Have we lost the full up feeling?

So here it is random blog post No 15

Here we are, it’s August and I’ve had a very heavy fewweeks. August is a tough month for me, with many instructors going on holiday, its left for those of us who are too poor to go away, to cover them.

Any gym/fitness instructor or coach will understand this annual headache.

As many of you know, I don’t just teach, I have my own training schedule and increases in classes can make me feel incredibly drained, so enter stage left food and sleep and copious amounts of it.

I’m already hitting a big Kcal ceiling but this week I’m doing that and then some, to cover the excess. It’s hard. I really do eat very clean (apart from the occasional jelly baby attack) 3000 cals of clean food is a lot, especially if you lose four hours a day training/teaching

Take that with 8 hrs sleep and then 4 hrs between meals for optimal nutrient uptake and I’m looking at 3 meals of1000 cals  or 4 meals of 750 if I want to reduce it to 3 hrs …..oooff!

Add on top of that the fact that I absolutely detest feeling full & I'm in a little bit of trouble

BUT, this lead me to thinking. I’ve always hated that “stuffed” feeling. I mean genuinely hated it. I would rather have a meal and feel comfortable, then eat an hr later, than stuff myself stupid. Have we as an “animal” lost the ability to ascertain when we are satiated?

It’s a genuine curiosity of mine. With modern foods being carbohydrate dense and containing very little else by way of nutrients, have we lost our ability to self regulate?

My opinion is yes

I’ve already addressed the issue of sugar in a previous blog. It’s in everything, it’s a fast carb and stored as fat in most people because they’re already replete in glycogen. The body, being the efficient machine that it is, stores the excess as fat for a “rainy day” and its soooooo addictive.

It also brought to mind a conversation I had with someone a few years back. They were laughing at the fact that I could never finish an Indian takeaway. My response was that I hated feeling overly full.

The reply that came back has always kind of stuck with me and probably highlights one of the problems with the modern relationship with food.

“You have to practice, overeating takes dedication”

Now I know he was joking but there is an element of truth to this statement. How many of you eat more than you want because there is food left? The old adage of not wasting food really is a very British thing. The war ended quite a few years back. We’re not rationed and guess what? leftovers can go in the fridge for later as a snack instead of a packet of crisps or a snickers bar.

Then there is the sheer cheapness of shitty food. I mean£1 microwave meals? No way are they going to contain anything good for you. Sausage rolls? Fuck me you’d be hard pressed to find anything good about those little bastards.

The government constantly go on about the increasing obesity of our nation but the price of fresh fruit vegetables and meat continues to skyrocket.

Here’s a suggestion … remove VAT from fresh produce and bang it on the crap.

Its very, very hard to overeat on fresh produce. 3000 cals is pretty much 1 ½ big mac meals. In clean terms in a very, very simplistic way, it’s around 1400g of chicken in meat or 10 kilos of broccoli in vegetables. Can you imagine eating 10 kilos of broccoli?

What would be really cool is if a genuine study could be carried out on two populations with the same general lifestyle. One could eat the modern diet as per normal & the other could eat fresh produce, or clean food as is generally becoming known as.

I really do think the results would speak for themselves.

It really is true what they say, not all calories are made equal and if we stick to nutrient dense, fresh foods, maybe one day, we will learn to become “full” again

So next time you reach for the Pringles have a think … would it be this easy to eat a kilo of broccoli?