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Chasing Life

With Holiday season and aroma of yummy food in air..... family, friends and parties , pretty much everything revolves around the food.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta has very interesting message to share to avoid overeating...

Chasing life is a wonderful book by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, a columnist for Time Magazine and a Chief Correspondent at CNN. In this book he has put forth simple yet incredible ideas to prolong healthy and fit life.
Dr. Gupta focuses on fact that given the choice most of us want to be live longer, but we want a sound mind and at least minimally functional body. The goal of the book is to help reader extend his active life.

He stresses the fact that eating well is important but eating less might actually buy more years of life.
In this book he talks about a phrase ‘hara hachi bu’ commonly used in Okinawa, japan. It means eat until only 80 percent full and the stop. From Dr Gupta’s neuroscience perspective that area of brain that lets us know that we are really full usually lags several minutes behind our actual eating. So eating more slowly serves us well in terms of regulating the number of calories we consume.

Dr. Barbara J. Rolls at The Pennsylvania State University is interested in the Psychological and Physiological controls of food intake. She suggests people should eat less of what they like and make up with those portions slightly dense with calories. For ex. less on burger and more on lettuce and tomato. She asks to choose food with a higher water content like bowl of soup.

The Priceless recommends from this book:

  • hara hachi bu - eat until only 80 percent full and the stop
  • Find water rich foods.
  • Slow Down – Your brain needs few minutes to signal you are full.
  • Eat Bigger breakfast: You will eat less the rest of the day.
  • Eat less and you may live more.