the one I am describing. If you are to have perfect health, you MUST eat in just this way; you can, and the doing of it is only a matter of a little perseverance. What use for you to talk of mental control unless you will govern yourself in so simple a matter as ceasing to bolt your food? What use to talk of concentration unless you can keep your mind on the act of eating for so short a space as fifteen or twenty minutes, especially with all the pleasures of taste to help you? Go on, and conquer. In a few weeks, or months, as the case may be, you will find the habit of scientific eating becoming fixed; and soon you will be in so splendid a condition, mentally and physically, that nothing would induce you to return to the bad old way.
We have seen that if man will think only thoughts of perfect health, his internal functions will be performed in a healthy manner; and we have seen that in order to think thoughts of health, man must perform the voluntary functions in a healthy manner. The most important of the voluntary functions is that of eating; and we see, so far, no especial difficulty in eating in a perfectly healthy way. I will here summarize the instructions as to when to eat, what to eat, and how to eat, with the reasons therefor:—
NEVER eat until you have an EARNED hunger, no matter how long you go without food. This is based on the fact that whenever food is needed in the system, if there is power to digest it, the sub-conscious mind announces the need by the sensation of hunger. Learn to distinguish between genuine hunger and the gnawing and craving sensations caused by unnatural appetite. Hunger is never a disagreeable feeling, accompanied by weakness, faintness, or gnawing feelings at the stomach; it is a pleasant, anticipatory desire for food, and is felt mostly in the mouth and throat. It does not come at certain hours or at stated intervals; it only comes when the sub-conscious mind is ready to receive, digest, and assimilate food.
Eat whatever foods you want, making your selection from the staples in general use in the zone in which you live. The Supreme Intelligence has guided man to the selection of these foods, and they are the right ones for all. I am referring, of course, to the foods which are taken to satisfy hunger, not to those which have been contrived merely to gratify appetite or perverted taste. The instinct which has guided the masses of men to make use of the great staples of food to satisfy their hunger is a divine one. God has made no mistake; if you eat these foods you will not go wrong.
Eat your food with cheerful confidence, and get all the pleasure that is to be had from the taste of every mouthful. Chew each morsel to a liquid, keeping your attention fixed on the enjoyment of the process. This is the only way to eat in a perfectly complete and successful manner; and when anything is done in a completely successful manner, the general result cannot be a failure. In the attainment of health, the law is the same as in the attainment of riches; if you make each act a success in itself, the sum of all your acts must be a success. When you eat in the mental attitude I have described, and in the manner I have described, nothing can be added to the process; it is done in a perfect manner, and it is successfully done. And if eating is successfully done, digestion, assimilation, and the building of a healthy body are successfully begun. We next take up the question of the quantity of food required.
Chapter XII.
Hunger and Appetites
It is very easy to find the correct answer to the question, How much shall I eat? You are never to eat until you have an earned hunger, and you are to stop eating the instant you BEGIN to feel that your hunger is abating. Never gorge yourself; never eat to repletion. When you begin to feel that your hunger is satisfied, know that you have enough; for until you have enough, you will continue to feel the sensation of hunger. If you eat as directed in the last chapter, it is probable that you will begin to feel satisfied before you have taken half your usual amount; but stop there, all the same. No matter how delightfully attractive the dessert, or how tempting the pie or pudding, do not eat a mouthful of it if you find that your hunger has been in the least degree assuaged by the other foods you have taken.
Whatever you eat after your hunger begins to abate is taken to gratify taste and appetite, not hunger and is not called for by nature at all. It is therefore excess; mere debauchery, and it cannot fail to work mischief.
This is a point you will need to watch with nice discrimination, for the habit of eating purely for sensual gratification is very deeply rooted with most of us. The usual "dessert" of sweet and tempting foods is prepared solely with a view to inducing people to eat after hunger has been satisfied; and all the effects are evil. It is not that pie and cake are unwholesome foods; they are usually perfectly wholesome if eaten to satisfy hunger, and NOT to gratify appetite. If you want pie, cake, pastry or puddings, it is better to begin your meal with them, finishing with the plainer and less tasty foods. You will find, however, that if you eat as directed in the preceding chapters, the plainest food will soon come to taste like kingly fare to you; for your sense of taste, like all your other senses, will become so acute with the general improvement in your condition that you will find new delights in common things. No glutton ever enjoyed a meal like the man who eats for hunger only, who gets the most out of every mouthful, and who stops on the instant that he feels the edge taken from his hunger. The first intimation that hunger is abating is the signal from the sub-conscious mind that it is time to quit.
The average person who takes up this plan of living will be greatly surprised to learn how little food is really required to keep the body in perfect condition. The amount depends upon the work; upon how much muscular exercise is taken, and upon the extent to which the person is exposed to cold. The woodchopper who goes into the forest in the winter time and swings his axe all day can eat two full meals; but the brain worker who sits all day on a chair, in a warm room, does not need one third and often not one tenth as much. Most woodchoppers eat two or three times as much, and most brain workers from three to ten times as much as nature calls for; and the elimination of this vast amount of surplus rubbish from their systems is a tax on vital power which in time depletes their energy and leaves them an easy prey to so-called disease. Get all possible enjoyment out of the taste of your food, but never eat anything merely because it tastes good; and on the instant that you feel that your hunger is less keen, stop eating.
If you will consider for a moment, you will see that there is positively no other way for you to settle these various food questions than by adopting the plan here laid down for you. As to the proper time to eat, there is no other way to decide than to say that you should eat whenever you have an EARNED HUNGER. It is a self-evident proposition that that is the right time to eat, and that any other is a wrong time to eat. As to what to eat, the Eternal Wisdom has decided that the masses of men shall eat the staple products of the zones in which they live. The staple foods of your particular zone are the right foods for you; and the Eternal Wisdom, working in and through the minds of the masses of men, has taught them how best to prepare these foods by cooking and otherwise. And as to how to eat, you know that you must chew your food; and if it must be chewed, then reason tells us that the more thorough and perfect the operation the better.
I repeat that success in anything is attained by making each separate act a success in itself. If you make each action, however small and unimportant, a thoroughly successful action, your day's work as a whole cannot result in failure. If you make the actions of each day successful, the sum total of your life cannot be failure. A great success is the result of doing a large number of little things, and doing each one in a perfectly successful way. If every thought is a healthy thought, and if every action of your life is performed in a healthy way, you must soon attain to perfect health. It is impossible to devise a way in which you can perform the act of eating more successfully, and in a manner more in accord with the laws of life, than by chewing every mouthful to a liquid, enjoying the taste fully, and keeping a cheerful confidence the while. Nothing can be added to make the process more successful; while if anything be subtracted, the process will not be a completely healthy one.
In the matter of how much to eat, you will also see that there could be no other guide so natural, so safe, and so reliable as the one I have prescribed—to stop eating on the instant you feel that your hunger begins to abate. The sub-conscious mind may be trusted with implicit reliance to inform us when food is needed; and it may be trusted as implicitly