Why are we getting bigger?

Today in United States, two out of three are overweight. On day I sat down in the Aisle of the shopping mall looking at shoppers passing by. 7 out of 10 people are either overweight or obese. But we are so used to seeing bigger people and we even forget that we may be carrying the excess weight. Once a year, I go across the continent from Charlotte, NC to South East Asia country Burma crossing either trans-pacific or trans-atlantic. As I cross the multiple airports in different region, I see the significant difference in the size of the people. The people from the America are bigger despite the different ethnicity.

So we must be doing something to make us bigger. It cannot be all that genetics.

How do we survive in the food abundant world

Look at our home, office. We are surrounded by food: in the fridge, on the counter, in the kitchen, everywhere. We lose sight on how much we are eating, most of the time, we are munching on something mindlessly. When we are under stress, we go open the Fridge. When we are free, we look for something to eat. When we are bored, we keep our mouth busy. Yes every time we have plenty of food to eat. We never have to prepare, cook, make for the food. They are all over readily available.

Due to the huge market competition, the restaurants and fast food places offer you with extra stuff. Super-size drinks, meal deal, buffet, abundant of condiments freely available all over and we tend to make a good use of it without realizing the excessive weight gain.

When we fill up the gas in our car, we do not overfill it. But we tend to overfill ourselves with all the extras. We forget why do we eat? We want to make a good use of the abundance of the food freely available.

Let’s see how we can manage to change our abundant surroundings. As in a medical clinic, we do get plenty of food, sweets and meals. When I go to hospital, we have complimentary food and drinks for the physicians readily available in doctor lounge. It is nice that we have convenience of having the food around so we do not work with empty stomach in the busy schedule.

What do we do among all these delicious temptation with humongous hungry stomach? 99% of the time I am hungry when I walk into the doctor lounge or the break room in the clinic.

I grab a bottle of the water (just water). Then I look for the fruits and nuts, gulp it down with the water. Then I choose what I want to eat to fill my stomach. Remember smaller bites, with some pauses in between. It is very much OK not to finish a cookie in one go. Some time I would finish a small cookie with three different bites in between seeing three patients in three separate rooms by keeping the bitten cookie on a piece of napkin.

I instructed to all the employees to eat only at the break room or lunch room. Eating at the desk, keeping a drink at the desk not only make you eat constantly but also reduce your desirable physical activity. Any food item candies, sweet, chocolates to be kept at the lunch room itself. If you want it, get up and go to lunch room. Some extra non exercise physical activity and small break from staring into the computer screen!

I have instructed to my office manager not to open the gifted food item unless we all really want to eat it. At the end of the day, the manager will take un-open food item to drop off at food drive drop box on her way to home. So that we do not HAVE TO complete eating all sweet and extra calorie. When we have somebody bring lunch for the office, we always indicate to bring only what we really want to eat. Bringing food for twenty generic items covering for 12 people is not so good option. Rather individual will order what he or she wants from the same restaurant and request them to bring just that. So we do not NEED TO complete all the extra food.

While we are taking extra measures not to waste the food, we have to remember, it is more dangerous to junk into our stomach rather junk in the garbage.

At work place, when you organize it into the discipline, everybody follows it because we all are in same boat. When you do it altogether it is more success. It is very OK to talk it out to your colleagues that you are watching your weight.