Angels, Dominion, Responsibility

For my Christian readers who share that God gave us dominion over plants and animals for food, so they don't buy into the whole vegan thing:

Psalm 8 (From the New International Version ©2010)

LORD, our Lord,
   how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 1You have set your glory
   in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants
   you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
   to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
   the work of your fingers,
   the moon and the stars,
   which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
   human beings that you care for them?[c]

 5 You have made them a little lower than the angels
   and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
   you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
   and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
   and the fish in the sea,
   all that swim the paths of the seas.

 9 LORD, our Lord,
   how majestic is your name in all the earth!

“… made them rulers over the works of your hands.” Should you take this seriously? If you do, than the job comes with the responsibility to treat “everything under your feet” with respect; they are the ‘works of God.’ The bible doesn’t tell you to be vicious and cruel in the treatment of God’s creatures, nor to look away at the injustices perpetrated by others on your behalf. It says you are just “a little lower than the angel” and that you are “crowned with glory and honor.” How honorable is it to be nonchalant in your use of animal flesh that makes it to your kitchen through torture and cruelty? Your disregard of whether or not the animals you choose to eat were treated humanely is not glorious or honorable, it’s selfish and it’s easy. Look away and the horror isn’t really there. Don’t make the hard choices.

I’m not advocating that you not eat meat. I’m suggesting that you open your eyes to where your meat comes from and then make a choice to either eat meat that was allowed to live as it was intended to live or not eat meat. It takes work. It’s not easy. For me it was easier to just go without meat.

Maybe you can’t fathom a meatless world. I get that. Just do the work to make sure the animals you’re eating were treated properly. It’ll cost more. Maybe you can make up the difference by eating some meatless meals, or less meat at each meal. You decide. You’re the one that’s just a bit lower than an angel. 

Am I? Hungry? Really?

One of the instructions in the Mission Biggest Weight Loss Challenge plan is to rate your hunger on a scale of 0-10 with 0 being “empty” and 10 being, “take me to the hospital and have my stomach pumped” (not really, but you get my drift). We were given a list of factors that make you hungry, one of which is: Defending your set point. Several years ago there was a diet philosophy that centered on a person having a weight set point; a weight that your body naturally gravitates to, and that’s what I thought the Challenge information was referring to. It well might be, but yesterday I discovered that it meant something entirely different to me.

I was struggling with the amount of food I had eaten, rather than whether or not I was hungry. I ate a good breakfast at 8:00 (satisfied), and at 1:30 I had a small salad with hummus on the side (not satisfied), then ate a Larabar at 3:00 (satisfied). At 3:45 I went to the rec center and swam for 40 minutes, stretched out in the steam room for about five, then headed to the showers. Walking to my car at 5:10 I was hungry and decided to have a leftover baked potato at home.

Driving home I got to thinking about whether or not I was actually hungry, much less starving, and I discovered that physically I wasn’t hungry, but mentally I was famished. I fought it for awhile, but gave in and ate a handful of roasted butternut squash seeds and a small bowl of brown rice. It was this morning that I realized I do have a set point and it has to do with volume and density, not weight or hunger. There is a certain volume/density of food that is a subconscious need rather than a physical one.

So even if gluten isn’t an issue for me this test has been enormously beneficial. The absence of dense volume has brought me a new level of awareness and is responsible for the set point epiphany. I can look at my hunger with new eyes and when it’s volume/density related deal with it differently. That might not alleviate the feeling that something is missing, but it gives me an opportunity to discover what is actually physically necessary.

I wonder if the lower density of the food is why a lot of people who have grown up with a predictable food volume/density at meals and snacks feel deprived when eating healthy, lower calorie foods.

This brings me to another factor relating to my volume/density set point and that’s my sense of the volume of food that will prevent future hunger. I often eat based on when I think I’ll eat again. As an example, one of the factors in eating the seeds and rice last night was that I was going to go out and walk my dogs. Ummmm … Okay. What’s that about? Was I going to pass out from lack of food in the next hour? I don’t think so. Remember, I wasn't even physically hungry!

I can’t imagine many situations when I wouldn’t be able to find something to eat in a timely manner. I’ve never been so broke that I didn’t have food (thank you, universe!) and it’s not like I live in the middle of nowhere and find my cupboards bare on a regular basis with the nearest convenience store twenty miles down a lonely country road; Awareness.

Redefining hunger is going to be enormously helpful to me. Gaining insight into an issue gives me information to change it. Recognizing the absence of density is another piece of information on the journey.