When you’re a kid, you tend to believe pretty much everything your parents tell you. But once you move into your adult years – a brief teenage phase aside – you soon become aware of a lot of things that your parents weren’t totally right about. In the world of diet and nutrition, you might feel like you have an especially enlightened, post-childhood perspective. However, there’s at least one thing your mom was right about when it came to eating… Slower eating prevents weight gain. Furthermore, eating slower could even help you lose weight! It’s an opinion that just about everyone shares – even the experts over at WebMD.
But, how exactly does the science work?
The Science of Slow-Eating Your Way to Weight Loss
When you eat slowly, your stomach realizes that it’s full more quickly. When you know that you’re full, you can avoid overeating. Oftentimes, people who overeat don’t do so out of gluttony. Rather, they end up overeating because their brains haven’t had time to realize that they’re full!
Of course, the types of food that you eat slowly are just as important as eating slowly. Learn more about eating a healthy, balanced diet here.
Types of Food to Help You Eat Slowly
There are three broad categories of food that result in slower intake: low energy density foods, high satiety foods, and chewy foods.
Low Energy Density Foods
Foods with a low energy density have few calories but are fairly large in size. Take an apple, for example, which has about 95 calories. Most people probably wouldn’t be able to eat five whole apples. But, if you did, you would feel full and have consumed less calories than a Big Mac, which you could surely inhale in 3-4 minutes if you were really hungry.
Of course, you won’t be nearly as satisfied this way, so we don’t recommend eating all low energy density foods. However, definitely supplement your meals with these types of food.