Testimony Treasures, Volume 1 - Ellen G. White

Eating to Excess
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 is 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."
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 that he is weary and exhausted, but you
tell him to go to work again and he will obtain relief. This is the way you
treat the stomach. It is thoroughly exhausted. But instead of letting it rest,
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