Chewing As a Weight Loss Strategy 

Do you woof your food down?  If you want to be lean and fit for life you might want to consider the relationship between chewing and weight control or weight loss. While most weight management or dietary programs focus on what to eat, little if any attention is given to HOW TO EAT.  

What you will see in this article is a practical strategy you can implement right now to lose weight and be lean and fit for life. Simply by chewing your food longer, until it is basically a liquid in your mouth, you do three things that help your weight loss, health and longevity. The first is that you will eat less. The second is that you will digest and assimilate nutrients more effectively; the third is that you will mitigate toxins and allergies from food, which are important to longevity and weight loss.

Chewing and Food Intake:
Recent studies from Oita Medical School in Japan show a direct relationship between chewing speed and the release of histamine from the brain. Chewing slower and longer causes the brain to release histamine,  resulting in decreased food intake.  

The speed at which you chew sends signals to your brain that control how much you eat.  (How much you want to eat)

Further, hormones such as leptin, ghrelin and cholestokinnen that are involved in the sensation of fullness, do not reach peak expression until 20 to 40 minutes after food is ingested.  Chewing longer allows these hormones to work for you. You get the same sense of fullness on less food because you are giving these hormones time to work.  Many speed eaters literally chew and swallow faster than their bodies natural satiety signaling can keep up with. If you want to lose weight but you woof your food down, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

There is a direct relationship between chewing and weight loss. Simply put, the more you chew, and the more slowly you chew, the less you eat. The less you eat at any given meal, the more weight loss.  Of course if you pile up your plate and eat slowly, it is going to take you forever to finish the meal.  So what is the solution, start out by putting about 40% less on your plate.  Watch the scale for a few weeks.  If you are gradually losing, (like ounces a day) leave it at the 40%.  If you are not cut the food in half as this confirms that you are getting all you need out of 40% of what you have been taking in.

Chewing and Digestion and Absorption.
Eating the right foods gets you nowhere if you don’t absorb them. Worse, eating the right foods takes you backwards if they putrefy into toxins.

Eating the right food is important, but eating the right food and properly digesting it is essential for life long weight loss.

Digestion begins in the mouth.  Specifically, saliva contains a fat metabolizing enzyme called lingual lipase. Before any fat you ingest even hits your stomach, it begins breaking down in your mouth via the action of lingual lipase.

As you can guess, the key issue here is how long you chew your food.  This is important for 2 reasons. The first reason is that the more you chew, the more surface area of the food in your mouth comes in contact with lingual lipase.

Blueeyedcurse note:   We are great believers in the synergy of chewing different foods together.  Enzymic action is short lived,  in some cases a matter of seconds.  The old cider maker that stands over the roller where the apples are going to the crusher before pressing, tosses in special apples into the mix just before crushing.  We knew a Cider Master by the name of Lou Grancelli.  He used to say  "It is in the blend and I am the master blender"  He will tell you that squeezing different apples and pouring them into a tank and then stirring the mix does not in anyway compare to the results of the instant synergy gained from his process.  We believe the same applies to the chewing process.  So my suggestion when you eat is go out of your way to mix foods in a couple of forkfuls.  We use nuts in most of our meals.  Nuts are a great food but high in calories.  We try to get at least a piece of a nut in each mouthful before we start the chewing action.  Check out our Nuts feature

http://www.blueeyedcurse.com/nuts%20to%20you.htm

The second  reason is due to allergies. The more undigested food you have in your stomach the more prone you are to getting food allergies.  Food allergies hamper your weight loss and longevity. Your mouth has a similar action for carbohydrates. Your saliva contains an enzyme called salivary amylase. Salivary amylase works to break down carbs into simpler sugars.

The most basic rule of thumb if you want to see the greatest absorption of the good foods you are eating to lose weight is more chews equals better digestion and absorption. The reason this matters is simply that undigested and unabsorbed food sitting in your stomach and small intestine tends to putrefy and cause allergic and inflammatory reactions. Take protein for example. Proteins tend to be difficult for the body to break down. There are many examples of proteins that are semi soft such as sushi, eggs, and yogurt, really tender fish, which often are mostly swallowed without chewing. What happens is these proteins have major portions of their mass that sit in your stomach and literally rot and putrefy.   Many people are allergic to eggs primarily because they do not adequately chew them.  Many including myself would have considered chewing food such as yogurt for instance ridiculous.  We eat yogurt twice a day, but we add fruits and berries to it.  We now chew this mix up thoroughly and in the process chew or at least liquefy the yogurt in it.  Remember the section above on lingual lipase and it is needed to break down the fat in the mouth if you give it a chance that is?  Good fat is essential in carrying nutrition throughout the body.  Even some saturated fat is needed, but my guess is the chewing process of any fat will have a huge bearing on how much benefits are derived from it.  Last is the negative aspects of not digesting fat properly.  You talk about putrefication, fat and add a little sugar to it in a meal and you are really talking a boiler maker.   All fats I believe have gotten a bad rap, simply because the body was not given the opportunity to digest them properly.  So in the case of fats poor chewing not only deprives the body of the benefits, the fat not processed raises holy hell in your digestive network.

