Episode 4: Slow Down!

The D.I.E.T. podcast explores an important question for those who are pursuing a whole, healthy and happy life. And that question is “Did I enrich today?” Today we’ll be discussing Brussels sprouts, (yeah, Brussels sprouts!) and ways that playing with your food can help you lose weight.

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Papers referenced in this episode:

Ohkuma T, Hirakawa Y, Nakamura U, Kiyohara Y, Kitazono T, Ninomiya T. Association between eating rate and obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Obes (Lond). 2015;39(11):1589–1596. doi:10.1038/ijo.2015.96

Kokkinos A, le Roux CW, Alexiadou K, et al. Eating slowly increases the postprandial response of the anorexigenic gut hormones, peptide YY and glucagon-like peptide-1. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2010;95(1):333–337. doi:10.1210/jc.2009-1018

Hawton K, Ferriday D, Rogers P, et al. Slow Down: Behavioural and Physiological Effects of Reducing Eating Rate. Nutrients. 2018;11(1):50. Published 2018 Dec 27. doi:10.3390/nu11010050

Podcast Transcript

Judi: Hello and welcome to the D.I.E.T. podcast, where we explore an important question for those who are pursuing a whole, healthy and happy life. And that question is “Did I enrich today?” I’m Judi.

Allison: I’m Allison

Bert: And I’m Bert.

Judi: We’re your hosts. And today we’ll be discussing Brussels sprouts. Yeah, Brussels sprouts—and ways that playing with your food can help you lose weight. As we talk, we may nudge up against traditional notions about what you might call fun and play, and we’re okay with that. As we see it, if interacting with our food in quirky ways helps us lose weight, then what’s not to love, right? We’re glad you’ve joined us today and we hope that the conversation inspires you to find fun ways to take a slow stroll through some of your mealtimes and invites you to enrich your life with a little

added play along the way. When we talk about playing with food, what we’re really suggesting is finding enjoyable ways to lengthen your mealtimes. The scientific evidence that eating food more slowly is good for the body is pretty compelling. And as an appetizer, before we launch into some ideas for stretching out your mealtimes with a bit of fun, we’d like to mention a couple of studies that offer inspiring results. Allison, would you tell us about the 2015 review and meta-analysis that looked at the association between how fast people eat and obesity?

Allison: Judi, I would love to do that! The paper was published in the International Journal of Obesity. The researchers did a rigorous and comprehensive review of the data from 23 peer-reviewed studies that were published from 2002 to 2014. So that’s 12 years of data. What they found was that how quickly a person ate

really mattered. The researchers assessed that eating quickly is associated with excess body weight and that people who ate quickly tended to have a significantly higher BMI, and they also tended to be obese. The researchers noted that the association is more dramatic for people who don’t have diabetes than it is for people who do have diabetes.

So, the impact of eating quickly is really significant for the generally healthy person walking around who’s trying to get or stay lean. The researchers concluded that eating slowly is an important factor for weight control. And we’ll be sure to include the link to the study in our show notes for today.

Judi: Thanks, Allison.

Allison: No problem.

Judi: One of the things you mentioned, Bert, in the book, AC: The Power of Appetite Correction, is that the appestat, the part of our brain that regulates our appetite, needs time to receive signals from our gut. That lets the appestat

tell us when we’re full or when we’ve eaten enough. There was a 2010 study that may offer more detail about the communication between our appestat and our gut. Can you tell us more about that, Bert?

Bert: Sure, the study is in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism from 2010, but there are many studies similar to it. And a small study, but I guess one of the most interesting things about it was that involved eating ice cream.

Judi: Mmmm.

Bert: That sounds like a kind of study to tune into, right? What they did was ask a group of people to eat ice cream slowly at one time, and then later on, eat it more quickly. And, they scrambled the times and so forth up to try to get a good picture of what would be the differences. Like most of the studies that we’re talking about, it showed that the people who ate slowly had more of some of the appetite-related hormones—the ones that give a feeling of satiety and fullness. The bottom line is that

when you eat the ice cream more slowly, you’re likely to get more of a feeling of fullness than if you eat it quickly, even if it’s the same number of calories. And that goes along with lots of other studies that have shown similar things. How fast you eat matters, so it gives a whole ‘nother meaning to the word fast food.

Judi: Bert, I have a question. Did you say that it decreased the satiety hormones or increased?

