A little bit of hunger can mean a whole lotta energy. Let me explain.
People who remember Arnold Schwarzenegger from his pre-governator, pre-Terminator days might recall a 1977 movie called Pumping Iron that introduced the young Austrian body builder to American audiences. But what they may not remember is that Pumping Iron wasn’t Arnold’s first movie. That honor went to a Bob Rafelson film made the previous year. It told the fictional story of a bunch of young bodybuilders in Southern California who were willing to do anything to become champions. The prophetic title of that long forgotten film ? Stay Hungry.
The young Arnold and his fictional band of merry men were on to something. It’s not an accident that there’s a cliché that goes “lean mean hungry machine”. When you hear that, you sure don’t think of someone with fatigue, dragging through his day, do you? More likely you think of some u-and-coming middleweight fighter, ripped to the bone, bursting with energy (at least that’s what I think of, but that’s just me). Point is, hungry isn’t always bad.
A little hunger can also mean a lot more energy. It may even mean a whole new lesae on life, if you’re interested in such things. (I’m kidding. I know you are). Consider this: The only strategy that’s ever been shown in research to extend life span is eating less food. The absolute truth is that eating less food extends the life span of every species ever tested – from yeast cells to rodents to fish to fruit flies to worms to monkeys. Maintaining a healthy weight reduces all sorts of metabolic stresses on the body, but you already know that. What you might not know is that staying just a little bit hungry – pushing away from the table when you’re, say, 75 percent full instead of 100 percent can also boost your energy like rocket fuel. There’s a fabulous Confucian-inspired phrase used by the long-lived, high-energy people in Okinawa that goes like this. “Eat until you are 80 percent full”.
It works for me!
A LITTLE BIT OF HUNGER ISN’T A BAD THING
I remember once talking with the irascible and brilliant C. Leigh Broadhurst, Ph.D., at one of Robert Crayhon’s legendary Boulderfest nutritional medicine conferences. Broadhurst is a scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who, in addition to being one of the smartest people on the planet, also happens to be a bodybuilder with about 1 ounce of body fat on her 6-foot athletic frame and enough energy to power a small city.
Broadhurst was holding court on the obesity epidemic in this country at the conference, and was scoffing at what she perceived as the wimpiness of the average American dieter.
“You need to learn to go to bed hungry”, she said. “It’s not going to kill you. Most of the world does it every night”.
Okay, so Broadhurst, genius IQ and all, isn’t going to win the Richard Simmons award for compassionate encouragement. But she’s on to something. The key to eating less to increase your energy is doing it properly, making sure what you do eat is loaded with nutrients. (We call that lowcalorie, nutrient-dense eating). Eating less as in “I only had half a slice of bread for breakfast” is exactly what I am not talking about.
When you load up on protein, a little fat, and a ton of vegetables, you’d be surprised at how few calories can actually sustain you, and how little it takes to have super energy people who are consuming 4,000 calories a day unless they’re professional athletes). A good place to start: Reduce calories by 25 percent a day. You get bonus energy points for eliminating those 25 percent calories from the least important foods, such as desserts, sodas, sugar, cereals, breads, rice, and pasta.
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