Minimize Snacking for Better Digestion

Imagine your digestive system as a campfire. Upon rising, you want to build a fire, so you grab a few kindling, some newspaper, and carefully prepare the fire. This is how we should treat our first meal, nothing too big or difficult to digest. Once the fire is stoked, it is safe to add larger, more robust logs to the fire. The second meal of the day should be our largest, after the digestive fire is stoked and the sun, the highest. This meal should be nutritious and filling enough to last until dinner. Come dinnertime, we want to lower the flame, adding very little logs to the fire, knowing we will soon go to bed. Just like the campfire, we should eat something small and light, either a smaller portion of our lunch, soup, sautéed vegetables or warm milk with spices. We should eat at least 2 hours before resting for bed.

We want our meals to be properly assimilated and digested before adding more food (or logs to the fire). If we are continuously eating, we aren’t giving our body enough rest time between meals to digest and empty. Every time we eat, we stimulate insulin, making your brain think you are constantly hungry even when you are not. Additionally, digestion requires energy, which could be better spent living our passion. If you are consistently hungry between meals, try eating a larger lunch and see how that makes you feel. A lot of the time we confuse hunger with dehydration, so before grabbing a snack, go for a tall glass of water. We should be drinking about 70-100 ounces of water per day, so use these moments as an opportunity to hydrate!