HOW MUCH TO EAT - A word about food

FOOD CAUSES

It is better to eat no more than eighty per cent of your capacity. A Japanese proverb has it that eight parts of a full stomach  ache sustain the man; the other two sustain the doctor."

So one of the Zen masters is quoted in the book Three Pillars of Zen (Beacon Press, Boston, 1967)

The advice is relevant. That Americans generally consume too many calories for the amount of physical energy they expend is a matter of record and of increasing concern as the energy expenditure tapers off even more. Every five years, the National Research Council, which serves as scientific adviser to the United States government, publishes recommended dietary allowances.

After recommending, in 1963, a cut of 100 calories per day for men and women, it recommended another 100-calorie reduction in 1968. In its calculations, the Council uses a "reference" man and woman-each 22 years old, weighing 154 pounds and 127 pounds respectively, living in a mean temperature of 68 degrees, and engaging in light physical activity. 

Such a man, the Council now figures, needs 2,800 calories a day; the woman 2,000. The Council also recommends that caloric intake be cut below these levels with age-by 5 percent between ages 22 and 35, by 3 percent in each decade between 35 and 55, and by 5 percent per decade from 55 to 75.

This brings the figure for the woman, for example, to 1,900 by age 35, to 1,843 by age 45, to 1,788 by age 55, to 1,699 at 65 and to 1,614 at 75. These, of course, are general guidelines, leaving room for individual variations, and your physician may well have suggestions of value for you. It is a measure of good health, and a contribution toward maintaining it, to reach and keep a desirable weight. 

For that, an effective balance between food intake and energy output is needed. If you are currently at ideal weight (see table on page 61), your intake and output are in balance---which is fine if you are getting adequate amounts of exercise. Exercise, of right kind and in adequate amounts, is a vital element in health for many reasons (see Chapter 8). If you should need to increase your physical activity, you will need to increase intake to maintain desirable weight.