Remember to chew your food!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

One of the biggest changes that I will have to make on this journey toward weight loss surgery is not only the food that I eat, but how I eat my food. One of the major things that you have to do once you have weight loss surgery, is to chew your food until it is the consistency of baby food (about 20-35 times per mouthful), and you have to spread out the time that you take to eat your food to 25-30 minutes minimum. This allows your stomach to better digest the food you take in.

Before I was told this, I had never really stopped to think about just how I was eating my food. Once you actually focus on how you eat your food, it's amazing to realize that most of us consume our entire meal in between  7 and 15 minutes, and for the most part the food that we swallow is hastily chewed.

I like to think of this as "shovel syndrome," where you literally shovel food into your mouth without thinking about how your body will digest it. A lot of it has to do with just how distracted we are when we eat. If you are anything like me, your watch TV while you eat. This can distract us from focusing on what we are eating in front of us, and ultimately harm us. If we don't focus on what or how fast we eat, we can overeat, which is never a good thing.

One of the things that my nutritionist suggested to help pay attention to how we eat our food, is to turn off the TV and focus solely on what you eat. Now, let's be blunt here. That's boring. I couldn't sit and eat without some kind of distraction for a minimum of 30 minutes. So, the more realistic thing that she suggests, is to put down your utensils between mouthfuls and not to pick them up again until you have swallowed. She also suggested taking smaller bites of food, and using toddler utensils. I really like using toddler utensils, because it forces me to slow down and take smaller bites, just because I can't physically fit as much food on the utensil.

It's just like our mothers told us all these years. Slow down and chew your food!

Jenelle