One of the most overlooked parts of improving health and fitness is how we eat our food. We place a huge focus on the type of foods and even when to eat, but something we pay little attention to how we eat. The process of chewing our food correctly is of vital importance in providing numerous benefits to our health. When you eat slowly, you digestion improves and your body can easily extract the essential vitamins and minerals from the food to allow it to function at its optimal capacity. You feel more satisfied with each meal allowing for better energy throughout the day and this also prevents over-eating helping you to maintain a healthy weight. However, if you eat too quickly your digestion suffers in a big way and this can cause havoc to not just your waistline, but can cause headaches, joint pain, skin problems, and even disease! Meals end up becoming stressful to your body as opposed to being a time for it to refuel and recharge. Add on top of this is how you feel sluggish and bloated and unable to stop over-eating and sabotaging your exercise efforts. Your food choices might be perfect but the fact you are eating too fast is your problem. For many people this becomes a bad habit and they do not even know they are doing it. In this article we are going to explain exactly what happens when you eat too quickly and some simple strategies you can use to prevent this bad habit from ruining your health goals.
We have all been in the situation where we are in a rush to be somewhere and not enough time to eat our meal and slam it down fast. The meal never feels very satisfying and there is probably a good chance you get indigestion or start burping. Sure your hunger pains have gone but you don’t feel great. For some people this type of eating becomes a habit where they have learned how to eat fast. Really fast.
Most people I talk to about nutrition who have a problem with portion sizes a big part of this is that they eat too fast.
Most of us rarely take the time to savor our food and chew it properly. We found we can save time on eating properly to fit in more things. The modern world is very fast and we are constantly trying to fit more things in and find ways to do things faster. Unfortunately, when it comes to eating this is a disaster. I myself have fallen into this trap many times and it caused me a lot of digestion issues that contributed to skin problems, joint pain, and not to mention feeling like crap all the time.
One of the most important benefits of eating slowly is that it gives your body time to recognize that you’re full.
It takes about twenty minutes from the start of a meal for the brain to send out signals of satiety. Most people’s meals don’t even last that long!
Imagine the extra food you could unnecessarily eat simply because you didn’t allow your body time to register that it no longer required food. Now imagine the effect of those extra calories to your belly or your hips.
Eating slowly helps you to feel more satisfied which is much different than just being “full”.
When you slow down, savor a meal, pay attention to tastes and textures, and appreciate each mindful bite, you leave the table feeling good all round.
It is amazing how this simple tip could be the missing ingredient for the person wanting to “feel leaner.”
Digestion Danger – What Happens When You Eat Too Fast
When you wolf down your food as seen in the picture above you take larger bites and chew less. This is bad news for your digestive system as your stomach has a hard time trying to break down big chunks of food into chyme—the sludgy mix of partially digested food, hydrochloric acid, digestive enzymes, and water that passes from your stomach into your small intestine.
When food isn’t properly broken down into chyme, it can cause indigestion and other GI problems. Large food particles make it difficult for the small intestine to absorb food molecules and nutrients we need.
“This type of eating depletes our body of valuable vitamins and minerals.”
Many do not realize the first part of digestion begins the mouth. Our saliva contains digestive enzymes that breakdown foods, especially carbohydrates. If you are dehydrated and cannot produce enough saliva your foods won’t be properly prepared for digestion in the stomach and intestines.
Dehydration is a big problem with digestion and people who are not drinking enough water combined with eating too fast are destined for big problems. When your body is dehydrated it wills scavenge water from vital organs and water from the mucus membrane in the stomach and intestines.
Heartburn is a common problem with the fast eater and dehydration plays a big part in this. Relying on antacids to treat this is ignoring the real problem. Apart from water our bodies are made up of proteins and fats. If proteins for repairing cells are not properly broken down they are less likely to be absorbed. The body will begin to break down its own proteins from muscle.
The combination of eating too fast and dehydration can lead to a host of problems like intestinal permeability and constipation. Sometimes dehydration can be caused from your training. I know I had this problem, and still do, when I was competing in cycle races during the summer. I am a heavy sweater at the best of times and it is not unusual for me to be covered in salt during a hard cycle or running session. I find it hard to drink enough water and I hate Gatorade and various other electrolyte drinks as they make me feel sick.
