Dutch people eat so quickly that this is one of the major causes of the obesity of half of the population. On average, it takes us 15 minutes to eat our evening meal, while twenty years ago that was double that! However, eating quickly is unhealthy and it three times increases the risk of obesity! Do you always eat quickly? Then you can easily and permanently lose weight by eating slowly!
Why do we eat quickly?
We are busy these days and that is why food has to be fast. We prefer to do something while eating. The current lazy lifestyle with fast food, frozen meals and large portions contributes to us eating more. We used to have regular family meals together. Nowadays there is often no time for that. At most it happens at Christmas and other festive occasions. However, relaxed family meals help us eat in peace.
How slow?
The advice is to chew each bite at least 20 times. Even better is 32 times. The longer you chew, the faster you will be satiated and the better your digestion will be.
If you have a meal of 500 grams, this means that it will take you about 20 minutes to eat your food. Your stomach needs 20 minutes to determine whether it is full. The feeling of satiety comes about gradually. When you eat slowly, the brain sends a signal that you are full.
What happens if you eat too quickly?
If you eat very quickly, you will eat much more in 20 minutes than you actually need. Your stomach will then not have the opportunity to indicate in time that it is full. The excess food you consume in this way makes it much easier for you to develop excess weight. Your body gets used to this eating behavior very quickly. Your stomach becomes accustomed to larger quantities. This will make you feel like you need more food, even though your body doesn’t need it. The result is that after a while you actually no longer know when you are really hungry or not. You no longer listen to your real feeling of hunger.
What is the effect of eating quietly?
When you eat slowly, you consume fewer calories. Research into this was conducted among a group of women. It found that women who ate quickly ate an average of 646 calories in about 9 minutes. The women who ate quietly consumed 579 calories in 29 minutes. That’s a difference of 67 calories. If you eat three meals a day slowly instead of quickly, you can easily save 200 calories.
Another advantage of eating slowly is that you are less likely to feel hungry again and that your digestion works better. You also enjoy your meals much more .
Difficult
In practice it appears that it is difficult for many people to eat quietly. In fact, it turns out to be so difficult that a tool has been introduced to help you eat calmly. That is the smart plate, the eating meet.
The food meeting
The eating meet was developed by Lissa Kooijman. It consists of two parts. The bottom part is a modified digital scale. This measures the weight of the board on top of it. A microcontroller measures how much each bite weighs. LED lights are controlled using this information. These illuminate the porcelain plate from below. The lights go out when the next bite can be taken. The light has a candlelight effect which should be attractive.
The problem with the sign is that the lights can be ignored. It has been tested on few people. These actually started eating more slowly. But that may be because it is a novelty.
Between our ears
The idea of such a board is of course clever, but it is actually treating the symptoms. Ultimately, fast food is in our head. We think we can’t do anything about it, but we have to learn the discipline ourselves to eat more slowly.
Tips
Because we find it difficult to eat quietly, it can take quite a lot of effort to get used to eating quietly. To help you, you can use the tips below. Continue until eating slowly has become a habit for you.
- We can teach ourselves to eat slowly. It is therefore important to pay careful attention to this in the beginning. After a while it will become more natural.
- Don’t wait until you’re hungry. This causes you to eat quickly and to eat more than necessary. Eat regularly, every 2 or 3 hours.
- Don’t start a meal when you’re stressed. Calm down first.
- Don’t over-fine your food. It is better to chew the food. It is then mixed with saliva, which ensures that the food is somewhat digested. This relieves your stomach and intestines. In addition, choose hearty foods such as waxy potatoes, pulled pork or carrots.
- Chew slowly: This makes your food digest better, you feel full more quickly and you have less of a tendency to eat more food.
- Taste what you eat: What is the taste and texture of your food?
- Eat from small plates with smaller portions. In practice it turns out that you then eat less.
- Use small cutlery, for example toddler cutlery. So you have to eat more slowly.
- Don’t be distracted by television or other things while eating. Distraction causes you to eat mindlessly. You will then eat more and faster. Your brain does not send a signal that your stomach is full when you are distracted.
- Make it a fun and cozy meal, for example with beautiful plates and candlelight.
- Make sure you drink well. When you drink a glass of cool water before eating, you will feel fuller and you will eat less.
- Don’t take a sip of drink with a bite of food. Then you rinse the food away. That is not good for digestion and makes you eat faster.
read more
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