If a mother feeds her babe every three hours the child will usually wake and call for food about this period. If she has formed the habit of nursing the child every two hours, it will call for food in about two hours, even though all symptoms indicate that the child is over fed.
It is important that both child and adult establish regular and hygienic habits because the digestive juices secrete themselves at the regular periods established. A right habit is as easily formed, and as difficult to change, as a wrong one.
If one forms the habit of eating a certain amount of food, the stomach calls for about the same amount, and when one first begins to change the quantity it protests, whether the change be to eat more or less.
Few people form the habit of drinking sufficient water,—particularly if they have been taught that water at meals is injurious. In this busy life, few remember to stop work and drink water between meals, and if not consumed at the meal time the system suffers. Many people look “dried up.”
The habit of drinking two glasses of water upon first arising, and six more during the day is an important one.
Frequency of Meals
There is no doubt but that a large number of people overload the digestive organs. This, as well as the bolting of food, insufficiently masticated, cannot be too strongly denounced. All food should be chewed to a pulp before swallowed.
As a relief from overeating, many theorists are advocating two meals a day, but the work of the average man is planned into morning and afternoon sessions, and the three meals have been arranged accordingly.
Where two meals a day are eaten, the first meal should be at nine or ten o’clock in the morning and the second meal at five or six o’clock in the afternoon; whereas, for the average person who eats two meals a day, the custom is to go without food until the midday meal, and then to eat two meals within six hours, with nothing more for eighteen hours.