You already know that “you are what you eat” but “you are how you eat” is just as important if you want to be both healthy and slim and succeed at weight loss. If you’ve already made the effort to clean up your diet and eat healthy foods, then it’s time to take the next step and think about how you eat as well.

Eat regularly

Regular mealtimes really should be a permanent feature in your life. Anyone who has seen a two year old that hasn’t had its dinner will appreciate that being hungry has a negative effect on your mood. The unhealthy effects of skipping meals:

• High cholesterol: research shows that eating irregularly can increase cholesterol levels
• Insulin resistance: which encourages increased body fat, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
• Overeating and slower metabolism: we tend to eat more and have a slower metabolism when we eat irregularly. Over a period of time this overeating and under burning could make a significant contribution to weight gain.

Chew well

Your mouth is the first part of your digestive system so chewing well breaks the food down into small pieces and mixes it with enzyme rich saliva, kick starting the breakdown of food long before it reaches your stomach. The benefits of chewing well for weight loss:

• Eat less: chewing makes us slow down which means we are less likely to eat more than we need.
• Better digestion: chewing properly also means that food is already partly digested by the time it reaches the stomach, helping prevent bloating and discomfort.
• Better taste: many processed foods taste actually taste pretty awful when you chew them well

Focus on your food

Whether it’s watching television, working on a computer or talking to friends, we eat far more, and far faster, when we are distracted while we eat. You don’t have to sit by yourself in silence but you should be aware of how being distracted effects your eating pattern and take it into account.

Eat smaller portions for faster weight loss

It’s possible for you to decrease your portion size by as much as 25% without it having any effect on your appetite. Or another way of looking at it is that you might be regularly eating 25% more than you need! How to eat less:

• Eat just enough to take the edge off your hunger and then stop. You shouldn’t feel full, just no longer hungry
• Cook less then you think you need. Have a snack later if you’re genuinely hungry
• Don’t finish everything on your plate. Practice leaving food behind.

Don’t eat when you’re stressed

When you’re stressed, your body’s resources are utilised in preparing your body to be able to run away or stay and fight for your life, not digest your last meal. Effect of eating when you’re stressed:

• Digestion will be slower and less efficient
• You are more likely to get bloating, indigestion and heartburn
• Chronic conditions such as food intolerances and irritable bowel syndrome could develop