So
what have I done to change my eating habits this last week? One of my
work mates told me that humans were not designed to eat three big meals a
day – we are in fact intended, biological, to
have five or six smaller meals. This is tied into the hunter-gatherer
history humanity has whereby we would travel around looking for food,
eating a little, and moving on before being found by predators or
hostile humans. So I thought I would give it a go.
I
delay my breakfast until I get into work, eating at around 0850 rather
than 0800. This is constituted of an egg and ham on toast, an egg and
ham sandwich or a mixture of various sliced meats
with an egg on toast for a calorie total of approx. 200-350, topped up
with a small glass of milk before I leave for another 50. I could have a
larger glass but I hate milk so limit it to this for my own
contentment, but still have some because it is disgustingly
healthy.
This
keeps me satisfied until lunch time – and sometimes a little longer
depending on whether or not I had a larger breakfast due to gym
commitments in the evening. I usually work through my
lunch now, allowing me to leave work at 1700 rather than 1800, and it
also means I have less idle time for my stomach to get in touch with my
brain about its insecurities (“Did that sandwich make me look empty? I
feel empty…”). Lunch is a tomato-wrap with
various filling fillings but is nearly always chicken in salad cream,
three slices of salami, and a mixture of onions, rocket and cucumber.
Yes, the tomato-wrap is being chosen under the probable misconception
that it is healthier than a plain one. I total
this as approximately six hundred calories but don’t have it all at
once. For one thing, half a wrap is filling enough and for another I
don’t have time to get to the deli at work, order the food, get back to
my desk and eat it all. I save half of it until
my afternoon break, around 1500 and then top myself up then. This keeps
me full all afternoon.
I
usually hit the gym around 1800, traffic allowing, and stay there for
an hour to an hour and a half. I am not hungry during this time and keep
a bottle of water with me at all times when possible.
The physical activity keeps my mind off food and I’m not hungry for
about half an hour afterwards – just long enough to get home, showered,
and started on cooking something just as I start feeling some small
hunger pangs.
Perfect,
right? Well, not quite. Part of this evolutionist theory is that we’re
constantly moving around. I work in an office; there’s only so many
times I can go get water and even that is
probably not representative of trekking across countryside or savannah
in search of food. The other problem is that my evening meal is usually
fairly substantial to compensate for the work I do at the gym. Why don’t
I eat less? Because I eat little enough
already. I am cutting down a little bit but I’m still wary of lowering
my calorie intake too far, especially as I’m burning 800-1200 at the gym
on average.
How
can I remedy these problems? As regards the supposed-to-be constant
movement there is very little I can do. I’m still doing a little bit of
exercise in down-time – finish a chapter, do twenty
press-ups, finish writing a page, do ten, for example – but it’s
difficult to fit incremental exercises into my daily regime simply
because I have a sedentary job. I do what I can – use the stairs rather
than the lift, walk the long way back to my car (why
don’t I run to work? Three miles in the morning might only take me half
an hour but I’d have to bring my suit in a bag and that would be a
hideous thing to do. Same goes for cycling), make sure I walk through
every aisle in supermarkets (ignoring the strange
looks I get from staff members). But aside from getting a new job,
which is difficult and there’s no guarantee I’ll have much more freedom
of movement if I do, there’s little else I can manage.
As
for combating the unbalanced meal size of my dinner I could just
increase the size of each of my portion-meals over the course of the
day. This would bring them up to a minimum of four hundred
calories which is actually quite a lot of food for me – take into
account my limit before exercise is only 1420. The upshot of me
repeating that information for the millionth time is that if I don’t go
to the gym – which does happen – then I may not be able
to eat dinner. The reason I have the unbalanced meal is that I don’t
want to over eat earlier in the day and then have to skip the gym for
whatever reason (usually a toss-up between emergencies, social invites
or laziness when it does happen).
So
that is my new diet plan with the reasoning behind it, the supposed
advantages and the obstacles I’m aware of. If anyone else has thoughts
on this, or experiences, please let me know. If
it is a terrible idea I’d quite like to know. It’s getting close to
being simply overcast rather than cloud-haunted in England and I might
need to consider buying yet more new clothes with the season change. I’d
rather my weight didn’t make a surprise return
unexpectedly because this idea is as flawed a tactic as Custer’s
Charge.
It
also conveniently allows me to excuse eating half a wheel of blue
cheese and a lot of pasta over the course of Saturday. Definitely a
coincidence :D
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