When many of us think back to our childhoods, we can still hear the voices of our parents reminding us to chew our food properly. That advice may actually have been better than they realized, at the time, as it is now believed that better chewing can help you to gain better nutrition as well as to lose weight.
The actual number of times that food needs to be chewed in order to help to lose weight is not specifically known. While some people say it should be fifteen times per mouthful, others say twenty. And yet other people will also say that it depends on the food being eaten and how big the mouthful happens to be.
When it all comes down to it, being able to lose weight isn’t the result of chewing for a certain number of times. It is in making sure that food has been effectively broken down before it has been swallowed, and in taking the amount of time needed in order to accomplish that goal.
The first half of that is very important. Eating foods properly is vital to overall nutrition which promotes a healthy body and, therefore, makes losing weight easier. Chewing is the first part of the digestion process. If that’s not done effectively, the rest of the food’s digestion will not be as efficient. In fact, improperly chewed food can often make its way right through the digestive system – and out as waste – whole. Taking the time to chew up your food crushes it down into much smaller pieces that are easier for the digestive juices to break down even further so that the maximum amount of nutrients can be extracted.
That said, taking the time to chew your food also does just that: it takes time. The more slowly you eat, the less you’ll have consumed by the time your stomach starts to send a signal to your brain to say that it’s full. By giving your body the time to properly communicate with itself, you’ll be better equipped to avoid overeating without having to go hungry while you’re doing it. It can take the body anywhere from ten to twenty minutes to actually register that it has had enough to eat. If you inhale your food in ten minutes, you may feel much hungrier than you would by eating the same amount of food over another five minutes, simply because you haven’t had enough time to feel full, yet.