food you will naturally begin to eat healthier. By being careful, the food addiction will subside as will the cravings. Your body will naturally adjust and, over several months to a year, begin to return to its ideal bmi. You may then discover how eating at these traditional times was a burden on your day rather than the boost you thought you gained that was in fact simply being converted into fat you don't need.You should then begin to feel a rejuvenated since you have broken the hold of tradition that triggers psychological hunger and the energy you used to spend on digesting large breakfasts, brunches, lunches and snacks while going about your business is now released freeing you to do more with your life, become more sober, emotionally stable and to feel better.

Telling people not to eat before they sleep at night because it will make them "fat" is probably really bad quack health advice

During sleep very important biological functions take place such as cell repair, not just of muscle and bone, but brain cells, nerves and synapses. The brain reorganizes thoughts filing and rearranging memories accumulated during the day and over a lifetime. During sleep the body more rapidly tackles disease, heals itself, wards off ageing by repairing both mind and body boosting both physical and mental or psychological health. These processes are fueled by nutrients from food. Not eating well, or starving yourself before you sleep may therefore be the worst possible time to deny your body food. To advise people not to eat before they sleep is probably the worst health advice to give. Doing so at this critical time may cripple your body, make you mentally, emotionally or psychologically unstable during the day and induce more rapid ageing as your body struggles to find the nutrients and resources with which to repair cells, heal and keep you young; worst of all this will happen without you even knowing it, everyday. Life may become a burden as a result, without you even knowing why. Deliberately retiring to sleep on an empty stomach, when you don’t have to, may be the recipe for waking up to a burdensome life that is persistently mentally, emotionally and physically constrained. Not eating well at dinner may cause mental health issues and cause you to age faster than you should be. When you eat a proper meal at dinner and sleep your body is inert and at rest. Therefore, the nutrients and fuel being created by digested food are readily available for healing and cell repair, however, because you are not engaged in any physical activity not only are nutrients and energy easier to access for cell repair, they are also being efficiently stored in your blood stream and system in a state where they can be immediately accessed. When you wake up in the morning if you ate correctly at dinner these will be able to fuel your body the entire day without the need for feeding or another "traditional" meal like breakfast or lunch to interfere with your day until dinner time. Simultaneous digestion and physical activity caused by traditional eating times overloads your body during the day making you lethargic and inefficient at what you might want to do or achieve. The one meal personal policy will help you prevent “overloading” unnecessarily. Importantly it will prevent you from creating excess nutrients accumulated during the day that being useless to your body will be stored in fat cells. This will make you naturally leaner. When your body acclimatizes to being able to do without unnecessary food the whole day and it becomes effortless, you will have beaten psychological hunger and will begin to discover a new kind of freedom – freedom from food addiction. The day will come when you are home in the evening and about to prepare your dinner when despite the fact that you have not eaten anything all day you find to your amazement you are actually not hungry. If you wanted you could skip dinner altogether. You try it and your day is just fine. Food and your body are beginning to work for you rather then against you. You will likely enjoy an emotional stability you probably have not felt in a long time. Your libido will improve. The food in the one meal will taste awesome. You will begin to look younger. Your body and mind will likely be firing on all cylinders and you will begin to feel more healthy, more creative, more eager to get out there and be fulfilled than you have in a very long time.

A one meal policy allows your body to work more efficiently

Probably one of the best benefits of a good healthy meal before your sleep is the amazing affect it will begin to have on how you look as you grow older. You will begin to look younger and more youthful especially when this is done on the one meal policy, if anything this approach is probably why some people stay looking youthful nearly all their lives. Being fast asleep at night while your body is completely free to digests, incorporate and, throughout your body, more deeply put to use the vitamins, nutrients, minerals and healthy attributes in food you ate at dinner helps to keep you looking remarkably younger and youthful for longer.

You need to give your body an opportunity to use up all the nutrients it has flowing through your system between dinners or the one meal. Which is why you have a one meal policy in the first place. If you had an adequate "one meal" dinner then you are equipped to understand that any hunger or cravings you experience during the day's activity are psychological hunger. You can beat it because you know its your body giving you the wrong instructions. Eating inappropriately in between interferes with the process of applying the nutrients already in your system. Try not to eat at inappropriate times. If you are given a snack take it, but its better to keep it and eat it later with your dinner making adjustments to the one meal policy to accommodate the snack. This is better and safer as there is only so much food you can eat at one sitting, compared to over time. If you eat the snack now, by dinner it will be as though it never existed - which is not what you want. Its much easier to simply abstain from food until your "one meal" time at dinner, than to have snacks, special diets or shakes at breakfast, lunch, brunch or other odd times of the day. "Dieting" consisting of special combinations of foods taken at traditional or set times of the day will inevitably fail since these approaches do not kill the expectation of food and therefore do not address the problem of psychological hunger. Since you have been raised as a food junkie expecting three or more hits of food per day taking any food at these times acts as a trigger for your food addiction that may lead to a full blown relapse. Small tid-bits eaten in between the "one meal" time may turn into full blown meals as you add little extra portions you think are not a big deal, but that are in fact your addiction to food outwitting you into succumbing to eating food you don't need just as drugs do to any junkie.

