Saying It All In One Sentence

Michael Anchors, MD, PhD

​One of my secretaries asked me to sum up myself in a single word. I won’t tell you what word I chose. It’s a ridiculous exercise. Well, it is and it isn’t. There is a place in the Bible, Matthew 7:12 where Jesus says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” I am not a Christian; I am just a reader. It’s a good exercise to try reducing your doctrine to a single sentence.
So here I reduce everything I teach to this. DO NOT EAT IF YOU ARE NOT HUNGRY. Find something else to do.
I said something like this before, and ran into problems with the fact that many patients cannot distinguish between hunger and cravings. And there’s the issue of continuing to eat fast, beyond the point when hunger would have ceased if we just ate slower. But as a single sentence to keep in mind as you go through the day, “do not eat if you are not hungry” might be easier to remember than the Ten Orders.