Many people who have a difficult time with weight loss have a difficult time with digestion and food allergies. Lack of adequate chewing is a principle reason why.

If you want the greatest weight loss in the short term, and to lose weight and keep it off for a lifetime, you not only have to eat the right foods, but you have to absorb them correctly.  The single most important thing you can do is to chew your food until it is basically a liquid in your mouth. By doing this you will eat less, absorb more and keep your physiology young longer by virtue of creating fewer toxins from digestion.

End of Lookcut article.  Note: We added the chewing fellow.

 

There are two last measures that you can take regarding the weight loss issue and that is balancing your food at every meal and snack.  In fact on the right is an image of my afternoon snack that I will be chewing and chewing and chewing.  If you take a close look you will see the apple slices and in the front you will also see a big ole brazil nut and to the right of that a piece of chicken.  Now how close this is to the 40% Carbohydrate, 30% Protein and 30% Fats I don't really know.  I do know one thing and that is I practiced this 40-30-30 regimen for a year and 20 lbs came off of me like butter.  You will read in the 40-30-30 feature  (Link below)  when you practice this balance at every meal and snack, you stimulate the hormone glucagon, the fat burning hormone and fat burning it does.  The apple of course is the good carb, the chicken with a little fat on it is the protein and the nut is a little good fat and it is critical.

We have written an extensive feature on this program.  It is called the 40-30-30 program.  The prominent zone diet uses these same principles and we would invite you to follow up on this by going to our ......

http://www.blueeyedcurse.com/40-30-30%20page.htm  feature.

 

Last but not least is calories.  If you start out by chewing your food to the point of liquification, you should be able to cut your calories a good 1/3, by simply reducing the volume of food you eat.  Stay on this regimen for a period of time and keep an eye on the scale.  I did every day for a couple of years.  See how your energy level is and how you feel.  If you feel good with the same energy level or more, you are gradually losing weight not necessarily every day stay with it.

Amusingly I personally have found that cutting my volume down on the plate has actually given me a visual reminder to chew.  I look down after a  few forkfuls and say  "Hey there isn't much left all of a sudden, I have plenty of time to do some chewing baby".  In fact I believe when you face a mountain of food on your plate that you don't really need you have a tendency to think "Woofing",  like "Hey I better get started as fast as I can or I will be here all day putting this stuff away". 

My good wife keeps an eye on my eating practice.  She notes that I take 2 or 3 forkfuls at a time.  I told her that I don't swallow the first forkful, I just accumulate enough of the food in my mouth so that I can enjoy the synergy of the different foods and expedite the process.  I don't mind chewing to liquification, but I can do 2 or 3 forkfuls in one operation.  I guess it all boils down to how big a mouth you have.  Now the guy above is not me and what he is about to inject in his mouth does not represent one of my forkfuls.

This is an extra experience we had one day at  a cafeteria and you talk about "woofing".  We were told this cafeteria was one of the best in town.  They advertized  "You will always find a table at Morrison's"  So being in business I was curious how they could make such a claim.  So the family and I approached the parking lot and looked over at the cafeteria and witnessed 2 long lines stretched out into the parking lot.  I said to myself now how in the world can these people advertize "You will always find a table at Morrison's"

So we got on line way out in the parking lot and worked our selves at a pretty good pace inside the place and started to pick our food out.  Now when we got to the register as soon as we started to be checked out, a waiter grabbed our trays and virtually ran to an  open table.  In fact we couldn't even track where he went until we collared him and he frantically directed us to the table.  Now during the course of our "woofing session" and woofing was just what it was, waiters and diners were scurrying around again at this insane pace.  So if you are subjected to a frantic insane environment, you naturally join in and to be expected we were done "woofing" our meal in a few minutes, because as soon as we put the last forkful in our mouth a waiter literally grabbed the trays from our table and gave us a polite  "Please stop again" Hence "You will always find a table at Morrison's"

This information is intended to heighten awareness of potential health care alternatives and should not be considered as medical advice. See your qualified health-care professional for medical attention, advice, diagnosis, and treatments.

 

Back To Main Menu