Eat Slower & Live Longer

Health Wellness

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One of the most common complaints with growing old is that we tend to slow down in so many things, and most of us and those around us don’t necessarily like it.

The older we get, the slower we tend to walk, especially in stores. Younger people in a hurry often get annoyed or frustrated trying to get around us or waiting for us to make up our mind which product we really want. If you really want to frustrate the younger folks in the grocery store, stand there and start reading the nutritional and ingredient labels. If there are a number of choices, it takes us longer to read all the labels.

We also tend to be slower in our driving, at least the majority of us older folks do. Growing up in the southwest, we all tended to drive faster as we had longer distances between places and wanted to get to our destinations faster. However, in winter, the metropolitan area would swell in population with 1-3 million ‘snowbirds’ (old folks from up north or back east), and the vast majority of them drove a lot slower than the locals. I remember many times trying to drive home from work, only to be caught behind a pair of snowbirds driving side-by-side doing about 15mph in a 35mph zone.

Another area us older folks tend to slow down is our physical activity. With aging comes loss of muscle mass and tone, so we tend to be less physically active than when we were younger. Unfortunately, giving in to this trend has drawbacks and negatively affects our health. It’s better for us to be more physically active at our age to try to help keep what muscle mass we have left and prevent the underside of arms to look like the waddles hanging down from a turkey.

However, there is one area of slowing down that can be quite healthy and that is our eating habits. Specifically, the slower you eat, the healthier you will be.

It takes on average up to 20 minutes for the brain to interpret signals from your stomach that indicate you are full. People who eat fast, tend to consume more food before that signal says they are full. The faster they eat, the more they eat and the heavier they get which in turn makes them more prone to type 2 diabetes, heart disease and strokes.

People who eat slower, will have consumed less food by the time the brain says you are full. This is a very good thing as we tend to eat far more calories than we should. Eating less results in less weight gain which lowers the risks of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and strokes.

What makes this especially good for us older folks is that as we do slow down physically, we don’t need as many calories as when we were younger and more active. I’ve seen some studies that indicate that older folks only need about half to two-thirds of the calories we did when we were younger or even middle-aged.

As much as many of us want to speed things up and get things over and done, it’s a lot healthier to eat SLOWLY. Take your time. Chew your food well and enjoy what you eat. Doing so could add years to your life.

Diet Eating Longevity

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