By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
hunger. ”
We don’t really need to eat so much. As we have discussed in an earlier column, your food intake should be only as much as your stomach can hold. And your stomach, in its regular normal state, is only as big as your fist. So if you eat that much, then your stomach is full. If you are mindful of this fact of nature, then when you have eaten this much (meaning the amount of food equal to the size of your fist), you should stop eating. Enough already. But will you stop eating? No no no! “Egak pay nabsog.” (I am not full yet.) So you keep eating and eating and if you are wearing pants or a skirt that fits just right, you will need to loosen it. (We Kankanaeys have a word for this- “men keyay”- so we must have a tradition of overeating.) If your waistline increased, then the size of your stomach has increased. So if you were in an “eat all you can” dinner and you heaped a mountain of food to your plate and you were able to eat all of that, then your stomach has stretched four or five times. If you only do this once in a season like wedding season, then perhaps your stomach will be able to return to its original size. However, if you overeat most of the time then your stomach will stay big and so you will feel underfed if you only ate as much as the size of your fist. By the way, your stomach is a muscular organ so it can stretch.
In time, if you don’t watch your food intake and you keep eating more than the size of your fist, it will not only be your stomach that will stretch bigger but also your waistline and other parts of your body, and if you are already an adult, this excess food will just make you wider and not taller, sorry to say. But then, it’s good that we don’t grow any taller after we reach adulthood because imagine if we keep on growing taller and taller as we eat excess food. We will fall down the “baneng”. Worse, we will have to redesign our “dap-ay”, our houses, our beds, schools, hospitals, cars, etc, to accommodate giants. Horror of horrors! God is good indeed. He just designed that we grow in height only up to age 28. The books say we stop growing at about age 21 but a friend of mine says she still grew taller till age 28, and she’s 5’8”. But God designed that our bodies can grow sideways so now there are such wide people that the regular bus seat will not be enough for them. One time, I had to give away my choice seat because my seatmate was huge and as small that I am, I felt crushed beside him.
We know the problems attendant to overweight and obesity. It is not only “kantiaw” (teasing) or finding the right size of clothes. The excess weight will strain your feet and knees and back. Naturally! Even the mighty horse will buckle down under excess weight. What is worse is that it will not only be your knees buckling down under excess weight. Your heart will also feel the burden. It’s like running double distance. Instead of your blood running 100,000 miles, they will have to run 200,000 miles. (Somebody measured our blood vessels if these were laid in one line and they say adults have about 100,000 miles and for children, over 60,000 miles. Thank you, internet, for this information.) Remember, it is your heart that pumps the blood to run all those miles.
Because the heart is connected to the lungs and the kidneys, soon these vital organs will also be stressed. As your heart and lungs are weakened, you will easily get tired and get breathless. These will weaken all functions of the body because blood does not flow as fast to deliver the oxygen and the food to the cells.
Take note, dear readers, that the problem is not only the longer distance that the blood has to cover. The bigger problem is that the blood is thickened with excess sugar and fat and protein so that “mas malayo na nga ang tatakbuhin, masmabigat pa ang dala.” What more, the blood vessels may be coated already with sugar-fat-what not deposits along its walls thus the pathways of the blood are narrowed. It’s like carrying a heavy load along a thicket. “Mas malayo na nga ang tatakbuhin, masmabigat pa ang dala, masmakitid pa ang daan.” Triple jeopardy. So now, I hope we can understand why overweight and obese people usually have complicated diseases.
In the past, there was no overweight or obesity. People then were thin and even gaunt. But they were strong and sturdy. I think this is because nature limited their food intake. They had to manually produce the food they ate. In the Cordilleras, we would be amazed that our “kelleng” of ricefields and small camote patches were able to feed us. There was no food shortage. Nobody died of hunger. We didn’t even have to plant a lot of vegetables because God just made them grow everywhere. Nobody died of lack of nutrition. If you worked, you had food. Bawal ang tamad. So people worked hard to produce food. There were no chairs then so they squatted while eating. Squatting will really not allow you to overeat. Try squatting while eating and after a fistful, you will feel full. Eating more than this will make you uncomfortable. What more, women wore “bakget” (wide indigenous belt) tightly around their waist (where else?). Oh yes, the men also wore g-strings wrapped tightly around their waists, too! These are the best measures to prevent overeating.
But then, the Americans introduced the chair to the Cordilleras. And we expanded our ricefields to Tabuk, Isabela and the sari-sari store. We now can choose to just sit down in the office and still eat, not only three times a day but five times or more. We can even buy more than enough food – we think that the more food, the better. But as history has shown, eating much more for a long time is not healthy. But then ang sarap kasing kumain.
So what do we do? You don’t need to go to the gym or to Dr. Belo. Here are a few simple steps:
Pray before eating to make you focus on the food and pay attention. Jon Navarro of HEALTH EXCELLENCE posted, “In many cultures, people pray before meals, which also contributes to the process of focusing on the food and simple products are considered as the gift of God, increasing the importance of even the simplest dishes.” Prayer need not be elaborate.
Put only enough food in your plate. Because satisfaction is such a psychological matter, you spread the rice in your plate so it looks a lot. You will see that even a half cup of rice is a lot already pala.
Eat one spoon of food at a time (better if with a teaspoon) and put down your spoon as you chew till the food gets watery (about 20-50 times). This process of eating will take you around 20 minutes to finish your food. This will give enough time for your brain so get the message that your stomach is full. If you eat fast, you will have eaten more than enough before the message reaches your brain.
Pay attention to your food and savor the different tastes of God’s gifts. So don’t be distracted by talking while eating, radio or television or your cellphone. As you chew very well, you will discover that gabi is sweet and rice is sweet also. Isn’t that wonderful! Eating could also be a meditative process.
Focusing on the eating process will result in better absorption of nutrients because they are properly digested. It will also allow you to feel satisfied with less quantity and thus avoid overeating. With that, even if Bontoc is isolated because the Sabangan and Karayan bridges are not passable, we will still be assured that our food is enough and will be healthy enough to walk the distance.**
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“Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.” Proverbs 23:20-21
