194. Are You Eating Too Fast? Here's What It's Doing to Your Fullness

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We spend so much time talking about what to eat… protein, fiber, portions, healthy choices… that we can completely overlook how we’re eating.

You can have a beautifully balanced meal in front of you, but if you’re eating it in seven minutes while answering emails, scrolling your phone, or standing at the kitchen counter, you may barely register the experience before it’s over.

That matters more than people realize.

Slowing down while you eat can give your digestive system more time to do its job, help you notice fullness as it develops, and make the food you’re already eating feel more satisfying. 

It’s also one of those rare nutrition habits that doesn’t require buying anything, tracking anything, or following a complicated set of rules.

It simply asks you to be a little more present at the table.

Digestion starts before food ever reaches your stomach

A lot of us think of the mouth as the place where food passes through on its way to the “real” digestion happening later.

But digestion has already started.

Chewing breaks food into smaller pieces, increasing the surface area available for digestive enzymes to work on. As food mixes with saliva, an enzyme called salivary amylase begins breaking down starches before the food even reaches your stomach.

That doesn’t mean you need to sit there counting 30 chews per bite. For most people, turning eating into another rigid rule is not particularly helpful.

The more useful question is whether you’re giving yourself enough time to chew properly in the first place.

If you regularly inhale lunch between meetings or take huge bites because you’re starving and rushing, simply slowing the pace can make the whole eating experience feel different.

Fullness is not an on-off switch

One of the biggest reasons to slow down is that fullness takes time to develop.

As you eat, your stomach begins to stretch, nutrients move into the intestine, and different signals start communicating with the brain. Those include signals through the vagus nerve as well as appetite-regulating hormones such as GLP-1, PYY, and CCK.

That process builds throughout the meal.

If you eat very quickly, you can get through a surprisingly large amount of food while those signals are still catching up. By the time you notice that you’re full, you may already have crossed into that uncomfortable territory where you think, Oh wow, I definitely ate more than I needed.

Eating more slowly gives you more opportunities to notice the progression:

• I’m still hungry.
• This tastes really good.
• I’m starting to feel satisfied.
• I could keep eating, but I don’t really need much more.
• Okay, I’m comfortably full.

Those are subtle shifts, and they are much easier to notice when you give them a little room.

You may enjoy your food more when you stop rushing it

There’s another piece of this that has nothing to do with calories or portion sizes: food is supposed to be enjoyable.

When you slow down enough to actually notice the meal, you start picking up on things that disappear when you’re eating on autopilot: the temperature, the texture, the contrast between salty and sweet, the crunch of something fresh, the sharpness of something pickled, or the creaminess of a sauce.

That can make even a very ordinary meal feel more satisfying.

And interestingly, later bites of a food often don’t feel quite as intense as the first few. When you’re paying attention, you may notice that the first bite is incredible, the second is great, and by the sixth or seventh you’re mostly continuing because the food is there.

That awareness can be surprisingly useful.

Distractions make it harder to notice what your body is telling you

No, you do not need to eat every meal in silence while staring thoughtfully at a carrot.

But if you are constantly eating while watching something, checking messages, working, driving, or scrolling, it can be difficult to tell what the meal actually feels like.

If slowing down is new for you, try reducing distractions for part of the meal rather than aiming for perfection. Even a few minutes of attention can help you notice your hunger, your pace, and how satisfying the food actually is.

You might experiment with:

• putting your phone out of reach while you eat
• taking a few bites before turning on a show
• sitting down instead of eating while standing in the kitchen
• pausing halfway through the meal to check in with how you feel
• putting your fork down occasionally instead of immediately loading the next bite

None of these need to become rules. They are simply ways to create enough space for your brain and body to stay involved in the meal.

A simple way to practice eating more slowly

If you tend to eat quickly, trying to suddenly become an incredibly mindful eater overnight will probably feel unnatural.

Instead, choose one meal a day and experiment.

