Eating Slow Aids Digestion, Makes You Thin

I’d always marveled at what a slow, slow eater my mom was. She’d sit there and talk or read in between bites, and you’d always be done with your plate while she still was looking at a half plate or sometimes even a virtually full plate of food left in front of her.  Another thing about my mom is that she has ALWAYS been thin.  She has never been one of those people to put on and take off the same twenty to thirty pounds.  She may waver in the five pound range, but never anything beyond that.  While I assert that a lot of her eating habits, including eating slow, contributed to this serendipitous ability to maintain a weight her whole life, I do believe that eating slow has been a major part of that for her.

You see, when you eat slow, your brain has time to catch up to your eating speed and tell you to put a lid on it, you’re done.  Have you ever noticed that when you scarf down two plates of food, that you inevitably feel ridiculously full and almost ready to vomit about twenty minutes to a half hour later?  It’s as if you’re food has expanded in your stomach.  But what that really is, is that yes, it does expand a little, but what it really is is that your brain finally had time to catch up with your mouth and tell you to stop eating.

The brain takes a while to send the signals to your stomach that you are full, so this is why it’s actually important that you take your time eating.  Eating more slowly also provides another important function, which is to help your digestion go smoother.  Instead of a bunch of food hitting your stomach all at once like an onslaught, forcing your stomach to make a lot of hydrochloric acid to digest and break it down, you’re allowing your stomach to have the time to make adequate digestive juices to accurately digest your food.

Because of this, you also may experience less indigestion and gas afterwards, because your stomach was able to do it’s whole job without being rushed.  Another great reason to eat slowly is that you will enjoy and appreciate the flavors and other nuances of the food you are eating, making it less likely that you will binge and go for that second plate which you almost never need.  It can be a great diet aid because of this.