One of the best tips I ever had about preventing this problem was from Paul Chek.
He suggested to me to try a few things at a course I attended in 2010.
•Drink 2 glasses of water as soon as I wake up in the morning
•Drink 1-2 glasses of water 15 minutes before each meal
•Avoid drinking alcohol or coffee on their own and never before a meal
I found the best way to understand the digestion process is to look at it as a series of steps and not just what goes on in your intestine. I have discussed the importance of gut health many times before and one of the most destructive things you can do to your gut is eat too fast.
As soon as we see, smell, or think about food this is step 1 for we start salivating to prepare for putting that food in our mouth which is step 2. As we have just discussed the production of saliva is very important for it contains the enzymes we need to break the food down, and moistens the mouth for easier swallowing.
The following digestive steps 3, 4, 5 etc. are getting ready to go to work when these first two steps begin to occur. Our stomachs start to secrete more acid in preparation for breaking down food and extracting nutrients. Our small intestine starts to get ready for some peristalsis. And so forth. All the cogs in the wheel are being turned and working smoothly like they are supposed to.
However, if we stuff our food into our mouth and swallow before the body has completed these processes we force our GI tract to deal with stuff before it’s fully prepared. And this is when huge problems to our health begin to surface.
Click here to watch a great video I from Precision Nutrition that explains this process in great detail with easy to understand illustrations.
Results Of An Interesting Study
At the University of Rhode Island, researchers examined how eating speed affected the early stages of digestive processing by observing 60 young adults eat a meal.
•Slow eaters consumed 2 ounces of food per minute.
•Medium-speed eaters consumed 2.5 ounces of food per minute.
•Fast eaters consumed 3.1 ounces per minute. They also took larger bites and chewed less before swallowing.
This means that not only are fast eaters putting more food down in a given amount of time, that food isn’t as well-processed.
If your meal makes you burp a lot or leaves you feeling bloated and sluggish, take a good look at how quickly you are eating. Just like me you might be blaming the quality of the food you ate, when really you just needed to slow down and give your body time digest your food properly.
This is also how conditions like “leaky gut syndrome” are created.
Leaky gut, also known as increased intestinal permeability, is a digestive condition in which bacteria and toxins are able to “leak” through the intestinal wall.
You can read more about this in the article – Why gut health is critical to the health of the immune system
How Many Times Should You Chew Your Food?
The number of times you chew really depends on the type of food you consume. Soft fruits and vegetables will break down more easily than chicken or steak, so you will need to make sure you chew your food as thoroughly as possible.
According to the experts at Ohio State University, you should chew softer foods 5-10 times, and more dense foods like meats and vegetables up to 30 times before swallowing.
Begin to Eat Smaller Portions without Trying!
So far most of what we have discussed is the value of eating slowly for digestion, but what about helping you to get in better shape? There is no denying that eating slowly helps you to eat less. Most people would love to be able to reduce their food intake without having to go on extreme starvation plans so this is incredibly powerful information if you are that person trying to reduce some unwanted weight.
In another University of Rhode Island study, researchers served lunch on two different occasions to 30 normal-weight women. The meal in both cases consisted of an enormous plate of pasta with a tomato-vegetable sauce and some Parmesan cheese, along with a glass of water.
At each visit, researchers instructed the women to eat to the point of comfortable fullness. But during one visit, they also told them to eat as quickly as possible, while on the other visit, participants were asked to eat slowly and to put down their utensils between bites.
When the researchers compared the difference in food consumption between the quickly eaten lunch and the slowly eaten lunch, here is what they found:
•When eating quickly the women consumed 646 calories in 9 minutes.
•When eating slowly the women consumed 579 calories in 29 minutes.
That is 67 less calories in 20 more minutes!
If you extrapolate that to three meals per day, you can see how quickly the extra calories could add up.
And here’s another interesting twist: When the women ate their lunch quickly, they reported more hunger an hour later than they did after their slowly eaten lunch.
