DAILY GOOD HABITS FOR HAPPY LIFE-3

DAILY GOOD HABITS FOR HAPPY LIFE-3

Dear Friends,

EATING: HOW? WHEN? WHAT, HOW MUCH?

Q.9.: How many times to eat per day?

A: Eating 3 times per day is OK viz breakfast, lunch & dinner. If hungry in between, we may drink water, tea, coffee or milk as desired with light or no snacks. It is better to skip meals if there is no true hunger than simply following the meal timing and eat without hunger.

Benefits: Keeping regular timings for meals give us set timings for work and other activities otherwise we may be distracted by food all the time while at work. So, eating 3 proper meals a day is a good eating habit.

PS: However, don’t feel guilty if you had a chocolate bar or a piece of cake or some cookies once in a while, outside of the meal timings, it’s OK, but don’t make that odd time snacking a habit on daily basis.

Q.10.: When to eat?

A: Breakfast [7AM to 10AM], Lunch [12Noon to 3PM], Dinner [6PM to 9PM]. However, the best time to eat is when we are hungry! It is good to keep more or less equal gaps between the meals. If one starts the day eating breakfast early then lunch and dinner too should be earlier but during the flexible set meals timings. Same way if breakfast is taken late, then the lunch and dinner too should be late accordingly.

Benefits: If we train our body to eat at specific timings, our body system automatically tunes us to feel hungry to those set timings thus enabling us to enjoy and digest the food better.

PS: Sometimes, based on our abnormal hunger or stomach upset or due to odd engagements, our regular meal timings may be broken and for that you don’t have to feel guilty at all, but as soon as possible come back to your good regular meal timings.

Q.11.: What kind of food to eat?

A: Thy food is thy medicine is a good saying we should note while choosing our food. For our human body system, the best suitable food items are fruits, roots, grains, vegetables, milk and milk products. Egg, Fish, white meat [derived from chicken, duck & other birds etc] to some extent are OK but better to avoid red meat [beef, pork, mutton, bison meat, deer meat … all kinds of meat derived from four footed animals come under this category] altogether. Whenever possible, it is always better to stick to the vegetarian diet. However, going extremes in vegetarianism like becoming a vegan [avoiding all kinds of food sourced from animals like milk & milk products and not even using leather products etc.] or eating only the raw vegetarian diet or eating only raw food [vegetarian or non-vegetarian or both] are not suitable for majority of the people. Vegetarianism is the middle path and so, better to follow it for our physical, mental and spiritual health.

Benefits: Selective good eating habit will give us the desired results in terms of our physical, mental and spiritual progress. According to Gita, foods are of three kinds viz Satwik [top], Rajsik [middle] & Tamasik [low]. So, it is best to eat the Satwik food. All Satwik foods come under vegetarian food and so becoming vegetarian is the best approach in terms of food selection for human beings because we are what we eat and so let us eat the top foods for best results in our life.

PS: Non-injury [Ahimsa] is one of the most important spiritual qualities that every good person do practice on daily life and this practice best starts from our daily food that we intake such kind of food available from sources with the minimum of injury to any living beings and so, the ideal choice of vegetarian food for human consumption. Yes, vegetarian people collect less bad karma than the non-vegetarian people in terms of food.

Q.12.: How much to eat?

A: Till your true hunger is satisfied. Yes, there is false hunger as well and that happens when you keep on eating tasty food items unable to control your greedy tongue in spite of having no true hunger and that is the cause of many ailments of body & mind. So, eat consciously and enjoy the food. You should feel satisfied and happier when finished eating, if you had eaten the right food in the right quantity as required by your body. If you started feeling heavy and lethargic after taking your food, that means you had consumed either some unhealthy food or took more quantity than required.

Benefits: Listen to your inner voice when to stop eating. Conscious eating this way will save you from unnecessary overeating. Eat to live and don’t live to eat. We eat for health and well being.

PS: There is no set quantity exactly on how much one should consume because it depends on many factors of a person’s work, body type, food habits etc. So, the best advice on how much one should eat is therefore to follow the inner voice in terms of body instinct one feels to stop eating. It is always better to eat a little less than a little more.

Happiness for all!

Regards,

Goodman

for HAPPY WORLD SOCIETY

PS: this post was originally written by Goodman on 17 January 2011