Bert: It tended to increase the satiety hormones. Doctors and scientists don’t know exactly how our appetite is regulated and how it measures what’s coming from the gut. But we do know that some hormones are involved and there are some that stimulate hunger; there are others that oppose that and give a feeling of satiety. And in this case, it was the ones that give a feeling of satiety or fullness—meaning not needing to eat anymore, rather than a change in the hunger hormones.

Judi: Great. Thanks, Bert. So,

if I understand it right, that study showed that the hormones that tell someone that they’re not hungry anymore increased. Is that right?

Bert: That’s correct. When they ate slowly, which was 30 minutes—obviously it’s kind of a long time for ice cream. You may be drinking it instead of eating it. But…but eating it slowly mattered in terms of the satiety-related hormones.

Judi: They, of course, didn’t mention this in the study, but it makes me wonder if they had a refrigerated dish or something. Because really, 30 minutes is a long time for a cup and a quarter of ice cream.

Bert: Maybe they were just outside, and it was cold.

Judi: Maybe so. Maybe so. All right, well, I’ll tell you what—a cup and a quarter of ice cream for me is not a 30-minute experience. But as we’ll see, maybe it should be, you know? Well, thanks guys. Those are interesting findings. It’s encouraging that we can take some steps to slow down

and maybe get benefit right away—that we actually eat less.

What I understand though, is that there is some benefit down the road as well. It’s not just at the time of eating. There was a study in 2018 carried out at the University of Bristol in the UK. In that circumstance, researchers studied 21 healthy people between the ages of 18 and 35. The subjects had a main meal and—Allison you might like this study—of macaroni and cheese—

Allison: Ooh, I love it.

Judi:—uh-huh. One group consumed it in six minutes and the other group consumed it in a 24-minute period.

Allison: Twenty-four minutes?

Judi: —for a portion of—

Allison: I couldn’t do it. There’s no way.

Bert: One little macaroni noodle at a time.

Judi: I know. It’s funny because they controlled—of course— everybody had the same amount. The study subjects did not know this was about pace of eating. That was blinded. It involved some functional MRIs. It was actually a nicely done study, although

with a very small number of people. But what’s interesting is when they finished the meal—the 6-minute portion of macaroni and cheese or the 24-minute portion of macaroni and cheese—which was the same volume, but just took longer for the 24-minute group—the researchers waited for three hours. They did things like, studied them in the scanner and took some blood and such, but three hours later, they offered snacks to the participants and encouraged them to eat until they were full. “Comfortably full,” I think was the word. The group of people who had eaten the food over the course of the 24-minute period ate 25 percent less during the snack period than those who had eaten it over a 6-minute time period.

Allison: Wow.

Judi: Yeah, so it lingers—I mean, at least in this study, it lingered. And, so, that’s kind of cool.

Bert: It is cool. And some of the studies weren’t quite so clear cut and there are some controversial outcomes, but the overall gist of things is that timing

does matter in how quickly you eat and that the microbiota— the bacteria that live in our guts—also have an impact on the hormones that gets secreted back and say how much hunger you feel and how much fullness you feel. It is a very complex interaction between bacteria, gut and brain. And so, one of the reasons that there may be some conflicting results is that different people have different outcomes because they’re different. Looking at this, it’s easy enough for somebody to implement just slowing down. It is definitely worth a try and may yield some big-time dividends for people who are trying to lose weight.

Judi: It’s funny, because this day and age we have this level of impatience perhaps because things do happen very quickly at times. I know that sometimes when I’m waiting for my computer to do something, I get a little bit impatient and then I think to myself just how quickly things go compared to how they

were, let’s say 20, 30 years ago. I guess a corollary in my mind is if you’re talking about the brain, the gut, the microbiome—so bacteria—all having crosstalk while I’m shoveling food into my face, I’d better give a little bit of time for some messaging to go back and forth or there’s no way they can get the message right.

Bert: That’s right. One of the studies talked about using a dental device to basically interfere with chewing, so that people took longer to eat. It was sort of like one of those invisible braces kind of things that line the teeth. People would chew with that in place and it would slow down their eating. The hard part is just getting people to remember to slow down, because our natural and cultural drive is to just get-it-done. Do as much as we can to quickly get through it —that’s not what we what we really need to be doing. We need to be taking on our fuel as kind of a side project while our hands are busy with something else

and give ourselves time to take in just what we need.

