A Time for Eating

I hate to admit it, but.. for the majority of my adult life…I did not eat a healthy diet. I ate what I now affectionately refer to as crap: Carbs Refined, Artificial and Processed.  And while I am confessing, I might as well add that I did not really eat. I wolfed. I gulped. I shoveled.  I guess I hardly even chewed because according to some, I was the fastest eater both sides of the Mississippi. While I no longer eat fast food, I still eat food fast.

My name is Julie Gilbert and I inhale food.

I had good reason.  In medical school and residency, if I did not eat fast, my beeper would go off and I would not be able to eat at all. I had no time to cook; so, yes, I grabbed quick, convenient, processed food. On my cardiology rotation, I would eat two of those Little Debbie Nutty Buddy chocolate wafer bars with peanut butter. All 330calories, 20g of fat 33 g of carb and 4 g of protein vanished in seconds as I rushed down the hall of the hospital to my next patient’s room leaving a trail of crumbs behind.

During a dermatology rotation, I recall stealing away to McDonald’s drive through on my 20min lunch break and grabbing a large chocolate milk shake every day. All 22 oz of the gummy corn syrup flavored skimmed milk disappeared in the few panicked minutes it took to get back to the office.

White rice and pace picante sauce were staples on my medical student budget. And I foraged free food from noon “lunch and learn” lectures sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.  Needless to say, they did not deliver health food fare. I could usually scrounge remnants of soggy subway sandwiches with processed meat and plastic cheese, maybe a wilted lettuce leaf and half slice of bland hot house tomato if I was lucky.  

Non-nutritious food eaten in the worst way possible.  I probably did not even taste it.

I came by this honestly as many of us do. Time is our constant constraint. And so we learn to eat fast in school, as working moms, as busy dads, rushing out the door, driving down the road.  Or we “skip” breakfast altogether. I hear patients say they prepare a meal for their family, but they don’t sit down to eat the meal with their family. Patients admit they are so busy at work they work right through lunch. Oregon requires employers to give a lunch break, at least 30min, but many times we don’t take it and we end up scarfing our lunch in front of a computer.

When did we start believing that we do not have time for our body’s essential requirement of eating? Or that sacrificing meal time is ok.  Our culture is not like other countries who have a two-hour break in the middle of the day (These countries have lower BMI’s than ours…hmmm).

But gulping food does not give our brains the pleasure of enjoying the food. Consequently, we are not satisfied and then we get hungry or crave more food in an hour or two. Eating while rushed promotes indigestion because our sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system is in play and what we really need is the parasympathetic (rest and digest) system working in order to digest and absorb nutrients well.

So I am working on slowing down my eating. Telling myself the truth. I need time to eat. I have time to eat. I am not in residency anymore. The food is going to be there in five minutes. I am not going to starve. I won’t be paged away. My work will still be there. The world will not come to an end if I take the time necessary to eat a real meal. I am giving myself permission to take notice of the various colors and textures and smell and taste and savor every bite of food before I swallow.

Mindful eating instead of mindless eating.

And I don’t need to chew the bite of food 100 times like all dieters are trained to do.  I do need to chew thoroughly, yes, but what I am focusing on more is breathing.  Take a deep breath or two in between bites and just relax and enjoy. Allow my body to digest and absorb. Without the distraction of phones or TVs or computers. When you eat, just eat.

It takes twenty minutes for satiety hormones to be released from the small intestine to tell the brain the body had food. If I rush through my meal, I most likely will overeat and be fuller than I am comfortable feeling.

For the last few meals I have eaten, I set my timer in front of me to make sure I spend at least ten minutes eating. I timed myself without the breathing and I can scarf a meal down in three minutes flat. With the breathing, I have stretched it to ten. My goal for dinner is twenty minutes and maybe even thirty on the weekend.

Taking longer to eat on the weekend may decrease my tendency to roam about the kitchen all day in search of what my brain did not get at the meal: enjoyment, satisfaction, pleasure.

These are the different principles we talk about and put into practice at Oregon Weight and Wellness. Because it is not just about what you eat. It is about how you eat.

So join me, won’t you? And slow down to weigh different.