Overeating
[
Testimonies for the Church 2:362-364
(1869).]
Many who have adopted the health reform have left off everything
hurtful; but does it follow that because they have left off these things,
they can eat just as much as they please? They sit down to the table, and
instead of considering how much they should eat, they give themselves
up to appetite and eat to great excess. And the stomach has all it can
do, or all it should do the rest of that day, to worry away with the
burden imposed upon it. All the food that is put into the stomach, from
which the system cannot derive benefit, is a burden to nature in her
work. It hinders the living machine. The system is clogged and cannot
successfully carry on its work. The vital organs are unnecessarily
taxed, and the brain nerve power is called to the stomach to help the
digestive organs carry on their work of disposing of an amount of food
which does the system no good.
Thus the power of the brain is lessened by drawing so heavily upon
it to help the stomach get along with its heavy burden. And after it has
accomplished the task, what are the sensations experienced as the result
of this unnecessary expenditure of vital force? A feeling of goneness, a
faintness, as though you must eat more. Perhaps this feeling comes just
before mealtime. What is the cause of this? Nature has worried along
with her work and it so thoroughly exhausted in consequence that you
have this sensation of goneness. And you think that the stomach says,
“More food,” when, in its faintness, it is distinctly saying, “Give me
rest.”
[158]
The Stomach Needs Periods of Rest
The stomach needs rest to gather up its exhausted energies for
another work. But instead of allowing it any period of rest, you think
it needs more food, and so heap another load upon nature and refuse
it the needed rest. It is like a man laboring in the field all through the
early part of the day until he is weary. He comes in at noon and says
169