Isn't it weird how we can't focus on a cup on the table and a picture on the back wall at the same time? You need to refocus your eyes. Clear your cookies. Have another drink.
It's 1:33. It's 1:33. It's 1:34.
I would like to start a movement for eye enhancement surgeries. We enhance other things, why not things that actually matter: sight, hearing, taste, touch. With many of these senses, there are surgeries and devices that enable you to recover or repair damaged senses. Glasses, contacts, hearing aids, at least. But what about us that have average to slightly-above-average sight or hearing? What kind of glasses can we wear? Shouldn't there be glasses to help us see even better? Eye surgery that gives us eagle eye sight? What can we do to get better sense of taste? Or, a more acute sense of touch? Technology, where are you when we really need you.
It's 1:37. It's 1:37. It's 1:37. It's 1:37. It's 1:37. It's 1:38.
I'm doing something weird. I've stopped eating when I'm alone. It's not a diet, more like a fast. I usually eat dinners alone, but this last week I stopped unless I was with people. Just to see if I would get hungry. And if I got hungry, how hungry I got. The weird thing is that I only got a little hungry. I drank water and ate a baby carrot of something, if I felt like it. But it's great to feel hungry. Hunger is a strange thing. When you eat regularly, I think hunger is an enormously powerful emotional force in your body. You STARVE. Even though you just ate a couple hours ago. However, the power of hunger doesn't really act consistently. If you don't eat for a while, you stop being hungry. Why is that? Maybe the body just figures out that it missed the meal and will do something else until the next meal comes around.
And after you haven't eaten for a while... 12 to 15 hours... food tastes different. You can feel the sugar, and you can feel the carbohydrates... at least it feels like you can feel it. Milk is extra milky. Water is extra watery. It's a wonderful way to experience the world.
It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:44.
I think I'm confused. I'm loving the change of the seasons.
It's 1:54.
There's apparently a hormone, ghrelin, that has been identified as a big player in hunger. The stomach produces ghrelin which in turn produces feelings of hunger. (That's too simplistic but it gets the point across.) The hormone comes in cycles, often peaking near the end of meals. Fatty foods seem to stimulate more ghrelin production than starchy and high protein foods. But even without the food stimulus, ghrelin production will occur, which is one reason we eat in cycles. It's sort of like a hunger alarm. So one possible explanation for why you stop feeling hungry after a certain period of fasting is that your ghrelin production cycle has peaked. Eventually, however, if you wait long enough, the hunger will return.
Posted by: Carrick | Friday, 07 October 2005 at 04:19 PM
That's interesting... I think I've learned about that before, but then I always forget again. Another interesting thing is that I think bodies adapt to hunger as well... and it's probably linked to something in our brains too. Nothing makes me hungrier than going on a diet, but I don't really get as hungry when I fast because I attach the feeling to something else (I use it as a trigger to think about something that I want to think about for a while). We're built strangely and complicatedly... especially when you start to think about craving a certain kind of food, and how that is influenced by what foods we like, our understanding of what's healthy, and what's possible and not too expensive. Our brains should in theory explode whenever we have to decide what we want to eat.
Posted by: Erik Benson | Friday, 07 October 2005 at 05:16 PM
On an average day, take a pint of water and try and drink it as fast as you can.
Try the same thing just after a 5 mile run.
You're so dehydrated you crave the drink and it really goes down quickly. But if you haven't been running, one pint is a bit of a struggle. I always find that interesting.
Posted by: se71 | Friday, 07 October 2005 at 11:53 PM
I did enough not-eating in high school that I can go for long periods of time without feeling hungry and that I really don't want to do it voluntarily again. I think it sucked the most 24 hours after my last meal because I was in the cafeteria with everybody else and they all had food.
Posted by: Eric Hodel | Saturday, 08 October 2005 at 11:10 PM