Rapid eating causes obesity

Speed of eating turns out to be one of the earliest predictors of obesity. And obesity is a risk factor for diabetes.

In a study by Robert Berkowitz and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania, rapid eating (higher number of mouthfuls per minute) of a single laboratory testmeal was a remarkably strong predictor of subsequent weight gain in kids.

At 4 years of age, 32 children of overweight mothers and 29 children of normal weight mothers were given a test meal in a controlled laboratory setting. Mouthfuls of food per minute at this single meal not only predicted changes in BMI from 4 to 6 years but also changes in sum of skinfolds and total body fat. Of course you can always trick your 4-year old into eating slow by providing foods that take longer to eat and if your 4-year old prefers to play with her food and takes forever to finish, you can at least comfort yourself with the notion that she is probably not in danger of having to worry about excess weight any time soon.

But what about you? People who eat rapidly are at risk of being overweight. Research has shown that obese people eat fast and maintain the same rate of eating, whereas normal weight people slow down their rate of eating during the course of the meal. Slowing down allows the stretch receptors to signal to your brain that your stomach is full. Eating quickly means you pass the Full point and reach Stuffed before your brain has been alerted to the meal.

Another interesting piece of research by Yvonne Linne at Huddinge University Hospital shows that eating with a blindfold decreased the intake of food, without making subjects feel less full. Eating blindfolded, therefore, may force subjects to rely more on internal signals. Most of us have stopped using internal signals to guide our eating, and we are getting overweight as a result. With practice, we can start to identify when we are hungry (most of us never feel hunger) and when we are full.

So, focusing on your internal cues helps you reduce weight. To help you achieve this:

eat slowly (putting your hands in your lap between mouthfuls really slows you down)
do nothing else whilst eating (no telly, no radio, no reading)
use a small plate

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Eating slowly helps you control what you eat

If you eat quickly, you are at risk of becoming very overweight. If you eat until you are full, you are also at risk of becoming very overweight. And if you eat fast until you are full, you are at greater risk of becoming overweight.

This research was carried out by Japanese scientists Hiroyasu Iso and colleagues from Osaka University in a paper published in the British Medical Journal. They found links between BMI and the way people were eating. In Japan, where overweight is a new problem, typically people ate till they felt they were 80% full, so that probably helped keep their weight down. It is really only since the arrival of American style fast food that overweight has become an issue.

So, to avoid the risk of overweight or to control any further increase in your weight:

eat slowly
stop when your plate is 80% cleared and then push it away from you.

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Unwiring our urge to eat

We are hard-wired to eat, since if we didn't eat, we would die.

My cat is a stray and I found her when she was scavenging in my friend’s kitchen. She was skinny and scared. After coming to stay with me she became as fat as fat because food, all of a sudden, was freely available. These are the rules my cat was following, to deal with the serious risk of lack of food and starvation:

• Always eat when food is available
• Always eat as fast as possible
• Always eat as much as possible
• Always eat anything put in front of you

We are animals too, and are wired to protect ourselves from starvation, so we can end up following these rules too, even though food is easy, accessible and cheap. Do you? I know I do!

Hypnotherapy can help you by embedding suggestions in your mind, to help you overcome these hard-wired behaviours.

You can do-it-yourself of course. Here are some weight-control tips. By introducing some of the behaviours suggested below, one or two at a time, you will find that they become increasingly automatic.

1. Eat half the plate offered you, screw up your napkin and place it on top of the remaining food and push the plate away. If you are in a public place, it will be very hard for you to grab the plate back, remove the napkin and start eating again! It is using your sense of embarrassment in your own defence.

2. Before you eat anything, consult your hunger quotient. How hungry are you at the moment on a scale of 0-10? If it is less than 5, you don’t need to eat. There is always food available later. This just adds a little bit of delay to the decision to eat. You know that if you eat when you are already satisfied, then more food just makes you feel sick.

3. Eat slowly. I eat very slowly and in restaurants, my plate gets whizzed away when everyone else has finished. I feel a tinge of disappointment, but gratitude too. Research has shown that if you train yourself to eat slowly, and indeed, to decelerate your eating rate, you will eat less.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com