Why You Should Never Force Yourself To Eat Everything On Your Plate
* This is not meant to be used as an excuse not to eat your vegetables. Hey, vegetables are good for you, you know! You will thank whoever forced feed them to you 30 years down the roads when you can see the effects of the veggies or the lack of them.
My friends and I went out to a restaurant to eat lunch. It was the first time we went there and the portions were HUGE. The prices were not cheap nor too expensive. Naturally, we could not finish the food comfortably. I watched in amusement and some sort of amazement, that although my friends were full, they FORCED themselves to finish everything on their plate, to quote "to make their money worth". In true spirit of whatever their parents told them when they were young to make them eat. Eg. Children starving in Africa, or the legend of how your future spouse's face will look like the dish. So if you don't finish, he will be ugly, etc. To everyone who thinks that forcing yourself to eat when you are already very full, I say, RUBBISH!
Again, let's start out with the simple general facts.
People buy goods and services1, in this case, food, to get satisfaction2. Correct?
Next general fact.
You want to maximise your satisfaction3 in whatever you buy. Correct?
Now we got that settled, assuming you agree, we shall move on.
Let's say that happiness can be measured, like we can be plugged to a Happy-meter. (I made up the concept of a Happy-meter, if it really exist, bravo!) Let's say each unit of happiness is called Hap, like kilogram is to weight. So if you are hungry and crave for some chocolate, eating 50g for chocolate will give you 500Hap. Whereas, if you are full and you are made to eat 50g of vegetables, your Happy-meter, unfortunately goes to negative 1000Hap.
So, you are hungry, naturally, the first bite of food you take is 1000Hap. Doesn't the first taste the best? ^_^ Then, your stomach gets a little fuller. The next bite will probably give you 900Hap, as your hunger gets more appeased. So this goes on, the more bites, the less Hap you get. Until you become pleasantly full, or you have enough of eating that food. That very bite is 0 Hap. STOP! Don't eat any more! You have derived maximum satisfaction! Maximum happiness! Think of it this way, when you add up all the happiness you consumed, from the first bite to the last, 1000Hap + 900Hap +...+0Hap, you may get, let's say 10000Hap. So, for that one dollar (or pound or baht or whatever currency you want) you paid for that food, you got the maximum Happiness of 10000Hap.
Now, if you try to force yourself to eat more of that food, your Happy-meter will go down, it will be negative. So, one more bite, you get -100Hap, argh, didn't like that, stomach is fuller. Another bite, you get -300Hap, argh, didn't like that more as stomach is more fuller. I shall not dare speculate how much capacity your stomach can take, but let's say by the time you finished your dish, you may get to -1000Hap! Now, when you calculate your total happiness, from the first bite to the last, 1000+900+...+(-100)+...+(-1000). You could end up with a total of negative Happiness! You may be thinking, ARGH! I am so full! I wish I hadn't eaten this dish. Now I have put on so much calories, tomorrow i have to jog, groan, groan! (Does that sound familiar to you? ^_^) So for that one dollar you paid for your food, you may get negative happiness! Totally defeating the purpose of buying it in the first place. Who pays to be tortured? (all those perverts out there, please don't reply)
So, you should eat your food, until you have enough of it, such that you get maximum happiness, maximum value for your money! Forcing yourself to eat will just make you less happy.
But just one more teensy weensy bite?
As I explained above, you get the max satisfaction of 10000Hap, one more bite and you minus off 100 Hap, so it is now 9900Hap, instead of the 10000Hap. The extra bite won't make you THAT unhappy, but it doesn't make you HAPPIER either.
Does that mean I have to eat till I am full?
No, you eat till you have ENOUGH of the food. For example, your capacity for eating chocolates may be much more than eating chilli. You may be happy to eat 1kg of chocolates in one sitting, but you try eating 1kg of chilli and you're going to be one very unhappy and hot person! ^_^ So if you feel happy eating 50g of chilli, just eat that amount. You don't have to be full of chilli.
But I actually feel happier finishing all my food!?!
That's why I said I am talking in a general sense. Some people, very ingrained in them to finish all their food and truly believe firmly that finishing EVERYTHING will be worth their money. Finishing everything off the plate... I say, go ahead then. You may goggle, why? Because simply, the EXTRA HAPPINESS for them in finishing their food OVERCOMES the EXTRA UNHAPPINESS for them in finishing them. You get it? Mind over body. So, as you take that extra bite, your body goes, "no no no!", but your mind screams "YES! YES!" So the total net Happiness you get of that particular bite, could be your body's happiness of -100Hap plus your mind's happiness of +300Hap. Total is +200Hap. So you can actually feel so much happier in finishing your whole plate.
Back to RUBBISH! Why You Should Never...
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Foot Notes & Explanations
1. Goods and Services. Simply, goods are tangible things, like food, furniture, clothing, etc. Services are intangible things like fixing the air-con, banking, etc. Return
2. Satisfaction. In other words, happiness. Let me give you a simplified example, being selfish people, we generally buy things to make ourselves happy, correct? I buy an ice cream cone to satisfy my hunger and make me feel happy. Doesn't have to extremely, ha ha happy happy joy joy, but just happy, no matter how minimal it is. You may argue how about those horrible bulky textbooks you are forced to buy and you wouldn't have bought it if you didn't have to. Think of it this way, you get happiness or satisfaction NOT in buying it, but USING it during classes or especially mugging during tests. You may not feel happy studying, but you definitely feel much happier that you can study from a good textbook, not a crappy one with missing pages. Return
3. Maxmise Satisfaction. In other words, make yourself as happy as possible! Return
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