When I was a kid, my best friend and I would often\u00a0stop at a local fast food restaurant called the Red\u00a0Barn, for\u00a0a burger, soda and fries.\u00a0 She’d be finished with her entire meal before I’d eaten even half of my burger…one time, she nearly made me choke from laughing, as she went through an elaborate pantomime of me, eating sooo slooowly.\u00a0 I tried to eat faster at times, but it was hopeless – I just couldn’t seem to manage it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When we were teens, she and I were about the same size: a Junior Size 5.\u00a0 When she got married in her late 20’s, I was still wearing a 5\/6…while her wedding dress was\u00a0a Size 9.\u00a0 The last time we talked, she lamented that she’d “never see 180 lbs. again.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
I’m still pretty much the same size I was in high school…and still a slow poke at the table.<\/p>\n
Interestingly enough, my husband is also a fast eater: in the past, he’d be finishing seconds before I was even close to being done with my first (and usually only)\u00a0serving.\u00a0 And not unlike my friend, he was skinny as a young guy, but steadily gained weight with the years.<\/p>\n
Coincidence?\u00a0 I don’t think so.\u00a0 And\u00a0there are\u00a0a couple of Japanese studies\u00a0that agree with my observations: there’s a relationship between eating rate and weight…and overweight.<\/p>\n
The first study<\/a> looked at 1,695 18 year old female college students.\u00a0 After collecting the (self-reported) data on weight, height and eating behavior, the authors performed a\u00a0statistical analysis on the data.\u00a0 They discovered that\u00a0mean BMI was higher by 2.2 kg\/m2<\/sup>, 1.5 kg\/m2<\/sup>, 1.0 kg\/m2<\/sup> and 0.5 kg\/m2<\/sup>\u00a0for the “very fast,” “relatively fast,” “medium” and “relatively slow” groups, respectively,\u00a0relative\u00a0to the “very slow” group.\u00a0 The second study<\/a> looked at an even larger number\u00a0of men and women (4,742)\u00a0between the ages of 35 – 69.\u00a0\u00a0 The researchers not only looked at their current BMIs in relation to eating rates, but also their (self reported) BMIs at age 20.\u00a0 They found\u00a0correlations between eating rate and\u00a0current BMI\u00a0AND the change in BMI from age 20 to the present.<\/p>\n What is there about eating quickly that leads to greater weight gain?\u00a0 Fast eaters apparently consume more calories…the authors of the second study also noted a correlation between eating rate and caloric intake.\u00a0\u00a0So one possible\u00a0mechanism is that fast eaters are\u00a0“ahead”\u00a0of the signals the stomach sends to the brain to indicate fullness.\u00a0\u00a0The researchers also proposed a second mechanism, based on a different study that demonstrated rapid eaters have reduced insulin sensitivity.<\/p>\n In my experience,\u00a0another\u00a0factor may be in play: the actual foods being eaten.\u00a0 Simply put, some foods are a lot easier to eat quickly than others.\u00a0 It’s a snap, for example, to scarf down a bowl of pasta or a soft, freshly baked Cinnabon.\u00a0 It’s\u00a0a lot tougher\u00a0to inhale an apple or a plate of broccoli – that stuff takes a while to chew through, and\u00a0has fewer calories in the bargain.\u00a0\u00a0Needless to state, that’s precisely\u00a0how we “tricked” my husband into eating more slowly, as he embarked on the battle of the bulge.\u00a0 Rather than force him to eat more slowly, we simply added a large pile of crisp-tender vegetables to each meal.\u00a0 Seconds weren’t forbidden, but the veggies\u00a0had to be eaten first.\u00a0\u00a0Needless to state, he\u00a0could put away a serving of – say – lasagna in 2 minutes, but it took a lot longer to chew through the green stuff.\u00a0\u00a0Thus –\u00a0by the time he was finished, and had also downed a large glass of water –\u00a0he had zero appetite for seconds.<\/p>\n Today he’s 210 lbs.\u00a0 It’s been slow going at times, but the scale (and calipers) have been on a steady, downwards trajectory for five years now.<\/p>\n The moral of the story?\u00a0 It’s not just about what – and how much – you eat…it’s also about how fast you eat it.\u00a0 If you’re trying to drop some weight, it will pay off to slow things down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was a kid, my best friend and I would often\u00a0stop at a local fast food restaurant called the Red\u00a0Barn, for\u00a0a burger, soda and fries.\u00a0 She’d be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,24],"tags":[235,565,1863,1236,1757],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7511,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/7511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}