So that's what it feels like to not feel full!

[magrat]

Last night (day two of No S) I lay in bed feeling hungry. I realized that my stomach wasn't grumbling or churning, and it didn't hurt or ache. So why on earth did my brain get the idea that I was hungry?? I can only assume it's because I'm so used to feeling full, anything less than that feels like hunger. Now, I'm hardly a gorger or binger or something. Technically I haven't quite hit the "overweight" category. But I've lost any shame in gluttony. Once upon a time, if I wanted a snack my mom would say "No! You'll spoil your dinner!" If I had two cookies and wanted a third, I wouldn't because *it's wrong* and embarrassing. But it's no longer embarrassing to be a glutton. It's celebrated - indulge! Go ahead, you deserve it! No wonder as a country we've gotten so fat.

I read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) back in high school, and there is one line from it that really stuck in my head, so I looked it up so I could share:

"The assiduous food-habit of a lifetime had trained the English body to the pitch of producing a punctual nervous excitement in the upper belly at the fixed hour of each meal: and we sometimes gave the honoured name of hunger to this sign that our gut had cubic space for more stuff. Arab hunger was the cry of a long-empty labouring body fainting with weakness. They lived on a fraction of our bulk-food and their systems made exhaustive use of what they got. A nomad army did not dung the earth richly with by-products."

Food is so plentiful in the US, why do we constantly think we're in danger of starving to death? It's an insult to all the people in the world who really are starving to eat it so thoughtlessly and with so little real enjoyment.

[Nicest of the Damned]

It's an insult to all the people in the world who really are starving to eat it so thoughtlessly and with so little real enjoyment.

I don't think it really matters to people who are starving how much people who have food enjoy it. The starving people don't get the food you're eating, whether you enjoy it or not. They probably won't know whether you enjoyed your food or not. I suspect most starving people would much rather have the food for themselves than know that someone they don't know enjoyed it.

I say this because my mom would tell me "eat your food, there are starving kids in Africa". From that, I learned to keep eating when I'm not hungry, to clean my plate. I'm struggling to un-learn this now. I try to tell myself that eating when I'm not hungry is just as much wasting food as throwing it in the garbage (if not more).

[wosnes]

But we're wasting food when we eat food we don't need -- it's just a human trash bin.

[oolala53]

Magrat, you had the experience of distinguishing the difference between being legitimately hungry and just having an urge to eat. We could really use a different word for each sensation. In regards to Arabs, it sounds like they were forced to frequently ignore even legitimate hunger. However, giving up between meal snacks has helped me appreciate even more the sensation of hunger. There are times it makes me feel the old desperateness, but many times, it actually feels good, and I will sometimes try to put off a meal just to extend it. I've also occasionally had the time for a meal go by without eating and it hasn't seemed like an emergency, nor have I eaten more at the next meal. But Lawrence's story does show that people can function well with a lot less food.

With regards to the starving children idea, I think it can be a useful image. I agree that those children are not affected directly by our thoughts and actions here. I also agree that eating too much is counter productive to combat world hunger or be healthy. But sometimes I am inspired by my memories of needy children I saw in Afghanistan, India, etc., to savor and be grateful for what I do have, and to be very happy with a moderate amount. Just a personal thing.

[marygrace]

Magrat, you had the experience of distinguishing the difference between being legitimately hungry and just having an urge to eat. We could really use a different word for each sensation.

I think "appetite" does a good job of describing the latter.

[Nicest of the Damned]

But we're wasting food when we eat food we don't need -- it's just a human trash bin.

That's what I tell myself. I hope that, if I tell myself that often enough, eventually I will believe it. I was told often enough that it was better to eat when you're not hungry than to throw food away, and learned that. It worked once, no reason why it shouldn't work again.

In fact, my family even used words very similar to those- "human garbage disposal" to refer to my dad's habit of finishing up food rather than throwing it out. But it was presented as an admirable or at least neutral thing. I'm boggling a little, thinking about this.

sometimes I am inspired by my memories of needy children I saw in Afghanistan, India, etc., to savor and be grateful for what I do have, and to be very happy with a moderate amount. Just a personal thing.

And that's all well and good.

If you wanted to help hungry people, you might spend less money on food and donate the money you would have spent on food but didn't to a charity that feeds hungry people. If you stopped going to the vending machine for a snack every day at work, and instead donated $25 per month (assuming you go 5 days a week and your snack costs $1.25) to a charity devoted to helping hungry people, that would help both you and the hungry people. Another way would be to brown-bag one day a week. If you save $7.50 per week on your lunches that way, you would have $30 per month for a charity, and you'd most likely also save yourself some calories.

It could be a charity that feeds hungry people in India or Afghanistan, but it wouldn't have to be. There are almost certainly hungry people in your community, and at least one charity that serves them.

You could even use your HabitCal (or set up another HabitCal) to do this. You could figure out how much you were spending on snacks and sweets on average each day. At the end of a month, you count up your green days, multiply by your average daily spending on snacks and sweets, and donate that amount to a charity. For something like brown-bagging, you could set up a separate HabitCal.

[magrat]

Our eating less food is not going to change anything for the hungry people in the world, I just mean by eating less and being more thoughtful in our eating, we can feel a gratitude for our food and will be better people.

I don't think anyone should emulate TE Lawrence - he had serious issues and ended up dangerously thin, but I do find his comments helpful to put things in perspective.