Initially your one meal will tend to be larger than it needs to be, due to the fact that since you haven't eaten all day you will indeed be hungry. Like a laser you are focusing your nutritional needs to one time or period of the day or 24 hour period. Cleverly you are taking this food before you sleep when the hard work done to digest it will not be experienced and will not interfere with your day. By freeing yourself of the belief you need three meals a day you are removing psychological hunger and therefore neutralizing cravings. Over the months as you acclimatize to going through the day without the need for food your body will adjust and the cravings will subside. At supper time, you will no longer be so hungry and this is the time to consciously begin to reduce your meal more exactly to the calories you require for the next day. This will mean a smaller, lighter, more nutritionally smart "one meal" at dinner that you ensure is properly prepared. After six months the results and benefits of this lifestyle choice will begin to take root. Once your food addition is kicked to the curb you will be surprised to find that you are liberated and will find you can actually fast for two days without food and yet have little or no cravings for it. You are actually clean and you can be the boss of food rather than the other way around.

Exercise and the one meal policy

Exercise is important. But not everyone likes to exercise. This "one meal" policy will allow you to restore your appropriate bmi whether you exercise or not. However, exercise and keeping fit are useful. For those who are able to and tend to enjoy exercising, when you are on the one meal policy, the best time to exercise is at any hour during the day before you have your one meal. If need be diligently adjust the nutritional diversity of your one meal to accommodate increased activity which will take place the next day. Remember the one meal covers all your nutritional needs for the next day which begins when you wake up in the morning.

By isolating the times you eat to only one hour of the day (at dinner in the evening), you will begin to set a baseline along which you can monitor your eating habits. In the beginning you may need to fast during this daily interval to begin to overcome the craving or addiction to excess food, which will be worst at the traditional meal times when your addiction will attempt to overpower you. This is when you should be the most firm with yourself. Should you find that you want food during the course of the day and find yourself consequently eating even though you are on the one meal policy then you may have a serious food addiction problem. The one meal allows you to identify this behaviour or eating habit that often is in control of you, you are not in control of it: basically you are a junkie. Technically there is no difference between you and someone addicted to hard drugs or alcohol. You are an addict. Your food problem needs to be dealt with. The one meal policy over time allows you to have a day without interference from digestion (the root of your addiction) and to become clean by taking only as much food as your body requires which becomes naturally evident in you moving closer to your ideal bmi.

Its not about how you look, its about your health

Don't let anyone tell you, you are not beautiful. Being at peace within and comfortable with yourself is a strong aspect of your personal health. The "one meal" policy is not about being fat or thin. Even thin people can be food addicts. They can have food cravings, binge eat and may be unable to stop themselves from eating at inappropriate times, they can be overwhelmed by hunger to the extent that it overrides their power to say no to food. Consequently the one meal policy is not really about size or looks, its about setting the foundation for developing self-control, are you in possession of yourself, or are you possessed by food, which is evident in your inability to say no to it when you know you have met your nutritional requirement for the day. Even though you have all the energy and nutrition you need for the day why are you still hungry or craving food? You have a problem and need to deal with it, nothing, not even food, should have this kind of negative power over you. Observing these physiological symptoms within yourself helps you understand your addiction. The one meal policy is a powerful tool for self monitoring, freeing yourself of a yoke you may not even know is weighing you down and developing a healthy relationship with food. It is a lifestyle choice, the fact that your body naturally moves closer to its appropriate bmi as a result of it is just a bonus, the real gain is the peace, clarity and inner strength you gain within from being in control of your relationship with food rather than it being in control of you.

How to manage the initial strain

Firstly, are you addicted to food?

You can test yourself first. How?

Here's how:

A calorieless 24hr fast will very easily and quite quickly reveal if you knowingly or unknowingly suffer from food addiction. During this period only consume water and nothing else. Most people do not know the difference between hunger and withdrawal symptoms. Observe your body and symptoms during this period. If during this period you feel perfectly fine, are not particularly tired, do not experience any symptoms and don't feel particularly hungry, then you are clean. Normal hunger does not anticipate food. You simply sit down and enjoy a meal when its available, you don't long for it. The absence of withdrawal symptoms, craving or longing for or anticipating food during and at the end of the 24hr period means you have passed the test, you are clean. You are in great shape to implement the one meal a day policy. If you experience withdrawal symptoms you have no choice but to put your health first and start the one meal a day policy. You can read more on withdrawal symptoms and what to look for in the next paragraph.

