CHAPTER 1: Brain Before Belly

Your brain controls what you do and how you do it. The brain is the very organ that the human body feeds before the mouth, a feed that thrives on knowledge, understanding, sensations and feelings etc.

Consider also your mindset; an ideology of instructions that governs how you eat, what you eat and when you eat. Over a period of time, your eating methods become a sub-conscious habit of mealtime intake.

The ideal scenario of eating a meal is that depiction of a family or an individual sat at a table with cutlery, plates and other utensils. This communal or tidy arrangement has been a dominant and common image of food consumption in western and modernised culture for some time. However, it has been practised a lot less in recent years with fast food and pasty shop culture ruling the corners of our cities with an iron fist.

The fast food industry caters towards those on the move, especially the workers who go out to lunch and eat on the go. The vision of a yuppie stuffing their face with a Greggs Steak Bake whilst walking along the street isn’t exactly pleasant. Sadly, that is what the monopolisation of these food outlets have encouraged, with cheap food, quick transaction and simplicity. Eating well on the go is impractical in the sense that one cannot take the time to enjoy their food or take the time out to make a better choice of what to eat. What has also attributed to this non-ethic is that a lot of workplaces reduce their lunch hour to 30 minutes so the employee can be paid for that hour of work. Aside from the 30 minute lunch hour (hour?), this way of doing lunch just does not add up. Food intake requires time to enjoy and digest. Eating on the go just upsets the balance of the body clock! Rushed eating can also lead to a continuation of hunger, with the body not taking time to register the food it has taken in resulting in a mixed message to the core processor to eat more. What a mess!

Now I can’t tell people what to eat, but in the daytime I find eating something uncooked a lot easier to take in. Sandwiches, fruit, salad and sushi are but a few things in the daytime that I take in much easier as opposed to something cooked or heated. Cooked meals are more ideal in the home where you are more likely to have a lot longer to pay attention to whatever you choose to heat up or prepare.


Surroundings are also a must. The reason we go out and eat socially at a highly acclaimed venue is for the backdrop as well as the cuisine. Finding somewhere peaceful and likeable on a lunch-break away from whatever you do is a good addition to enjoying lunch for the limited respite period. Good surroundings are good mental stimulation.

Not everybody has ‘swanky’ surroundings that are accessible to them. I know people who don’t even have a kitchen/family dinner table to sit at for communal meal times. Sometimes you have to make the most of what you have, even if you have to make do with a living room ‘n’ lap trays arrangement. Not that I condone living room eating, since a dining table is more suitable for setting up a meal. Good ambient surroundings are important and if you don’t like them, change them.

Structured eating gives the body a better chance to digest and process your intake. I find that chewing a mouthful 15 times or more (give it a try, unless you have a tough steak to content with) before swallowing gives more of a chance to appreciate and enjoy the food. Chewing properly to me is an important discourse between the brain and belly as timely and savoured chewing tells the body it is filling up. Plus, you enjoy your food better!

In hindsight, the old saying of ‘engage your brain before you engage your mouth’ is the epitome of how to approach eating. Structured times, pleasant surroundings, a good choice of food and well paced eating. Some aspects of health really aren’t hard; they just take desire to approach and to active them.

Introduction

First and foremost, I am in no way a fitness guru, life-coach or dietician. I’m someone who has struggled with weight & eating issues for a number of years and I’ve learned much from it, with good results.

The years I have had spent fighting the hold of obesity has strengthened me to tackle the problem. In some cases you can learn a lot about tackling a problem if it has been with you for too long. My obesity has been like an arch-nemesis whose tactics I can predict from a near lifetime of battling.

Some of what I will say in these writings may offend or come across as either egotistical or patronising. The intension behind the confident musings I have are not intended to spark off upset but to proclaim that what I am writing is so good I have justified reason to be confident. As stated above, I am not a professional teacher - I am a guy on a journey who has kicked a lot of rear along the way and wishes to share the enlightenment gained. After all, the journey is more important than the destination.

The fact is, life is valuable. You the reader, being alive to read this, are valuable. People in general need to be reminded from time to time they have value.

In society, we humans take a lot for granted. I am a Christian and I believe we were made in God’s image as the species on this planet given stewardship over the rest of creation – responsible dominion. We were created to enjoy life but also created to respect ourselves, each other and the planet. Those Jennifer Aniston L’Oreal commercials on TV have a great discourse in that they tell the viewer that the beauty product is brilliant that they are “worth it!”. Not many adverts tell the consumer of their worth, the norm is all buy, buy, and buy! McDonalds adverts with their “I’m loving it!” slogan have no indication towards customer value; they just inform the viewer that a ‘mystery voiceover’ loves the product without offering a sense of building character. I want these writings to be less like a McDonalds ad and more like a L’Oreal beauty product ad (even though Jennifer Aniston can’t be here today…). I’d also like to add that shampoo is food for hair only and not for eating.

People should learn to eat more like a King (or Queen), because they deserve to! You only get one physical vessel in this lifetime, and that physical vessel is going to go through a lot. That vessel deserves the best upkeep that money can and can’t buy. That’s right! Eating like a king does not mean having to buy expensive grub from upmarket retail outlets or specialist stores, it means respecting and loving yourself as a person so much so that you make the right decisions for what is good for you.



What I am aiming to do in this series of writings is to encourage and provoke thought towards eating, how one eats and what one would sensibly eat. For eating isn’t just about physically chomping down on edibles, it’s about what your brain processes to start with. Most would assume that dieting is all about the physical process of better eating and more exercise, but the first thing to consider is brain before belly.