Weight Loss By Chewing More?

Absolutely. Taking smaller bites and chewing more should be a real part of our health and weight loss regimen. While any assistance to the digestive process will pay off big in the long run, specifically, smaller bites / chewing more gives time for digestive juices in the mouth to mix well with the food and become more

liquid-like as the mix starts to move to and through the digestive tract.  This helps with a more efficient assimilation of nutrients as well as deflecting chances of heartburn or other digestive related ailments. Also, higher chewing counts have been shown to reduce actual food intake. Even though the mealtimes were longer in duration, less food was consumed and there was still the feeling of being 'comfortably full’.

Yet, this is the point that settled it for me. As we take the time to chew our food more thoroughly, we give more time for our brains to register how much we have eaten. This usually takes about 20 minutes. The issue is listening to your body’s signal in saying “I’m pleasantly full” rather than the un-gauged feeling of “I’m stuffed!” Remember that what the body can’t immediately metabolize for energy gets stored, and depending on the caloric density of the foods we’ve eaten, what gets stored could add up quick.

It really does take effort to stay conscious of every bite and watchful of our tendencies to “wolf it down” especially when the meal is in sandwich form and does not leave our hands. This ‘watchful’ process gets even more difficult for people who routinely eat while watching television (me) or while driving. It is recommended to chew each mouthful between 15 – 30 seconds or 25 – 50 times. If weight loss is a key concern, definitely look to get into those higher levels. Also, look to set visual guidelines on an allowable amount of a bite or the “level” of a spoonful.

We are all a work in progress and I’ll admit that this is still a mind-renewing process for me as well, but I believe that through prayer and developing better eating habits, expected results can be seen quickly.



You may also want to see:

Faith Declaration of Health and Wellness 
in the Areas of Nutrition and Eating Habits by Yashalife PDF

The Great Physician's Rx for Health and Wellness, Jordan Rubin   
How I Became Young at Sixty, Horace Fletcher
Prolonged chewing and food intake. Fletcherism revisited., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21316411