Mindful Eating

Don’t forget to come up for air when eating! Chowing down quickly and eating until you’re full triples your risk of being overweight.

Is your food gone before your dinner date has a chance to taste his or her entree? Many of us inhale our food so quickly, we barely have a chance to register what it is we’re eating. While that might be okay if you’re a competitive eater, for the rest of us, it’s not a winning strategy. Research shows that this kind of turbo approach to eating, along with not stopping until we’re full, triples our chances of being overweight.

When we chow down hurriedly, our body doesn’t have enough time to process how much food we’ve consumed. By the time the message that our belly is full reaches our brain, we’ve already eaten too much. According to Elizabeth Somer, RD, every bite we take has about 25 calories. So if you take 10 more bites past the point of fullness, that’s an extra 250 calories every time you sit down to eat. Since all it takes is 3,500 extra calories to gain a pound of weight, you can see how quickly the pounds can add up.

Slow, mindful eating, on the other hand, is associated with weight loss. To slow down your meal, chew each bite 30 times. Resist the urge to shovel more food into your mouth by putting your fork down. Try to make your meal last at least 20 minutes.