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Our bodies and brains have developed a number of adaptations over the millennia that many so-called "food experts" and alleged "dietitians" claim are useless--and even dangerous--to the modern eater.
Bunk. Some of us out there want to eat as much as we can, as quickly as we can.
Listen, after age 25, the average person can look forward to gaining some 5-10 pounds of fat per decade. Why wait around? Furthermore, there are some 400 million obese people on the planet. That's an enormous market--more than two Brazils, twelve Canadas, or two hundred Slovenias. What are we food bloggers doing to help these people? Finally, somewhere out there is a young kid who dreams of being the next Takeru Kobayashi. What are we doing to help him reach his goals?
What we really need are some helpful tips and advice on how to eat as much as possible, as efficiently as possible, and with as little effort as possible. Here are seven tips you can put to use right now:
1) Avoid fruits and vegetables
Only a fool eats fruits and veggies. They're so high in fiber and water content and they require so darn much chewing that you'll never gain weight eating them. This is a complete waste of time and stomach room.
2) Trust Only the Highest of High-Fat Foods
High-fat food helps you in two ways--it's energy dense (meaning it contains a lot of calories per unit of volume), and it's highly palatable (meaning it requires very little chewing before swallowing). As a result, fat-laden food can be eaten extremely quickly, and because of its energy density, it allows you to inject calories into your body with stunning efficiency.
What are the best foods? You guessed it: second-order foods. Cookies, chips, cakes, store-bought muffins and candy bars are ideal because they enable you to wolf down hundreds of calories without a second thought. You can also include on this list almost all restaurant foods, most of which are engineered for maximum hyperpalatability by the evil and greedy restaurant industry. Heck, all it takes for any of these foods is a couple of swishes around your mouth--and then whoosh, down it goes! On to the next bite.
3) Speed is of the Essence
Remember, fullness occurs with a lag. It takes 20-30 minutes after you actually are full before your stomach breaks the news to your brain. Hence, those 20-30 minutes represent truly precious time during which you can eat relentlessly without your brain knowing what you're doing. If you work quickly, you'll be able to eat double the amount of food you actually need. Get going!
4) Make the Priming Reflex Work for You
Here's another one of humanity's supposedly "useless" reflexes: when we're in the presence of a large store of appetizing food, we become instinctively hungry, even if we've recently eaten a large meal. Just think how you can use this to your advantage--you can actually trick yourself out of feeling full!
5) Put Complete Trust in Your Appetite
Our appetites would never trick us into eating more than we should, right? Learn to ignore other cues from your body and listen solely to what your appetite tells you. When you're hungry, eat. Don't think so much about it. A second point: be sure to keep plenty of unhealthy foods in your home so you'll have something to get into when hunger hits you.
6) Eat Mindlessly
Don't pause to think carefully about the food you eat. Don't savor your food. Never pause at the table or eat slowly, bite by bite. There is simply no time for this silliness. Remember, you've only got 20-30 minutes. Before you know it, your brain is going to figure out that you're full. If you don't watch out, you'll happily push back from the table with thousands of potential calories left uneaten. You're wasting precious time!
7) Eat Still More the Next Day
Have you ever eaten a huge meal one night and been shocked when you wake up hungry the next morning? This is yet another opportunity! Go for it, take advantage of that hunger and get started eating all over again. You can do it!
After all, we should always mindlessly obey our appetites, right?
Readers, what "tips" did I miss? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Related Posts:
How to Resist Temptation and Increase Your Power Over Food
Hacking the Satiety Factor of Food: How to Feel Less Hungry on Fewer Calories
The Worst Lie of the Food Blogosphere
Trusting Your Own Taste in Wine and Food
How to Master Last-Minute Meal Preparation
Make Your Diet Into a Flexible Tool
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11 comments:
Ummm...yeah - OK. Sarcasm.
Non-snarky tips like this might be needed for the many elderly who have trouble maintaining weight. Like my post-surgery elderly neighbor.
Love this hehe, and loved the way you linked to previous posts throughout. This is the nutritional message of CK all in one post!
Rest easy, Dan. You aren't going to Bad Writer's Hell. I'm laughing. But as a food blogger who's guilty of posting a few too many dessert recipes, I shouldn't be.
Tomorrow I'll post a veggie recipe. Promise.
Dan, Dan, Dan ... you forgot DRINK MORE! All those wonderful empty calories from non-satiating beverages!
A sweetened whole-milk coffee drink on the way to work (with a pastry, of course; after all, you went to all the trouble of stopping at the coffee shop!) and a large cup of soda with lunch adds up to at least 750 calories!
A big bottle of sweetened "energy drink" after your workout - after all, you've got to replace those electrolytes you burned off in your thirty minutes walking the treadmill - that's another 200-300calories, easy!
A daiquiri or pina colada (or two) before dinner, wine or beer throughout, an after-dinner Manhattan or port, a whisky and soda before bedtime ... you can add a whole 'nother thousand calories without even thinking about it!
Why quench your thirst with useless, boring WATER??
Diane, I'd say more facetiousness than sarcasm. But I guess it depends on how literally you read the post.
Melissa, thank you! Yep, this is more or less all of my dietary concepts in a nutshell.
Charmian, I'll be looking for that veggie recipe. :)
Chacha1: Oh, that is a good one. Definitely a miss on my part. Thanks for filling in the gap!
DK
Salt!
You forgot about salt. You need to have at least 2000mg of sodium a day to stay health. More is even better!
Chips, salted nuts and all those lovely frozen pre-made meals are just store houses of sodium.
Ummm... Not loving all the Marc Rubio For Senate ads plastered all over your site today. I know you need to make money and all, but it's really REALLY off-putting.
Cynthia, great one! Nothing like a highly-salted snack to bring about mindless, conditioned hypereating.
DK
Haha too funny.
Eat out as much as possible. And really, why stop there! Go on a cruise where you can eat as much as you want, whenever you want. Eating at home is for skinny healthy people. Boring.
You also need to take advantage of every possible eating location. Don't let being in the car stop you from eating!
(I hate seeing people chowing into burgers while driving. I bet they get to wherever it is they are going, and have another meal as they don't feel like they've just had a proper meal)
While I agree with the facisiousness of many of these, the "pay attention to your hunger" is actually a very important in eatng disorder recovery and eating normalization. Learning to pay attention to one's hunger signals is important, and part of that is learning how food companies manipulate that hunger response for commercial gain. But ignoring hunger signals is a major part of eating disorders and disordered eating.
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