So not only did eating quickly lead to greater food consumption, it actually satisfied the women less! Conversely, of course, slow eating meant less food but more long-lasting satisfaction.
Why Eating the Right Amount Is So Important
If we don’t eat the right amount for our needs, our bodies will try to self-regulate itself to maintain homeostasis. If we’ve under-eaten, we might compensate with a binge. If we’re over-eating on comfort foods our bodies might say “This is awesome! Have more, just in case of famine!”
All this may have been great for us when we were cavemen and food was scarce but it is of no use to us now and really sets us up to eat too much. Sometimes we eat in response to sensations other than physical hunger, and this type of eating becomes destructive to our health when it is associated as the principal way of dealing with feelings. If we eat each time we get lonely, sad, bored or happy, addictions are easily formed that can be very difficult to break.
If we do not eat when we are hungry, our body gets us back eventually by cranking up our appetite signals and smothering our fullness signals. Do you know what the biggest trigger of binge eating is? – Dieting!
And after a big binge we often seen people punish their body in the gym with intense training to burn off the calories. This strategy is never works so keep that in mind if you are thinking of doing that before Christmas parties.
Food plans that are very restrictive and based solely upon reducing calories can increase food cravings, food preoccupation, guilt associated with eating, binge eating, weight fluctuations, and a preoccupation with weight.
We might get into a cycle of “deprivation mentality”: we restrict, then lose control, then vow to “get back on track” (ie. restrict further), only to lose control again, then apply an even more rigid control, then lose control… over and over and over.
Simple Tips to Help You Eat Slower & Improve Your Health
1.Drink 1-2 glasses of water BEFORE you eat
2.Sit down to eat in a calm environment with minimal distractions. Don’t eat while driving, while watching TV, while texting, etc. Pay attention to your food. I never have the TV on when I am eating but I love to play some music that helps me to relax. I find this is a good way to help me slow down.
3.Choose high-fibre foods that take more time to chew, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. It is amazing how lettuce makes me chew so much more. I enjoy most vegetables so this is an easy one for me.
4.Put down your knife and fork between bites. Take a moment. Breathe. If you’re eating with other people, enjoy making witty conversation for a few minutes. I have to remind myself to do this a lot and if you have always been a fast eater like myself this will take practice to break the habit. I myself use this tip all the time.
5.Use smaller plates. This is a simple way to reduce your portion sizes.
6.Find another slow eater and pace yourselves to them. My mum eats super slow and I sometimes try to pace my meal with hers. I find my food starts to go cold she eats so slowly, but I do appreciate how I digest the meal much better and feel satisfied from eating less. Thanks mum!
7.Set aside time to eat – Allow at least 20-30 minutes for each meal, and preferably even longer at dinner. Don’t just eat “whenever you get around to it” or treat it as an inconvenience. You’re fuelling your body and maybe even spending quality time with friends and family. I find spending time to eat really makes me enjoy all the flavours of what I am eating and at dinner times to reflect on what happened during the day.
Do You Need More Help?
To help you put together everything we have discussed in this article I have created a detailed PDF report that provides with everything you need to know about healthy eating.
Click here to get your copy.
Summary
Most of us lead hectic, fast-paced lives, so it’s understandable that we might try to rush our meals. But it should not be an excuse and we must never sacrifice our health for convenience. We have to become smarter with how we approach eating and recognize that we are re-fueling our body with important nutrients and we must respect this process so the body has the chance to extract what I needs. For many people this may be the missing ingredient to getting in great shape as they may be doing all the other things right but messing it up right at the end when they eat too fast.
There are so many nasty things that happen to our health when we eat too quickly and end up eating more than we need. Apart from gaining weight and feeling bloated and sluggish the damage caused to our digestion is significant and over a period of time can lead to a host of serious health problems.
Eating food is one of the great joys in life so we should be taking time to enjoy it and eat slowly. Not only do we get to enjoy the meal more but gives our body the chance to utilize the nutrients from the food more effectively to give us energy and feel great.
About The Author
Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 20 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.
References
•Obesity Paradox – By Carl Levie MD
•Eat Real Food by David Gillespie
•Precision Nutrition
•How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek