September 27, 2022 / by Suzanne Ingleton / Weight Loss
"There is more to life than increasing its speed." - Ghandi
Have you ever noticed how fast you eat? And could you consider that the pace of your life often matches how fast you eat?
For many of us, fast eating is a learned behaviour and a conditioned response to managing our busy lives. Take people in the nursing industry. Every nurse that I have ever spoken to has said there is never enough time to eat due to their reactive environments, so they learn to eat fast. Office workers or business owners will say that they most often eat at their desk trying to get through their workload. Busy Mums & caregivers may only have time for a few bites here and there and most often on the go or rushing to get to the next task….
Phew! Does this sound exhausting to you just reading about it??
If you’re a fast eater who hoovers your meals in the blink of an eye, then it's time to change. One of the secrets to losing weight is the slower you eat, the faster you burn calories and metabolize your food!
Let me explain….
Can you recall a time when you were eating in a stressed or anxious state? Most people say they will experience heart burn, cramping, gas, digestive pain, belching or a feeling of food being stuck in your gut.
This is because the automatic survival response of the body has kicked in and gone into fight – or flight mode.
This is our brilliant safety mechanism that is part of our central nervous system designed to keep us alive in times of danger. It is an automatic response to anything that the body perceives as danger.
This is what happens when we are in a stressed state – our blood pressure rises, hormones cortisol, insulin and adrenalin are pumped into the bloodstream, blood flow is redirected away from the digestive tract to the head, arms and legs for quick thinking and fleeing.
Your digestive system will slow down and shut down because the last thing it wants to do is digest a meal when your being chased by a saber tooth tiger! And yes, I know they don’t exist anymore, but our primal survival system actually doesn’t know this – its just responding to our thoughts …..
Another interesting fact about the hormones Cortisol and insulin, is that it also sends a message to the body to store fat, hold onto weight and not build muscle!!
All of which we DON’T want to do when the goal is to lose weight!
So even though you are just rushing to finish your meal to get onto the next task, your body perceives its in danger and goes into automatic fight or flight and releases cortisol! Its part of our genetic programming to protect and preserve the body at all cost.
Or to put it another way – when the brain thinks we are stressed – it will turn off our digestion which slows down our metabolism & we won’t burn our fat stores. When the brain thinks we are relaxed, it will turn up our digestive power and ramp up our metabolism, which means we will have more energy and burn more calories!
So how do we bring ourselves back into a state of slow……….
That’s easy! All we need to do is breathe. This is our only onboard inbuilt antidote to stress. It is our breath that will bring our body into a relaxed state in a matter of moments, which will reduce cortisol and insulin in the bloodstream. There is another interesting fact about breathing.
When we breathe deeply and bring more oxygen into the bloodstream, we actually burn more calories! So, not only does breathing help to reduce the way our body hangs onto weight, it will also tell the body to burn more calories and reduce fat!
Check out my video on how to slow down when you are eating so you can lose weight faster!
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If you'd like to find out more about how I can help to transform the way you eat, think and live, book in your FREE 30 min chat and let's get you started on being the happiest, healthiest version of YOU!
I'm a fully qualified Eating Psychology Coach, Hypnotherapist, Time Line Therapist©, NLP Master Practitioner and a writer who has been featured in publications like Thrive Global and the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.
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