10.24.2011

Learning to slow down


Recently I had dinner with my 22 month-old godson, Callum. Leftover spaghetti was on the menu and as he ate I couldn’t help but notice how much he savoured every fist-full of pasta. While there was spaghetti everywhere, there wasn’t a trace of guilt or shame to be found. And once Callum had enough, he pushed the bowl away and smacked his lips – he was done. For him, the party was over.
Watching Callum reminded me that all of us are born with that same innate wisdom about food and our bodies. As we grow older, though, some of us retain it more than others. Living in a health-conscious and appearance-obsessed society takes its toll: we can lose touch with our joie de vivre and our body’s internal cues. 
Dr. Brian Wansink, a food psychologist at Cornell University , would agree. Wansink , who is also the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Thinkbelieves we’re particularly lousy at listening to our fullness cues. Many of us don’t stop eating unless we’re physically uncomfortable.
Wansink proposes that our fullness cues are influenced by how much we chew, taste, shallow, think about food, and how long we spend eating. 
We are a nation of fast eaters. One study described by Wansink revealed that if we’re eating lunch alone, we spend only 11 minutes eating in a fast food outlet, 13 minutes in a workplace cafeteria, and 28 minutes in a moderately priced restaurant. This is bad news considering it takes 20 minutes for our stomachs and brains to realize we’ve had enough.
According to Wansink, most of us decide how much we’re going to eat before we even begin. We eyeball how much food we think we want, dish it out, and then eat until our plate is empty. Instead of relying on our body signals, the empty plate becomes our cue to stop.
After conducting countless studies, Wansink strongly believes our bodies have only three main internal cue settings: “I’m Starving”; “I’m Full but I Can Eat More”; and “I’m Stuffed”. 
Within the “I’m Starving” mode, there is a bottom level to our internal cues where, past a certain number of hours, we don’t experience hunger pains any differently. Whether we haven’t eaten for 8 hours or for 18 hours, we feel equally hungry. (Although I believe we would most likely experience other physical symptoms such as low energy and poor concentration as time went on without food). The “I’m Stuffed” setting contains our internal cue ceiling, beyond which we can’t continue to eat without experiencing physical pain. 
Between these two extremes lies the grey zone, the “ I’m Full but I Can Eat More” category, which Wansink feels requires most of our attention. This is where we can always find room for more food even though we’re close to our fullness ceiling. How many times have we found space for dessert after a filling main course?  
One of the most practical ways we can respond to Wansink’s findings is simply slowing down. The truth is the faster we eat, the more we eat. We need to give our bodies a chance to acknowledge its satiety. As much as possible we should set aside at least 20 minutes to eat a meal and 10 minutes for a snack. And just like Callum, we should try to savour every fist-full of food.

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