Before you start, take a moment to notice how hungry you are. Then eat normally, but pay attention to your pace. Taste the food. Notice the texture. Put your fork down once or twice. Halfway through, check in with yourself and ask whether your hunger has changed.

Rather than aiming for a perfect stopping point, pay attention to how hunger gradually gives way to feeling satisfied.

That is a skill, and like most skills, it gets easier when you practice it.

This can be especially helpful around holidays and social meals

Slowing down becomes particularly useful during times of year when food is everywhere.

Holiday meals, parties, restaurant dinners, buffets, office treats, family gatherings… these environments can make it very easy to eat quickly without even realizing it.

You may be talking, standing, grazing, going back for seconds, or trying foods you do not usually have around.

Instead of approaching those situations with anxiety, slowing down gives you something practical to focus on.

Enjoy the foods you genuinely want. Notice how they taste. Give yourself time to register them. If it helps, start with foods that provide some protein and fiber, then enjoy the other things you want alongside them.

A slower pace can make the whole experience feel more intentional, without turning the meal into a negotiation with yourself.

You do not need another food rule

There are plenty of nutrition strategies that require planning, measuring, tracking, shopping, prepping, or remembering a dozen different things.

This is much simpler.

The next time you sit down to eat, give the meal a little more time than usual. 

Give yourself a little more time with your meals. Slow the pace down enough to actually enjoy the food, notice how your hunger is changing, and give your body a chance to catch up.

You don’t need to do it perfectly or turn every meal into a mindfulness exercise. Even a small change in pace can help you feel more present, more satisfied, and a little less likely to look down at an empty plate and wonder where the meal went.

Listen to the complete episode for more on why slowing down matters, what’s happening with digestion and fullness as you eat, and a few simple ways to make meals feel more satisfying.

Ready to start your next chapter? Join The Next Chapter, my new small-group January program to help you set a goal and actually make it happen. Spots are limited and registration closes October 30. Click here to save your spot.

TRANSCRIPT:

Disclaimer: The transcript below is provided for your convenience and may contain typos, errors, or grammatical inconsistencies, as it has not been professionally edited or proofread. Please enjoy it as-is and read at your own discretion.

Please note: The content shared in this podcast and blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized medical guidance.  

 Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you all doing? Friends, I have to confess, I know I said I would start to have video with the podcast. I, I just can't do it all the time. I speak so differently when I'm here flailing my arms around. I feel like I'm talking right to you. Something changes sometimes when there's a screen recording you. It just feels different. So, here I am talking into my little mic, feeling like I'm speaking to you, and there won't always be a video. I... It was, it was a great thought, but I'm pivoting 'cause I don't like it. So, we're at this time of year when, at the time when I'm recording this, it's toward the end of September. My latest 3030 round has started and it is just such a nice group, and it always reminds me the power of community, how incredible it is to hear what other people are trying, to hear their questions, to hear their thought process. Everyone that finds me in my community, they are just absolutely incredible people. So if you're listening and you're part of that, I'm incredibly grateful for you, and also for everyone else listening. I have been thinking about, I think I've spoken about it, what's gonna come for next year. And I had run the 3030 program several times over the past few years, and I still love that program. I love the format. I love what we go over weekly. But I really wanna try a little bit of something different. I want much more of an experiential program in the sense of I want people to set a goal in January for that half year, so it's gonna be a five-month program. And I want to guide people through how can we actually make this happen. So in January, can we do a bunch of decluttering? Because you can't create new things when there's a bunch of old stuff clogging things up, how can we just really declutter things? How can we start to work on these habits but really understand them? I wanna do the James Clear, the Atomic Habits, that workbook. I wanna do that together. I wanna do a workshop where when I went to Seattle, one of the women ran a junk journaling session, and it was so inspirational for making a spread for the future you and what you wanna accomplish. And I want my people that are in the program to have all the materials, and they have it on hand, and they don't have to go search things down. They don't have to go find a book here, supplies there. All of it's with them. And they can work on these things slowly, bit by bit, guided in a group, getting all the support, but not be watching videos and feel like it's another thing you have to do. I just want this to be a really different experience. So that program, it's called The Next Chapter. It's starting in January, and I'm freaking pumped about it. It is so different. In addition to us really working on your goals and it being, uh, very valuable in that sense, it's also, there's a lot of fun things that are happening in there. And honestly, it's the things I'm into, and I just find that's what I'm gravitating toward, that to be able to do these big things in life, there has to be that other aspect of play and fun and creativity. That has to come out. Otherwise, I find it really hard for people to just stay in the intellectual lane when they're doing things. So if you're interested in that, the reason I bring this up, I know it's, it sounds early, but we are registering... I am registering for that, and I need the final headcount for that by, drum roll, October thirtieth. So if that's something that you're thinking about, you're interested in, now would be the time to sign up for it, we can't take later registrations because there will be a final number. Of course, I'm limiting the spots because it's a small group, and I need that final headcount because we're gonna be getting those packages together that have the material for each month. It's gonna be super amazing, and we need a final count on that. We can't kinda have that up in the air. So I'm super excited about that. If, if that's something you're interested in, the link will have it down below. You can go to rentiaclinic.com/thenextchapter. Pretty self-explanatory. And because it's a new program, I'll make sure to do a Q&A in the next few weeks at some point, 'cause I know people are gonna have a lot of questions. All right. I wanna talk today about this concept called the dip. This comes out of the new book. It's called "The Knot" by Seth Godin. Now, don't go reading it. It's a marketing book. I don't think that's gonna be helpful for you. But he recently did this really long interview, it's two hours, on a diary of a CEO, and he has just so many gems in there. But I wanna just come to one concept that he talks about, which is the dip. He defines the dip as the difficult stretch between starting something new and becoming good at it. And when the dip appears, instead of being like, "Oh my gosh, something's gone wrong, I can't do this," you say, "Thank you. This is the hard part." That it's amazing that you've arrived there, that it doesn't automatically mean that the goal is wrong. This is actually part of the process. Now, okay, we've all heard of this, we've all experienced it, but here's the real gold. How do you know when this dip occurs, what is delusional, you should stop, you should quit, that is appropriate, versus when you have to push through further? Here is the question and the logic that he went through, and I think this is gold. Today's gonna be a shorter episode, but this is gold. If you want this all written out, go to rentiaclinic.com/blog and we'll have all these questions written out so you can come back and reference them. You ask yourself at that period, have other people successfully made it through this dip? He gives the example in medical school, organic chemistry, it's wretched, but people, yes, they've made it through and they've become clinicians on the other side. Got it. But then if you take someone, for example, with end-stage emphysema and they're still smoking, that can lead to life expectancy decreasing and not a great outcome compared to stopping smoking. So it would be worth the effort to stop smoking at that point. So that's just an example of the decision tree. But when you say, have other people successfully made it through this dip, that's a great question, but how can you further clarify