Sustainability & Food Consumption

Just some thoughts to ponder.

We've all heard of stories where populations of animals, and people exceed the 'carrying capacity' of a region and then suffer from a rapid decline of population and potentially a complete wipe-out.


I recently read a story about how a small group of Reindeer were placed on St. Matthew island for use as an alternative food source for a local military base, well with no natural predators, the population expanded exponentially, from about 10 into the thousands, and then in one year they were wiped out completely.

History seems to tell a similar story about Easter Island, explaining how as the population on the island grew, they continued to cut down trees on the island until there were virtually none left, with a serious shortage in resources, there were wars on the island and eventually the native population were almost wiped out completely, the once fertile island having lost it's topsoil.

Many environmental researchers look at the human population on the planet potentially facing a similar situation... Here's a graph of the Human population on the planet from 10,000BC to the present... Notice the spike?

Clearly, we're not learning to live sustainably, as there is no such thing as sustainable growth... Any amount of % based growth begins to create an exponential curve.

So what does this have to do with fitness & weight-loss?

What I'm trying to show here is that over-consumption, that constant growth is bad for a small population, bad for a nation, bad for the planet, and what I propose is that it's also bad for the individual.

If there is an ultimate truth or purpose for life, it should be to learn to live in a sustainable way, to learn to live in such a way as to maximize the chance of future success.

As an individual, if one consumes too much, gets too fat, becomes obese, you increase the risk of an early demise, just like these examples I've provided above. So the goal should be to consume exactly what you burn and no more, find your optimal size to maximize your health and fitness and remain there...

What do you think?