Judi: It’s funny that you mention that study with the dental device. I looked at that and I could not imagine something less pleasant—

Allison: Sounds horrible.

Judi: —than trying to…it does, doesn’t it? My interpretation of the study was that, in some part, the people that continued to use it over the course of the study period used it as a reminder to slow down. I thought we could come up with a better reminder—even something in the middle of the table— a big glaring sign that says, “Slow down!”

Allison: A little tent card on your dining room table that says, “Eat slowly!”

Bert: Right. Slow—

Judi: Exactly.

Bert: —Slow, children at play.

Allison: Slow, adults at play!

Bert: Right.

Judi: Yeah grown-ups that play. I love it. I love it. Well, we appreciate our listeners indulging us with a little bit of science. It’s nice to know that as all of us are making our way and navigating through our studies of one, there are some hardworking folks out there who are asking some questions and

giving us some information that might help us to explore some ideas for the ways that we’re going to try to make progress. And to that end, one of the sections in the book, AC: The Power of Appetite Correction talks about the Brussels sprouts test. Now, this isn’t related to extending the length of one’s mealtime. So, this is a little bit of a non-sequitur, but it is so much a part of what prompted our idea about playing with food, that I thought it was worth, before we move on to some ideas for how to extend our mealtimes, let’s first step firmly in the playing-with-food-moment and talk about the Brussels sprouts test. Bert, can you share a little bit?

Bert:  Sure. The Brussels sprouts test is a way to provide a little bit of introspection about your own hunger. The Brussels sprouts test consists of buying a bag of frozen Brussels sprouts—the little ones that are easy to eat. They’re just a little bit bigger than peas, so

smaller than the usual Brussels sprouts. They make a pretty decent snack if you add a little spice and heat them up in the microwave. You keep this bag of Brussels sprouts in your freezer. Anytime that you find yourself prowling the kitchen for a snack, you open the freezer and lo-and-behold, there are your Brussels sprouts. If you’re truly hungry, those Brussels sprouts will be a satisfying snack. But, if you’re just bored or something else is driving your hunger—you’re not really in need of food—those Brussels sprouts may not seem so appetizing. You might use some other vegetable that’s not especially pleasant, but not especially bad in place of the Brussels sprouts, but I think for a lot of people Brussels sprouts fit the bill—something that is plenty nutritious, definitely adequate to keep a person alive, but not going to be the top of the list when it comes to snack time.

Allison: And can I just make a note that Brussels sprouts in the microwave is also going to really stink up your house? So, you have to consider that in the whole equation!

Judi: It’s a good point.

Bert: So, you’ve got some explaining to do as well.

Allison: Exactly.

Judi: It’s funny—there are some real foods that do that. I recently—I’m going to totally go on an aside here—but boiled cabbage is something that I grew up eating. I don’t know if anybody out there eats boiled cabbage, but I did when I was a kid. You know, with a little bit of vinegar on it.

Allison: I love it.

Judi: Oh good! I’m so glad. My kids could not—I should say our kids—could not stand the smell of that in the house. It was so foul to them. So, I think for some people, maybe it’s the boiled cabbage test.

Allison: Mm-hmm.

Bert: Mm-hmm.

Judi: Yeah. Alright, so, I’m not sure that really falls under playing with food, but I think Brussels sprouts are such an underappreciated vegetable, they kind of get a bad rap. I never liked him as a kid, learned to love them when I grew up, but you’re right—Brussels sprouts in the microwave—now there’s broiling them. That’s a totally different experience—

Allison: Or sautéing them. The microwave—just there’s something about it that

just makes food smell a little bit different to me. But I love Brussels sprouts. I don’t know if the Brussels sprout test will work on me. If I knew I was going to sauté them, but if I thought that I was going to microwave them in and just a quick thing then, yes, that—the test would work on me.

Judi: So, there are some layers to this test that are maybe a little bit off. Okay, so let’s just admit that that may be not so much playing with food as it is just kind of an interesting little thing that makes you smile. Let’s move on to coming up with some ideas for how one can play with their food, have fun, enjoy a meal and extend it beyond our shovel-it-in and just-get-it-done kind of approach that has landed some people in a position they’d prefer not to be in.

