Power Chewing by Muramoto

POWER EATING PROGRAM

YOU ARE HOW YOU EAT

When people experience imbalances in their health, they often try counseling, divorce, relocation, pills, herbs, and surgery. Only as a last resort do they consider changing their eating habits, in the hopes of regaining their health.

When we eat food in a conscious manner, we may, as Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine taught "Let food be our medicine, and medicine be our food."

 Eating is a primal desire, the basis of our survival instinct. Eating is a simple act, yet vastly underestimated as a major influence on health. If you question the importance of food, try fasting for several days, or notice the behavior of a hungry infant. As with all basic human functions, eating can be a greedy indulgence or a spiritual experience. How we eat can merely fill us up and comfort us, or it can heal and transform us.

In many traditions and cultures, eating is considered a crucial, even sacred act. I was told by Lebanese friend that a peasant is not required to stop eating even if a king enters his house. Ancient Jewish law states that if a piece of food larger than an egg is eaten, one must sit down and say grace. Eating with a reverent attitude is recommended in many religious and spiritual ritual practices.

These days, we casually interrupt our meals for the phone and a thousand other hectic, chaotic influences of modern life. While we eat, we jump up and down, talk, read, scurry around, grab a bite, and then grab a digestive tablet.

 According to Consumer Spending Report, Americans now spend over $1 billion on digestive medicines each year Take a good look at your own lifestyle.

If foods are the building blocks of our health, then our stressful mealtime habits are causing us to crumble. Americans are overfed and undernourished. For too many people, food has become a form of entertainment rather than the means of nourishment. Grinning clowns sell high-fat, sugary non-foods. Cartoon characters, film stars and athletes convince Americans to eat junk food.

Yet a growing number of North Americans now are changing their eating habits. Unfortunately, some who eat a healthy diet fail to achieve satisfactory results largely because they focus on what, rather than how to eat. Very few people I observe know how to glean the full power from their food. The effects of even the most healthful meal can be minimized or nullified if eaten improperly.

We each choose what we want for our lives. With PEP, you will derive the maximum benefits from the foods you choose to eat. As you begin to take more care with your food choices, eating manner, breathing, exercise and contemplation, and as you practice directing your energies, you will focus your life more swiftly on where you really want to be.

REALIZE WHY YOU EAT

    Develop an awareness of your motivation for eating. Discover if the reason you are eating is:

1. Mechanical: a spontaneous response to hunger without thought about the quality or effects of food. "I'm so hungry, I could eat anything." "I could eat a horse."

2. Sensory: Eating for the taste, texture, fragrance, visual appeal of the food. "I eat this because it's delicious." "The food looks so pretty." "I love creamy foods."

3. Sentimental: Eating motivated by emotions or memories. "This dish reminds me of childhood, my homeland, the ethnic foods I loved." "I want cookies and milk before bed."

4. Intellectual: Influenced by diet, experts, and scientists. "I eat this because the book says to." "The speaker said these foods are low in calories and high in vitamins."

5. Social: Eating while conscious of the earth and its people, with empathy for others. "I eat food which supports the earth and can feed everyone." As Gandhi said, "I eat simply so that others may simply eat."

6. Ideological: Eating according to religious discipline or spiritual teaching, for development and transformation. "Exercising discipline and care, I eat the food of my spiritual beliefs."

7. Supreme: Freedom in eating deriving from inner wisdom and understanding of self with an awareness of all seven levels. "I eat to support my dream. I know the power of food. I eat to live, not live to eat." (Adapted from George Ohsawa's Seven Levels of Judgment.

READ MORE: http://macrobiotics.co.uk/pep.htm