Slow Food advocates believe that food was meant to enjoy and to taste. Those who manage weight loss programs also boost the notion of slow eating as an approach to satisfying the need to feel full and have that full feeling stay with you over a longer period of time.
Slow Food is not a new concept. It started in the 1980's and has become an international development with several organization most of which also promote local foods, focus on organic farming, saving varieties of fruits and vegetables that are in danger of going extinct and healthy eating styles.
Here are 6 guidelines from the Slow Food movement that will help you stay healthy and increase the probability of you losing weight.
1. Prepare most of your own meals. If you never cook, try making dinner at home once a week, then twice and maybe three times. Be sure you include a vegetable or two with each meal. Frozen vegetables will work fine and they are easy to prepare. You do have time to prepare your own meals. It doesn't take much more than it would for you to get to a restaurant or to sit longer at the table while you're served.
2. Only eat when you're sitting at a table meant for serving a meal. If you are eating ice cream out of a container standing at the frig you are asking for trouble. Take the time to scoop out the ice-cream, put it in a dish, and sit at the table with your serving. I am guessing that you will eat half as much ice cream.
3. Don't eat when you're not hungry. This doesn't always work especially if you have young children and you work hard to be their roll model. On the other hand, don't be taken in by the ads for snacks even though you've just had dinner.
4. Enjoy what you're eating. Savor it. When you eat quickly while reading the paper you lose a lot of the food's flavor. When you eat too fast, you lose the smell of the food which take on half the work of our taste buds. Fast food companies know this which is why their foods are soft and moist and hardly need chewing so they can be eaten fast. Remember how that greasy hamburger just about dissolved between your tongue and the roof of your mouth.
5. Don't eat what you don't like. Who do you know who eats the fruit-flavored chocolates only because they're the last ones in the box but she would rather have the chocolate covered nuts? Waste of calories.
6. Use the same slow food thinking in a restaurant that you do at home. If you feel rushed at a restaurant or you have to shout to the person across the table from you because it's so noisy in the bar area, you are probably in the wrong place and not going to enjoy your food.
It is worth it to take the time to plan, prepare and earnestly partake in good-tasting nutritious meals. You deserve it.
To your success at balancing your health.
Ruthan Brodsky
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