Stuffing your face

Have you ever sat watching TV whilst mindlessly piling food into your face? If the answer is yes, and in my case, frequently, read on.

No matter how well you think you can multitask, the human brain can only truly focus on a single task at any one time. So in reality whilst we are concentrating on the TV, we are not paying attention to our food or what our body is telling us about that food.

It can take up to 20 minutes for our stomach to report back to us that we have eaten enough, whilst eating on autopilot we tend to eat more quickly. This allows us to eat more before our stomach reports in that we are full. This probably worked well for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but our bodies have not evolved to live in times of permanent plenty. When food was scarce we needed to fill up with as much as we could and as fast as we could to out consume the competition. Nowadays we have all the food that we need on hand. We need to evolve our eating habits.

There are many different ways we can slow down our food consumption and learn to listen to our bodies own regulation systems.

Don't eat whilst doing anything else. Sit at a table, away from the TV, your computer or any other distraction. Focus on your food, enjoy the taste and texture of your meal. It can help if you make a little extra effort when dishing up your food. Rather than just dumping it on a plate, take some time to present it as if you were going to serve the dish to friends at a dinner party. Top chefs understand that presentation is just as important as taste, you will enjoy your food more if it looks nice too.

Put your knife and fork down between bites. This might sound a bit childish but it works by letting you concentrate on the food in your mouth, rather than concentrating on loading up your next mouthful. It slows down your eating and lets your stomach tell your brain it's full before you have a chance to over eat.

Make time for your meal. In today's busy world it seems like a lot of us never get a chance to stop, this is particularly true at meal times. I frequently eat at my desk whilst working through lunch.
I try now to get out of the office, sit outside and enjoy my food. This has two benefits, firstly I can really enjoy my food, I can focus on the flavour of my food. Secondly the time away from my desk allows me to have a mental break and return, refreshed, nourished and relaxed.

Variety is the spice of life. When dieting or eating on any health regime, it is very easy to get stuck in a rut of easy to prepare meals. Eating the same foods every day will soon get us switching off our minds during dinner. Whip out the recipe books or fire up the computer, there are thousands of low fat, healthy menu ideas out there. Even your favorites can usually be made without the fat and sugar the recipe normally asks for. You just need to fire up your imagination.

So the message is simple, make time for your meal, focus on what you eat and make sure you choose interesting food.