optimal eating strategy, intermittent fasting, mental part most important

 

3.1.1.7.8 - optimal eating strategy for yogi

Most important part of all, your motivation and attitude while eating

* memorize the STED formula for eating from AN 3.16. “...eating not for play, intoxication, … only to sustain body and nutrition to support spiritual practice…”

* recite formula before you eat

* recite it at least once while you’re eating it, preferably with every refill or new dish you eat or drink

* recite it at least once after you’re done with your meal

* When you recite the eating formula, use vitakka, vicāra, upekkha.

If you recite mindlessly, not pondering the meaning of what you’re saying, that’s just vitakka, thinking at a superficial level.

You only thought about what you’re reciting to the extent that you know you memorized something correctly and recited it correctly.

Using Vicāra means you ponder the meaning of what you’re reciting.

Using upekkha means your vicāra and Dharma investigation, that pondering is powered by jhāna samādhi, so you not only understand theoretically, but you understand directly at a deep level.

Deep enough that it affects your view, your motivation, your habits around eating.

* along with reciting the formula, also use some visualizations from other sutta passages on eating that are helpful. For example, this only takes a second to do, I visualize the simile from SN 12.63^63.1. I visualize a family member, or a close friend, being cut into a thousand pieces of jerky, and I have to live on that to sustain my spiritual practice. There’s no way I overeat or eat for fun and pleasure when I do that visualization, and it only takes a second to do so there’s no excuse to not do it.

Allowable eating period is between local time 6am and 12 noon.

Out of the 24 hour day:

* 6 hour eating period

* 18 hour fasting period, no food, only water.

* Eat in either two sessions, or one session, depending on energetic requirements for the day.

Daily energy requirements will depend on one's activity, also weather.

In cold winter, you may need to eat more for example.

If you study suttas intensely, deep thinking burns calories like you wouldn't believe.

Advantages of eating in two sessions instead of one:

Because you have two opportunities to replenish energy, you can undereat a little bit each session.

So right after eating a meal, you could do sitting meditation and you wouldn't feel uncomfortable.

Eating in one session, you feel pressure to get both a proper mix and enough of all the nutrients so you have enough energy to sustain a 24 hour period.

Never overeat, whether you eat one session or two.

When you overeat, it just stresses your body without gaining what you had hoped to gain, which is extra energy that will give you better energy throughout 24 hour period. Instead, it feels like it just saps your energy in many ways:

* your body doesn't know what to do with surplus food, so more energy to excrete it or store it in liver or fat

* you feel sluggish and unable to do sitting meditation for 2 to 3 hours after overeating.

How not to overeat: this takes much trial and error. But in general, if you wait to get the bodily sensation of overeating, you've already been overeating for a while. Eating more slowly helps to dampen that effect.

There’s a wonderful invention, it’s called a refrigerator.

Don’t use the rationalization of food will go to waste if you don’t overeat.

You only end up wasting energy of your mind and body from having to deal with stress of food coma from overeating.

Also, if you have leftover to put in the fridge, it saves you some time for part of the next day’s meal. If you overeat now, the food tastes terrible. If you eat the leftover tomorrow, the same leftover food will taste great because you’ll be hungry then and need those nutrients. If you overeat that food now, it tastes horrible because your body is trying to tell you “don’t do it!” because the body will waste energy having to store surplus food or excrete it, and make you feel sluggish and useless for a few hours.

natural way of fasting and eating one session a day

Don’t eat your first session of the day until you feel hungry and really need the energy.

If you’re on a meditation retreat where you don’t have to do anything except jhāna, you’ll find your eating window gradually shrinks, and the amount of food you feel you need also shrinks.

When it feels comfortable, try eating one session that day.

If you have strong fourth jhāna, perhaps somedays you’re so energetic you don’t even feel the need to sleep or eat.

On the flip side, if your health is such that it’s not ready to eat less, then doing so can be detrimental.

How do you know if you're really hungry?

0) mental craving - either from habit, or just mentally craving delicious food. This comes not from energetic and nutritional need, just from 5kg and kāma 💘💃‍ sensual desire for pleasure.

1) stomach grumbling from being empty

2) body getting cold, have difficulty maintaining comfortably warm level of body heat

3) energy level weak - even walking, standing, staying awake becomes difficult. Science calls this low blood sugar.

#3 is really the one you really have to be concerned about.

#2, you can wear more layers of clothing, and do the exercise such as 🏃👨‍🍳🥧 to warm up the body, easily maintainable for 30-90 minutes, because you're only using about 10% more exertion than walking.

with #1, if you have plenty of body fat reserves, you can safely ignore stomach grumbling. If you do a gentle exercise like 🏃👨‍🍳🥧, it will smooth out the process of your body kicking into burning body fat for energy reserves.

#0 requires you to learn to distinguish between craving certain nutrients for real need, such as getting enough vitamin C so you don't get scurvy, enough sugar, protein and healthy dietary fat so you have smooth burning energy reserves throughout a 24hr day cycle.