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Want to lose weight? Slow down!

It’s a mystery why some people are thin and others tend to gain weight easily. Like most things in life, the answers are not so simple. A combination of lifestyle, genetic disposition, foods we eat, and metabolism all play an important part. Unhealthy diets aside, most people look for a “tricks” that will help keep the weight off.

Forget the hot pepper diet or the one that touts eating nothing but meat! I’ve found one, seemingly whacky (and easy), approach.  It may surprise you that slowing down while eating can actually help you lose weight.

Numerous studies have been performed on this, but I’ll cite two from the University of Rhode Island that underscore this theory. It takes time for the stomach to tell the brain that you’re full and if you are eating too quickly, you’ve likely long since filled up before your brain has the time to tell you that you’ve had enough.

Some interesting statistics came out of these two studies. Among them:

  • Fast eaters take in about 85 grams of food per minute;
  • Eaters who eat at a medium pace eat about 70 grams in a minute;
  • Turtle eaters consume about 57 grams every minute.

So right about now you’re seeing where I am going with this, right? There’s a huge difference between 57 and 85 and over a twenty-minute period, whoa! Now we’re talking:

  • The fast eater just took in 1700 grams;
  • The medium paced eater ate 1400 grams;
  • And the turtle consumed 1140 grams!

Let’s consider a meal of heavy vegetables and 120g (4 ounces) of meat for the slow eater and a 300g (10-ounce) steak and potatoes for the fast eater. Multiply this over a month, six months or year. The picture isn’t pretty for the fast eater, is it?

Here are some other stats that came out the combined studies:

  • Men tend to eat about 80 calories in a minute;
  • Women eat about 52 calories a minute;
  • People with a higher Healthy Body Mass Index (BMI) eater faster than those with more healthy BMI.

When told to chew quickly and take more bites during meal time, one group in the study ate 646 calories in under 10 minutes while the ones who were instructed to breathe between bites and put down the fork periodically ate 580 calories in 30 minutes (by comparison, that’s under 200 calories in 10 minutes)!

It might take some training, but for a lot of people it’s a good idea to slow down and take a breather between bites!Consider this an easy first step in your healthy weight goal.

 

Until next time,

Peace, love and vitamin C!

 

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