this? Then you get to ask practically, what does it usually cost in time, energy, money, or support to make it through? And then you think, do I have the resources required to continue? Does the current evidence suggest that this can still work? I think this is incredibly helpful when you're thinking about what is possible for your body, for different habits that you wanna achieve, if you're in maintenance, whether it's reasonable to keep going or to stop. Of course, I'm always gonna say involve your medical team, because I find often people are wanting to achieve things that literally, physically are not possible for their body. Like they literally couldn't have zero fat and continue, a lot of the time there is this rough stretch that occurs, and sometimes there's no right or wrong answer, if you ask this question, have others made it through it? Yes, they have. Okay, great. But then when you think about it, maybe you don't have the time required to do a bunch more exercise or to be able to fit in all the things that you would need to do. Maybe you don't have the energy. There is a reality to this. We don't all have the same energy bank. My husband always, always jokes that I have a Rentea battery. Like I just cannot be doing stuff twenty-four/seven. I get headaches somatically within my body. I feel wretched. I, I don't have it in me to just endlessly do stuff. Sometimes financially there are constraints. In fact, for most of us, there are financial constraints, and instead of railing against that, "Ah, I can't do this or that," sometimes just saying, "Okay, that's the limit, that, you know, that's where it ends." Support, we don't all have the same level of support. I sometimes think about, wow, people that are in my program, I feel like the support is really good potentially for people in there for what they're wanting to achieve, and not everybody will be able to join a program of mine, and I hear that, right? That's why I do something like this podcast. But there are realities to this. The support you're getting, maybe you have someone that's not supportive at home or maybe you have someone like me where this person really is supportive. These all make a difference if you can make it through it or not. And I bring this up because if you ask yourself these questions, I think it can become more clear to you in certain circumstances whether you want to continue down that certain path or not. And oftentimes where I'll get to, I might have someone that they have five, 10 more pounds they wanna lose, and it might be reasonable based on their body composition. But we have this talk and I say, "Look, it is the smallest changes ever at this point that are gonna get you over that metaphorical finish line. And are you wanting at this point to not have the snack with dessert? You don't have that extra bite. You don't do this. You don't do that." Like it's this level of cleaning things up. Do you want that life? By the way, if our mindset's in the right spot, we're like, "Yeah, it's no problem. I can do these things. I now don't view food in the same way," and we could go on and on within that vein. But there's another aspect where you say, "No, food has a social, emotional aspect for me. I don't want a world where I never have a bite of this or that." There's no wrong answer, but you get to decide. And everyone always assumes that the version where there is more things that are cut out... I don't like using the word restriction because it's all about a mindset of how we're thinking about things, but everyone always assumes that you getting to a lighter weight and you cutting out more things, that that's always the noble way. I don't think so. I don't think that it leads to the best things for everyone. And so if you have this framework, I think it would be really helpful for you to think through what your next steps could be. So if this is helpful for you, always remember rentiaclinic.com/blog. We have show notes for each episode. We have everything that I talk about. It is written out. These questions will all be there. I think that it's helpful to ask yourself when times are hard, have others made it through? Do I have the energy for this? The capacity? I don't know if you all remember if you've listened to all the episodes leading up to this. Gosh, over a year ago at this point, maybe two years ago, I did a business conference, and part of what we created for me was a go, no-go list. Before I made a decision 24 hours before... Let me see if I can actually pull this up. I had to ask myself some decisions to make sure that I would make the right choice for things, because I was impulsively saying yes to things, and then I wouldn't have the bandwidth for it, and then later it would crack me as far as how I was feeling and the things I could do, 'cause I had over-committed myself let's see if I can find this, the go, no-go list. This is happening live, people okay. The go, no go list. Wait 24 hours to take an action. I need to have clean intention, and here's some of what went on, and I'm not gonna go through everything, but do I have the energy to do it? Notice that's one of the things that he was talking about. Does it energize me? Does it impact my community? That's actually a big factor in when I think about obesity advocacy and people being part of a community that is safe and supportive. I definitely think about that. And there are more that are on that list. But just the fact that the result really for me is that I want to build a relationship with mysel-self where I have trust and I feel calm. I'm not trying to be happy all the time but I do think it's possible to trust myself and to cultivate within myself that I can get to a calm place if I want to. And so going through that go, no-go list is part of it. So really, all roads lead to Rome, and I feel sometimes when you hear it in a different way, you can maybe take it in. If there's maybe something today that really resonates with you, write a question down in your planner. Put it next week at the top of the weekly spread that you can ask yourself, have others made it through this before? And then again, if you are wanting to do that January program, I'll have the information for that in the show notes down below. I hope you have an amazing rest of the week, and we'll talk soon.