Cook at home and slow down, what’s the rush anyway? Take note of your eating habits and beware of how quickly you’re preparing and making your food. The process from preparation to consumption should be an enjoyable one. Yes, it’s more convenient to stop and grab a quick bite. However, the easiest way to boost your health is to start preparing more home-cooked meals. Better yet, then sit down and slowly eat your meal.
Cook At Home And Enjoy Every Bite
When you slow down your eating habits or cook at home you’ll be amazed at the health benefits that come from it. We’re talking about improved digestion, better hydration, easier weight loss or maintenance, and greater satisfaction with your meals. Most people eat way too quickly and as a result, they consume too many calories before even realizing that they’re full. It takes about 20 minutes from the time you start eating for your brain to send out signals of fullness. So slow down and take your time – besides cooking is fun!
Leisure Eating
With that in mind, it makes sense to start adding some leisurely eating and cooking to your life. When you slow down this process you give your body ample time to trigger the signal from your brain that you are full. Therefore, feeling full results in your eating less. As soon as you rush your meals you jeopardize the digestion process, increase chances of weight gain, and lower satisfaction. So it’s pretty clear what needs to be done… Slow down a little, cook, and enjoy the beauties of life to improve your well-being. Why rush?
Rushing your meals during preparation and consumption is stressful. You’ll naturally feel rushed and upset that you couldn’t enjoy the meal more. Your digestion will suffer. If every meal feels like it’s over before it starts, you’re going to crave more. Or you overeat before your satiety levels have kicked in, leaving you feeling uncomfortably full. Likewise, if you cook every meal in a microwave. Rather, take the time to at least heat it up in the oven.
Cook At Home, It’s Fun And Healthier
Once you get into it, you’ll quickly understand why it is very enjoyable to cook. Not only does it feel rewarding after eating a meal you have successfully prepared for yourself, but it allows you to get creative. You’ll also feel satisfied after eating a home-cooked meal. Although it seems daunting trying to find the time to cook – if you don’t, it will have a massive impact on both your mood and health.
Besides, when you eat out every day you have no control over what’s in it or not. Most of it will contain a lot of processed food that’s high in chemical additives, hormones, sugar, salt, unhealthy fats, and calories. This can all affect your brain and outlook. So much so that you might end up feeling tired, bloated, and irritable. In addition, you’re increasing your risk of developing depression, stress, anxiety, and other mental health concerns. Not to mention how it might affect your weight.
It’s worth the effort to slow down and spend some time cooking for you and your family. Eat more fresh and wholesome meals. You will look and feel healthier, improve your sleep, boost energy, reduce stress, stabilize your weight and mood. When you’re in control of what goes into your body, you know how it will affect you.
Cook Slowly To Avoid Fast Calories
When you slow down to cook your own meals, you’ll want to sit down and enjoy your meals. This is because you will have a greater appreciation for what’s in front of you. Recent research explains that overweight men and women take in fewer calories when they slow down their normal eating pace.
In the University of Rhode Island study, researchers served lunch on two different occasions to 30 normal-weight women. The meal in both cases consisted of an enormous plate of pasta with a tomato vegetable sauce and some Parmesan cheese, along with a glass of water.
During each visit, researchers instructed women to eat to the point of comfortable fullness. However, during one visit, they also told them to eat as quickly as possible. While on another visit, participants were asked to slow down their eating and put their utensils down between bites.
Guess what? When the researchers compared the difference in food consumption between the quickly eaten lunch and the slowly eaten lunch, here is what they found:
- When eating quickly, women consumed 646 calories in 9 minutes.
- When eating slowly, the women consumed 579 calories in 29 minutes.
Therefore, slowing down on your consumption helps you to unconsciously eat more mindfully.
Slow Eating Means Fewer Calories
These results are very interesting for anybody who is looking for ways to improve their eating habits. 67 fewer calories in 20 minutes. That is quite a big difference. If you had to slow down and cook all three meals per day you would see how quickly those extra calories start adding up.
This is another interesting twist: When the women ate their lunch quickly, they reported more hunger an hour later than they did after they ate slowly. This means when you slow down eating and cook at home, you automatically feel more satiated.
So not only does eating quickly lead to greater food consumption, it satisfies you less! This means that you will end up eating less, but will feel more satisfied. Another recent Japanese study involving 1,700 young women found that eating slowly increases the feeling of fullness sooner. Therefore, you’ll eat fewer calories at mealtime.
Simplify Meals And Cook At Home
A slow diet doesn’t mean you need to spend hours in the kitchen. It just means making more of an effort to cook your own meals.
In fact, the healthiest kind of diet is one that includes food that is as close as possible to the way nature made it. This means no processed food, and doing your best to replace artificially produced food with real food as often as possible.
Better yet, slow down and eat plenty of vegetables and healthy sources of protein. This doesn’t mean you have to spend hours in the kitchen combining hundreds of different ingredients or slaves at fancy recipes. More often than not, the simplest meals usually taste the best. You also don’t have to be perfect and make every meal at home, either. Even if you only manage to cook at home a few nights per week, it will help you experience major health benefits.
Cook More Family Dinners
The best part about eating slow and the meals you cook at home is socializing. No matter what, sitting down at the table and engaging in some good conversation is always the best kind of medicine. You’ll feel more cheerful, and it’s a great way to bond with those around you.
You also don’t need to be a pro chef either. Whatever your abilities or experience as a cook, you can learn to prepare quick and healthy meals that can have real benefits for your mental and physical health.
Bottom Line
It’s better to take your time, cook at home and enjoy every meal you eat. That way you’re guaranteed to look and feel much healthier. If you can, do your best to avoid rushing meals despite your busy schedule. And if you are pressed for time, do your best to at least sit down to eat it.
Eating too quickly can lead to weight gain and may even make you enjoy your meals less because you’re so rushed.
But if you slow down you’ll increase fullness, which can aid in weight loss. There are other health benefits when you slow down cooking, like improved digestion and more constant moods.
Going forward, try to decrease your screen time, slow down, cook, chew more, and focus on high-fiber foods. If you do this you will be well on your way to slower eating.
Want to know more?
It’s that time of the year again. Now while we’re fond of holiday staples such as pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes, we all know that our holiday meal can’t be complete without a Thanksgiving turkey. Here are the 5 Benefits Of This Holiday Meal.
References
- URI Researcher Provides Further Evidence that Slow Eating Reduces Food Intake. From URI Today: https://today.uri.edu/news/uri-researcher-provides-further-evidence-that-slow-eating-reduces-food-intake/
- Eating Too Quickly. WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity/features/slow-down-you-eat-too-fast#1
- All About Slow Eating. Precision Nutrition. https://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-slow-eating
- Eating Too Quickly and How If It Makes You Gain Weight. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/eating-fast-causes-weight-gain
- Benefits of Eating Fiber. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/22-high-fiber-foods
