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American to Grazer

The last couple of days I've noticed that my eating habits have really changed. Like, really changed.  I made an attempt to try to include more foods with protein such as soy and peanut butter in my diet this week. The result was that my meat cravings were nil. I've also had to practically force myself to eat a whole meal because I don't feel hungry by the time meal times have rolled around. What I have been doing is eating snack types of items every couple of hours.

Here's about what my eating schedule was yesterday:
10am half a pb*&j sandwich on daves killer bread & nonfat latte
11am lowfat greek yogurt*
noon half a frozen veggie curry entree* (practically had to force myself to eat this as I wasn't really hungry)
1pm the other half
3pm a packet of mixed nuts*: pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries
5pm green naked fruit juice (again, not hungry enough for dinner, but felt like I should probably have something of nutritious value)
10pm meat free nachos, because I felt like I should eat even if I wasn't hungry
I put an asterisk by everything I got from Trader Joes. It seems that's all I eat now.

When I got home from being out with the Greshem crew Paul wanted Muchas Gracias. He got me a carne asada taco and I found myself really enjoying the salsa and avocado that comes on it more than the meat. In fact the meat was kind of a let down.

I'm beginning to feel like I should reject our cultural notions about eating meals. When I was in the Czech Republic, the family I stayed with would eat a light breakfast of bread and butter maybe with some lunch meat on it and maybe yogurt around 6am, everyone would come home from work and school for lunch around 11 and take 1-2 hours to eat a full meal - their grandma would come to their house to cook it - they'd work for a couple hours more, and then eat a very small very early dinner around 4.

Why do americans think that dinner should be our biggest meal? Why do we equate salad with lunch? And why do we think that huge meals are necessary? Isn't starving yourself for four or five hours between each meal and then bingeing illogical? We are hunter gatherers by nature. So it seems reasonable to think that our bodies would respond better to fewer smaller meals throughout the day. Honestly, every time I ate yesterday I wasn't really hungry but I ate to sustain myself. And every time I ate I wasn't full. It seems that my body knows knows what is best for it! I suppose I should keep listening.

Comments

  1. one of my biggest "duh julia!" moments was when I realized that you want to eat your biggest meal when you have time to burn it off... but our biggest meals tend to be dinners. Since then, I've tried to make sure I eat more at lunch so I have more time to actually burn it off.

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