Each day your body only needs a determined number of calories to fuel its activity. When you make the switch to a one meal per day policy you are basically developing a baseline and method by which to ensure there is a better balance between how much you consume and your daily activity. To function optimally and healthily your body actually needs much less food than society would like you to believe. When you begin the one meal per day policy you are likely to feel the strain of lowering how much you eat. These are known as withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal symptoms may include irritability, insomnia, headache, despondency, the shakes, tiredness, pain in muscles and joints, difficultly concentrating, memory loss, sweating, anxiety and fatigue during the course of the day. When you feel these symptoms some people and society will in ignorance say its because you are starving yourself. It is important not to confuse the symptoms you experience with starvation. You are not starving. No softy, you are not dying. What you are experiencing are a junkie's withdrawal symptoms. You are simply beginning to realize how much damage overeating may be doing to your mind and body; and are feeling what it takes to get away from it.

When withdrawal symptoms hit you hard the very best remedy is not to eat something, for example, a tit bit just to keep you going as some "diets" advise. Why? The period of withdrawal is critical in that it is when your body is working hard to drive out the addiction. This is not the time to give it the very thing it is trying valiantly to overcome. What you are actually doing is baiting yourself back to the problem. Taking a little food to help get over the strain will have exactly the opposite effect. It will make you feel better only briefly but you will pay a hefty price in that you will have re-instated the addiction and instead of quenching the hunger by eating later at the inappropriate time in the evening, will only make you hungrier and perpetuate the strain. Furthermore, since you are delaying your body's natural ability to overcome addiction to food you are inevitably stretching out and unnecessarily prolonging the strain, tiredness and discomfort instead of decisively ending it. The more morsels you eat to tide you over at this stage will only make you hungrier, prolong your addiction and make you even more tired or strained shortly after, while sticking to abstaining completely from food until evening at this stage kills the junkie cravings, permanently. So don't give in. The very best thing to do where possible when the strain is heavy or makes you feel drowsy is to take a brief nap. Rest as often as you can and try to relax, meditation during this time is very effective. Relax, suffer the effort for the duration, close your eyes, rest, give in to the process of release and let the addiction go. Its the very best thing for you at this stage. When you rest a healing process sets in. This allows the body to win the ongoing battle against your addiction going on at a molecular level within and to adjust with much less physical strain. Eventually you come out the other side just fine. You find you need less and less rest. Your body is learning to function without the excess and as the vitality begins to kick in you will begin to feel awesome again because your body is driving out the food addiction and beginning to give you back control.

In all likelihood what you experience when you go without eating for the day as you wait for your one meal is not starvation. You ate dinner and scientifically have enough fuel, vitamins and nutrients in your body for the entire day when you woke up in the morning. The strain and craving you may experience in the early stages are called withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal symptoms are what addicted people go through when the source of addiction is taken away from them, in your case its food. Since food is the problem don't give into it to ease the strain, instead take a beauty nap. At this stage you are no different from someone trying to kick alcoholism, smoking or addiction to hard drugs that destroys lives. Similarly food addiction can ruin your physiology, health, sex life, physical activity, psychological well-being and your relationships. To give up on the one meal a day policy because the initial strain says you are starving yourself is an excuse addicts may sometimes use to justify giving in to their craving and returning to their debilitating habit that is ruining their life in the belief that they are "hurting" themselves by coming clean. Stick it out and after several months, when your body is clear of food addiction you find you can thrive the whole day without being compelled to eat and be astounded to find that at dinner when its time for your one meal you are not even hungry. This power you have gained over cravings, eating and food is simply you having successfully beaten food addiction, you are no longer a junkie. You can begin to get your life back and be the powerful person you were always meant to be.

Without a one meal policy, you do not have a clear food consumption limit

A one meal a day policy works because there is only so much food you can eat at one sitting before you feel satisfied. On this policy despite having a set meal, in real terms it has only one third the impact on your health. In other words the one meal is then equivalent to a one third portion of the food you see before you. You are in fact getting the upper hand. Whereas dividing food into three traditional sittings a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner) potentially unnecessarily triples the amount of food a person is able or needs to eat in a day. The fact that digestion takes place between meals magnifies the amount food a person would desire to consume, whereas if there are no sittings expected at all not only does the person not psychologically expect food they also do not hunger for it thus naturally killing cravings. As Pavlov has shown just the idea that you are expected to eat a meal at a specific time of the day may make you hungry or want to eat when that hour of the day arrives even though you do not need the meal.

