It is one of those scenes often played out in households across the globe: you sit down for a quick meal, but before even taking a bite of it, you reach out for the TV remote or put your phone next to your wine glass. The usual reason we give ourselves to describe this kind of multitasking while dining is that we feel we need some amusement or more time in our lives. Little do we know that this innocuous pastime affects digestion in a huge way.As we eat dinner while browsing our social media pages or watching a movie, it isn’t just about feeding our bodies. There is a capacity limit to how many things the brain can take care of at one time, and if your brain is busy with other tasks like comprehending the story being told or composing an email, it will not be able to listen to what your stomach is trying to tell you. This dichotomy of mind and body is not only about failure to pay attention. It is about a fundamental shift in the way we experience satiety.How distractions make us lose our sensesDistracted eating can have a severe impact on our ability to recognise whether we are satiated or not. The brain receives a series of signals from the body telling us that we’ve eaten enough, and when we are distracted, we do not pay attention to these. In The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a study has found that not only do distracted individuals eat more during the meal, but also in the remaining part of their day.The research has shown that if your brain did not completely take note of what you just ate, then there is no way it would effectively process the calories consumed. Consequently, this makes you susceptible to snacking or eating more during the next meal since your mind does not feel as if it has eaten anything, even though you are feeling full. This is particularly common when you are doing some sort of passive activity, such as watching television.Furthermore, the speed at which we eat plays a significant role in determining both our ability to maintain a healthy body weight and proper digestion. Being distracted, we usually gobble food, keeping pace with what is happening in front of us on the screen. When the satiety hormones reach the brain, it turns out that too much food has already been consumed, since the brain registered only the last moment of eating.
Maintaining regular, screen-free mealtimes allows your body to properly register fullness and improves gut health, promoting a healthier relationship with food.
Timing, and the health of your gutApart from the amount of food we eat, there is a whole range of issues connected with when and how we approach our food. We all function according to certain internal clocks, and our digestive organs operate within these schedules as well. In addition to that, new studies show that even gut bacteria have their own rhythm of life.As revealed in a recent study published by the FASEB journal, what we eat, or rather, the time at which we eat, is responsible for dictating the circadian rhythms of our oral microbiota. Late eating or delayed eating schedules have been found to stimulate inflammatory bacteria. Thus, maintaining regularity and focus during meal times is akin to metabolic self-care.So, how do we reclaim our dinner time? The fix is simpler than you might think. It starts with creating a “screen-free zone” at the table. By putting away the phone and turning off the TV, you allow your sensory-specific satiety to kick in. This is the process where the pleasure of eating a specific food naturally declines as you get full. When you are focused, you can actually taste the flavours and feel the textures, which helps your brain decide exactly when to stop.Foods that require just a little bit of extra effort can also be a factor in this decision-making process. These little tasks engage your mind in what you are doing by helping you pay attention to what is before you. After enough repetition, this small focus turns into improved digestion, reduced bloating, and healthy relations with your food. Perhaps the best solution to losing weight is to simply relax and enjoy what you are eating.
