On A Diet? Eat Alone!

It's day 173 of documenting 2025.

Happy Sunday, my friend ☺️ 

I wish you a wonderful week ahead.

I hope this week gives you more reasons to smile, even more to be grateful.

On my end, it's getting clearer...

What I must do to finally change things in my life.

By change, I mean a shift from the familiar.

And I'm starting with small steps.

Asides that, I'm actually looking forward to the new week.

I wouldn't say enthusiastic, just hopeful 😌

Hoping that things will move along well.

That's all for updates.

Let's move to the sections for today.

Highlights come first, as usual.

Then Meditations (it's becoming my favorite 😁)

365 Days With Self-discipline 

📌 On Eating Alone

"Meals eaten with one other person present were 33% larger than meals eaten alone, whereas 47%, 58%, 69%, 70%, 72%, and 96% increases were associated with two, three, four, five, six, and seven or more people present, respectively."

Quote by John M. de Castro

Here’s a super simple way to improve your self-control when eating: eat alone. 

When people eat with others, they eat more — and the greater the number of people who share the meal with you, the more you eat.

However, studies suggest that this phenomenon isn’t related to the amount of time spent eating.

It’s the companionship in itself that makes humans more likely to eat more when they are around other people than when alone. The same happens with animals. 

With chickens, for example, a full chicken will continue eating if a hungry chicken starts eating with it.

If you’re currently on a diet and you frequently have a bite with other people, ask yourself how important it is for you to spend time eating with them.

Perhaps you could forego or reduce the number of shared meals while you’re on a diet and find a different activity that you could do together.

Sometimes such simple tweaks can quickly produce big results, so give it a go for at least a few weeks and see whether it can help you achieve your goals more quickly.

That's interesting 🤔 

So if I want to eat less, I should eat alone?

Probably...

In some cases this might not work....especially if I haven't eaten all day.

Just saying...

On to the writings of Marcus Aurelius...

I shared three of his lessons today.

And they seemed pretty clear.

Meditations 

📌 Book 3: In Carnuntum

9. Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. 

It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. 

It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.

10. Forget everything else. 

Keep hold of this alone and remember it:

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. 

Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

My thoughts on this:

The only moment we have now is the present.

The past is gone and the future...uncertain.

11. To the stand-bys above, add this one: always to define whatever it is we perceive—to trace its outline—so we can see what it really is: its substance. 

Stripped bare. As a whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name—the thing itself and its components, to which it will eventually return. Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us. 

To look at it in such a way that we understand what need it fulfills, and in what kind of world. 

And its value to that world as a whole and to man in particular—as a citizen of that higher city, of which all other cities are mere households.

What is it—this thing that now forces itself on my notice? 

What is it made up of? How long was it designed to last? And what qualities do I need to bring to bear on it—tranquillity, courage, honesty, trustworthiness, straightforwardness, independence or what?

So in each case you need to say: “This is due to God.” Or “This is due

to the interweavings and intertwinings of fate, to coincidence or chance.”

Or: “This is due to a human being. Someone of the same race, the same birth, the same society, but who doesn’t know what nature requires of him.

But I do. And so I’ll treat them as the law that binds us—the law of nature; requires. 

With kindness and with justice.

And in inconsequential things? I’ll do my best to treat them as they deserve."

What do you think, my friend?

Are the lessons clear?

Well, I understand what they mean...mostly.

You can read them out loud to understand better 🗣️

That's all for today's post.

Thanks for reading 🎀 

Once more, I wish you a wonderful week ahead.

You can catch up on former posts by visiting the main site, Documenting 2025.

And you can also help me understand how to improve this blog by answering a few questions on the reader survey.

I'll see you there 😉 

I'm Duon Ada...

I'm documenting 2025,

And I'll see you tomorrow 

Ciao 💕