Without a one meal per day policy, in principle, you have no reason to refuse or avoid food during the day whether you spend your day at home or work. Consequently you will eat indiscriminately which does not help you. Since you don't stand for anything (where eating habits are concerned) you will fall for anything your unruly stomach wants. Food eaten randomly and at inappropriate times of the day can cause highs and lows. It can make you feel happy, euphoric for no good reason; it can make it difficult for you to think clearly, make you feel groggy and sleepy. It can make you feel empty or depressed and hungry when the high subsides even though nutritionally you don't need any more grub, you find yourself comfort eating creating a cycle that like any other addiction is difficult to break. Every time you eat because you are bored, is a lost idea or lost creative activity that has been blocked by the quick "high" from food. Since you don't have a one meal policy you have no food baseline by which to manage when and how you eat. Food can take the place of you being a go-getter and dulls creativity as it replaces the "good feeling" you experience when you are being creative and constructive with a quick fix. After you get this quick fix from food you find that you have lost the drive to work, do something creative, find and develop a hobby and so on. Eating can take the place of boredom, instead of making the effort to find interesting new things to learn, see and do instead you eat at the inappropriate time and this kills your drive to do useful and constructive things, some of the very attitudes that characterize and ruin the lives of junkies.

Eating can consequently take over your life and you will be powerless to control it. This makes the one meal policy, taken at dinner, a very important lifestyle choice for giving you a boost in the right direction. By sorting out your nutritional needs for the next day, you clear your food schedule and are forced to focus your mind and heart on other aspects of your life that you can improve. There is always something you can find that you would enjoy doing, that will enrich you, keep you occupied you just have to make the effort to look around for it. You recognize that since you don't need food during the course of the day you should make the effort not to succumb to eating unnecessarily. If you succumb, you recognize you are a food junkie and have to develop greater will power to deal with your addiction, as a junkie is not the kind of person you want to be. Without the one meal as a baseline, it may be impossible to properly manage the psychological and physical pressure food exerts on your mind and body.

It is important to emphasize that the majority of ordinary people will become food addicted and obese despite the fact that they feel they are not over-eating. In other words they are victims of food rather than beneficiaries of it. They eat pretty much like everybody else. However, the tradition of eating three meals a day, drinks and snacks in between has led to a state of inconspicuous consumption. They simply eat until they are full at each sitting. This is where the one meal a day policy is very important. It allows them to learn how inconspicuous consumption caused by traditional feeding times in human society is having a negative impact on their personal life. The one meal a day policy becomes a learning process, an education, a baseline strategy for recovering from conspicuous consumption, avoiding unnecessary obesity and food addition.

The WHO and the struggle for good nutrition

Well, this is my 2 cents on food, nutrition and health related to issues to do with skinniness and obesity. We often hear about addiction to alcohol,tobacco, hard drugs and how they are harmful to society. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has chosen to priorities obesity as one of the fastest growing global pandemics. It’s important to be comfortable in your own size, as you will not always look the way you want to; you will gain weight and lose it throughout your life. However, the problem may not only be obesity; obesity is merely one symptom of a problem that affects not only people who are stereotypically fat, but even people who are skinny and have perfect bmi scores. WHO may need to move away from focussing on “heavy” people ,which only leads to social stigmatization of heavier people. Low self-esteem helps no one. It’s better to be big yet be happy, self confident and have high self esteem than have a perfect bmi yet be depressed with low confidence and low self-esteem. The WHO should instead focus on the real problem: food addiction and approach it from this angle. If the problem is approached as an addiction then a solution to obesity that avoids stigmatization will have been found as it can affect people of any size or shape. The profound effects food has on the human physiology and psychology makes it as powerful as drugs or narcotics. The same approach that weans addicts of these may be useful for helping people make healthier eating choices. The usefulness of food to human health does not discard the fact that, when it is inappropriately administered through over or under eating, it can have harmful effects on human mental and physical health. By focussing on food addiction as opposed to the physical problem of obesity the WHO may increase the resolve for improving social and individual nutrition and better solve the problem. A one meal a day policy at which all of a person's nutritional needs are achieved is a challenge the WHO can champion. Its a simple approach that is easy to sell. One approach to use for adults is to scrap the three meals a day approach to food consumption and instead recommend a "one meal" a day policy. When people begin to think they only need one meal a day they will naturally avoid over eating and will learn to control or limit their consumption. The one meal policy may be able to help instruct people on how to manage food addiction. In any case there is no need to wait for the WHO to tell you what to do, you can begin to manage your relationship with food today, yourself, by adopting a one meal a day policy and ensuring you get the right nutrition you need for each day through that meal.