Category: Food

How to Eat More Slowly and Its Benefits

Here are techniques that actually work:

  1. Put the fork down after every bite.
    This is probably the most effective habit. Take a bite, put the utensil down, chew, swallow, then pick it up again.
  2. Chew a specific number of times.
    You don’t have to count to 30. Just aim for 10–15 chews on most bites, and more for tougher foods.
  3. Take a sip of water every few bites.
    This naturally creates a pause.
  4. Use a smaller utensil.
    A teaspoon instead of a tablespoon, or a smaller fork, makes each bite smaller.
  5. Make each bite the same size.
    People who eat quickly often unconsciously take larger and larger bites as the meal goes on.
  6. Notice the flavors.
    Ask yourself:
    • What spice do I taste?
    • How sweet is this?
    • What’s the texture?
    Turning eating into observation rather than consumption naturally slows you down.
  7. Pause halfway through the meal.
    Set your fork down for one minute. Ask:”Am I still hungry, or am I just eating because the food is there?”
  8. Time your meals.
    If you normally finish in 8 minutes, try making it 12 minutes for a week, then 15 minutes. You don’t need to stretch every meal to 30 minutes.
  9. Conversation.

One exercise I particularly like is the first five bites rule:

  • Bite 1: Notice the aroma.
  • Bite 2: Notice the texture.
  • Bite 3: Notice the flavors.
  • Bite 4: Put the fork down before chewing.
  • Bite 5: Take a breath before the next bite.

After those five bites, you’ll often find your pace has reset.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • Which ingredient do I taste first?
  • How does the flavor change as I chew?
  • Which bite is the best?
  • When does my hunger actually begin to fade?

That shifts eating from “fueling up” to a small act of exploration, and exploration naturally isn’t rushed.

There are more benefits than most people realize. Eating slowly affects not only digestion, but also appetite, enjoyment, and even long-term weight control.

1. Your brain has time to register fullness

One of the biggest benefits is that your stomach and intestines release hormones that tell your brain you’ve had enough to eat, but that process takes time. If you finish a meal in 8 minutes, you can easily eat several hundred extra calories before those signals arrive.

2. Better digestion

Chewing thoroughly:

  • Breaks food into smaller pieces.
  • Mixes it with saliva, which contains digestive enzymes.
  • Makes it easier for your stomach and intestines to process the food.

Many people experience less bloating and indigestion simply by chewing more.

3. Greater enjoyment

When you slow down, you notice:

  • subtle flavors
  • different textures
  • aromas
  • how the food changes as you chew

Ironically, people often enjoy the same meal more while eating less of it.

4. Better weight management

Research consistently finds that people who eat quickly are, on average, more likely to be overweight than those who eat slowly. Slowing down tends to reduce calorie intake without requiring conscious restriction.

5. More stable blood sugar

Eating more slowly can reduce the speed at which nutrients enter the bloodstream. While the food itself matters most, a slower eating pace may modestly reduce sharp glucose spikes after meals.

6. Less overeating from emotion

Rapid eating often becomes automatic. Slowing down creates little “checkpoints” where you can ask:

  • Am I still hungry?
  • Am I eating because I’m enjoying this?
  • Or am I just continuing out of habit?

7. Greater satisfaction

This may be the biggest surprise. People often report feeling more satisfied after a slowly eaten meal even when they eat less food. Satisfaction depends on both what you eat and how you eat it.

Kill Your Appetite

When I was growing up, we always had a sit-down dinner in the dining room. But about half an hour before dinner, I’d find myself in the kitchen, looking for something to satisfy my growing hunger, only to be scolded by my mother:

“Don’t eat anything. You’ll ruin your appetite!”

Ironically, that’s exactly the right strategy for someone trying to lose weight and avoid overeating at dinner—or at any large meal. The trick is to do exactly what my mother was forbidding, about 30 minutes before you sit down to eat.

The goal is simple: eat just enough so you don’t arrive at the table with a ferocious appetite. Instead, you take the edge off your hunger before the meal begins.

Here’s one simple snack that works well.

Start with two artichoke hearts. They’re exceptionally high in fiber, one of the most valuable nutrients for weight control. Fiber isn’t digested by the body, so it adds bulk, promotes fullness, and contains relatively few calories.

Next, eat half an avocado. Although you don’t eat the skin—as you do with many other fruits, where much of the fiber resides—avocados are still an excellent source of fiber. They’re also rich in heart-healthy monounsaturated fat, which is highly satisfying. Save the other half to enjoy with dinner.

Finally, have about eight walnut halves. Walnuts provide healthy fats, including the plant-based omega-3 fat ALA, along with a modest amount of protein. Both fat and protein help increase satiety, making walnuts another excellent choice.

Eat this snack about 30 minutes before your main meal, and by the time dinner arrives, your appetite will have cooled considerably. You’ll still enjoy your meal—but you’ll be far less likely to overindulge.

So, in the end…

Thanks, Mom.

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Processed Foods

Best thing you can do for your diet and health is stop eating processed foods, which is about 85% of what you find in a typical supermarket.

Food companies are not interested in your health; they are interested in making money off of you with highly palatable but unhealthy processed foods.

Instead, learn how to cook with whole foods — real food, not crazy chemicals.

Get Healthy

Refined Sugar

If what you are considering buying at the grocery store has refined sugar added in the ingredient list, don’t buy this processed food. It will spike your insulin and blood sugar levels.

You should treat this added ingredient, which has no nutrition at all, as if it were poison to be avoided entirely. Treat it like poison — because for your system, it is.

Laughter

Food Order

The best thing to eat before your larger meal begins is a handful of mixed nuts and seeds. Eat these 10 minutes before you begin the main course. They will be high in both fat and protein, and fat and protein will slow down the digestion of the carbohydrates in the main course so that you don’t experience sharp insulin spikes, which is what you want. They will also increase satiety so that you end up eating less.

The worst thing to eat first is bread. That will do the opposite — cause a tremendous insulin spike and make you eat even more than you need to.

So get into the habit of first eating a handful of mixed nuts and seeds when you sit down to eat — before anything else.

No Salt

No Salt

Stop using salt in your food and you will start to really appreciate various tastes. Your pallet will become much richer for it.

Those cooking instructions that tell you to add a “pinch of salt” to your recipes are very unhealthy, as you get enough sodium from the food you eat and don’t need any additional salt. That pinch of salt just means you are raising your blood pressure a notch, and so welcoming heart issues.

Don’t add a pinch of salt to anything.

Tasty Veg Casserole