Wikipedia describes gluttony as “derived from the Latin gluttire meaning to gulp down or swallow, means over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, intoxicants or wealth items to the point of waste.”
The term has continued to role around in my mind the past several weeks, so I am taking a moment to write down some of the thoughts that I have had regarding the subject.
I think the initial spark for me was tracking calories for what I ate. I have always felt like I ate decently, until I actually started reviewing calorie consumption. After all, how can I determine if I am eating right if I have no idea where to start. To do this, I went to have a BodyPod review of my body make up which included a nutritional review.
What I found was that I was higher than recommended in body fat percentage (no surprise). The kicker was that I was told to maintain my weight, I only needed 1800 calories a day and to lose weight, I should only consume 1500 calories a day. I actually had to ask, the nutritionist, “Hey, I thought all the labels on food say I can have 2000 calories a day.” After a chuckle, she explained that the government picked that arbitrary number based on an active healthy person in a good body make up. She explained that MOST people don’t need anywhere near that many calories because they aren’t as active, and their metabolisms don’t support that because the muscle to fat ratios aren’t where they should be to burn those calories.
In a nutshell, you don’t have enough muscle and activity to burn that, so what you eat over that will be waste. The waste will be passed or stored as fat.
I have to admit, it made sense. So, I began trying to bring my calories down to the lose some fat level. Guess what, I was eating WAY too much. When I actually began to evaluate what I was eating, I discovered I was gluttonous. In fact, I discovered that many meals I was eating in one sitting, contained my total needed caloric intake. It wasn’t intentional really, I just had no idea how many calories were in what I was eating. Another shocker was that I was actually getting enough calories in just the drinks I was drinking. I was baffled.
I actually downloaded an application for my phone that tracked calories for me. The application actually broke down the calories that I ate into helpful information on what those calories consisted of, sugars, proteins, fats etc. Another discovery, its not just how many calories you eat, its what nutritional value they contain.
I guess, in reality, I had heard all of this in grade school. But I had never applied it into my life. So, here I am now trying to break 38 years of bad eating habits. Why do I share this in a blog, because, I would bet that there are those out there that may find this information useful, and why not learn from my mistake.
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