How to Eat More Slowly and Its Benefits

Here are techniques that actually work:

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.
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.
Take a sip of water every few bites.
This naturally creates a pause.
Use a smaller utensil.
A teaspoon instead of a tablespoon, or a smaller fork, makes each bite smaller.
Make each bite the same size.
People who eat quickly often unconsciously take larger and larger bites as the meal goes on.
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.
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?”
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.
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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Keto Day

The long-term studies relative to the ketogenic diet are not very encouraging. They all point out the likelihood of heart disease. Basically, the body is not meant to consume that level of fat on a regular basis.

But that doesn’t mean that the ketogenic approach is not useful.

Let me explain. I do 19:5 intermittent fasting. I eat a big meal at 11 am and stop eating at 4 pm sharp. It is just the way I eat now. Don’t even think about it. Habit.

But I want to do 48-hour and longer fasts on a fairly regular basis for the sake of enhanced autophagy. Not that hard to do a 48-hour fast — just means not eating for one full day. But longer fasts are a real test for me, and yet they would provide even better autophagy.

So longer than a 48-hour fast is where a “keto day” comes in. I just did a 48-hour fast, but the next day afterward, I did what I call a keto day. The keto day was 2000 calories, mostly fat, a small amount of protein, but only 22 grams of carbohydrates.

The tiny amount of carbohydrates means that the deep ketosis of the longer fast will continue for another day, with all the benefits of deep ketosis.

Relative to enhanced autophagy, the small amount of protein is a more serious issue, as protein tends to halt autophagy. (A major reason for autophagy is the body is scavenging for amino acids, so if you provide protein with food that ends the need for scavenging.)

Bottom line: on that third day, one needs to keep the carbohydrates tiny for continued ketosis, but also keep the protein very low, and that — keeping the protein low — is a challenge in using a keto day for greater autophagy in a longer fast.

No Hunger

Food Order

An interesting question is whether there is any advantage in eating the macronutrients — fat, carbs, protein — in any sequence?

There is a lot of evidence that having fat in one’s meal aids the digestion of various vitamins and minerals. Without the presence of fat, these nutrients are digested, but not as well as they would have been had there been some fat available.

Fat also has no impact at all on insulin, and if you eat a meal that includes some fat, the carbs, which will spike insulin, will spike it much less severely because of the presence of fat. You do want to lower insulin spikes as much as possible.

There is also a good deal of evidence that protein is very satiating, and also slows down digestion because the protein compounds require a lot of work by digestive enzymes to break them down, which is a good thing.

So on balance, eating fat/protein at the start of a meal would appear to be the best strategy, and nothing fills that bill better than a handful of mixed nuts — high in both fat and protein. Perhaps you should start all your major meals with a source of fat/protein like nuts to improve your digestion.

Strength and Old Age

No-Brainer Supplements

Resveratrol, sulforaphane, turmeric, milk thistle, garlic, magnesium, chlorella, glutathione.

Resveratrol because of its intense antioxidants and because it is linked to longevity — a longer life span, probably because of the antioxidants.

Sulforaphane because of its proven ability to fight cancer cells. The pharmaceutical industry has poured billions into the study of sulforaphane for this very reason.

Turmeric because of its proven ability to suppress chronic inflammation, which is so common.

Milk thistle because of its proven benefit to promote the health of the liver. You are only as healthy as your liver.

Garlic because of its proven antiviral impact.

Magnesium because of its proven ability to create calmness — a natural sedative.

Chlorella because of its unique mineral content from the sea.

Glutathione is the body’s main antioxidant — the body produces its own glutathione to suppress oxidative stress, but you can also buy it as a supplement in order to boost this defense against cancer and inflammation.

For those people who say that supplements are useless, I say nonsense.

Food Choices