Healthy Eating Tips

How to Become a Slow Eater

Modern life style is doing everything at a greater speed. Everything is on the run including eating.

Ready-made things are available to make it faster. There is no town or village on this planet now left without a place for fast foods.

Fast eating has become a habit! It is high time we realized that fast eating, besides

affecting health, causes so many other side effects. If you chew well and eat slowly you can live more. Spending a few minutes more for eating can yield a lot of benefits.

Sit at a table

Sitting at a table to eat tells your brain you are having a meal. If you eat while standing or surfing the Internet, you can quickly lose track of how much you’ve eaten.

Even if you eat a lot while standing, you may still feel like you haven’t had a meal and want to eat more later.

Serve small portions

A clean plate is an incredibly powerful cue that a meal is finished. For this reason, large portion sizes often lead to overeating simply because of our tendency to eat what is in front of us.

Serve yourself smaller portions as a reminder to take your time and savour each bite. Use small plates so your brain doesn’t perceive the portions as skimpy.

Recommendation: Eat on child or dessert size plates (and out of similarly sized bowls...)

Remove distractions

If you are reading or watching TV, you are not paying attention to the food you put into your mouth.

That’s often because you are busy and want to multitask, but resist the urge for 15 minutes and eat a real meal.

Chew

You might think that you chew your food, but there’s a good chance you are swallowing a lot of it whole.

Take smaller bites and chew your food thoroughly. Notice the texture of what you are eating and appreciate what it adds to your meal.

Recommendation: Chew each bite of food up to 20 times!

Drink

Another way you can force yourself to slow down is to consciously sip your drink throughout your meal. This requires you to put your fork down, chew and swallow before eating more.

It also adds liquid to your stomach and can help you feel more full.

You only have one mouth, and if you are using it to talk it’s really difficult to shove food into it.

Don’t talk with your mouth full!

Eat with friends, have a great conversation and

use this as an opportunity to slow down your meal.

Have a conversation

Eat regular meals

Skipping meals can lead to out-of-control hunger, often resulting in overeating. When you're very hungry, it's also tempting to forget about good nutrition.

Snacking between meals can help curb hunger, but don't eat so much that your snack becomes an entire meal.