Bert: I think that one of the interesting ways to do this is to leave some of the preparation for the table. That means that instead of having everything put together and in a dish or whatever for easy

spooning onto a plate, there’s still more to do once you get to the table. And, that can be chopping some vegetables for a salad or even putting together the salad. People have different tastes in what they like in their salad, so just having the ingredients separate at the table, so people take time to put the salad together and maybe you snack on a cherry tomato or grape tomato or carrots as they’re assembling their own salad, it can slow down the process. It just takes a little bit longer and helps bring that concept—that initiative—of slowing down to the table, because you can see your pieces of salad fixings there and know that why they’re there is to slow down. So, there’s your table reminder, too.

Allison: I like that idea, because it’s also, you know, “Pass the carrots, please. Would you please pass the croutons?” You’re kind of having an immediate connection with the other—if you’re eating with other people—with the other people at the table while you’re all enjoying the same meal.

Judi: I like that. There was a time when we would bring whole things to the table—

not things that were hard to fix. Onions we would pre-chop. But if you were going to add a little bit of fruit to something, bring the whole fruit and a cutting board and a knife. People do that with cheese. They might have a cheese plate. I can imagine something like a vegetable plate where you cut off a bit of something and eat it—just what you’re hungry for at that moment. Like you said, Bert, the preparation is happening right there, so it adds time and it adds work to the meal a bit. I think that’s a cool idea. I like that idea.

The classic reminiscence that people have is sitting down to meals together—families or chosen families or friends—sitting down to meals together and sharing a meal. It happens a little bit less often, perhaps a lot less often in some circumstances. There is something to be said for sitting down together and everyone having a meal, but sometimes, if things are served family style where there’s a whole pot of something on the table or a whole dish of something on the table and

people are serving from that dish to their plate, it makes it quite easy to just put something on, eat it, and then move on. One of the ideas that is probably worth considering when a group of people are sitting down together is serving up plates from a buffet space and sitting down and having the meal together. When somebody wants something more, they physically have to decide it’s worth getting up and going and getting it. Again, it just adds a little bit of inefficiency to the food consumption—

Allison: And social pressure!

Judi: And social pressure! Good point!

Bert: That can be highly effective.

Allison: Yeah.

Judi: Yeah, it can. How many times am I going to get up from the table? Again, we’re not talking about limiting what we eat, but we’re talking about giving our appetite time to tell us that we’re full. That’s really the key: With a little social pressure, we might sit there for a few minutes before we decide that we’re ready for another portion of something.

Bert: And, we can also use the same or similar technique to eat in courses. Instead

of having everything on the table at once, you start with a salad or soup that adds a lot of bulk without starting off with a lot of calorie-dense food. After you’ve decided that you don’t want any more salad, you may take some time, take half an hour, and then eat your second course. This is easier to do on your own or with a couple than with a family, but take some time and have another course later. There’s also nothing wrong with eating dessert first. If there’s something that you know, 100 percent, you’re going to be eating at a meal, then make it one of the earlier choices and not one of the later ones, so it’s not just something that you stuff in on top of everything else. That leads into one of things that I find myself doing too little of, and that is really appreciating the food—taking the time to taste it rather than trying to get it into my stomach as quickly as possible. I am not sure where all those habits came from, but taste is one of our senses and there’s a lot there that we can appreciate if we take the time to do it.

Allison: Yeah, appreciating how the food looks and smells and tastes and when you take a bite, thinking about what flavors do I taste here? Is that sweet or salty or acidic or bitter? Thinking about all those things is a fun exercise and it also takes that extra little bit of time.

Judi: It’s funny that we think about what’s in a dish and one of the things I found really surprising one time was I had a brownie that was particularly wonderful. It was just so tasty. When I talked to the person who made it, that person told me that there was some cayenne pepper in it. I was a little surprised. When I went back and had a little bit more, I could taste it. I could appreciate the second taste, the second layer of spice in the brownie.

That has prompted me—sometimes to a bit of disaster—to play with recipes a bit. I’m kind of becoming a big cayenne pepper fan where I just put a little pinch in some things

to see what it’ll do. And, when we think about having this relationship with our food, if we’re preparing food, we can challenge ourselves to move beyond our traditional palate. In this country, we have this tendency toward salt and sweet. Those are our two foundations for the kinds of foods that we make sometimes. It can be really fun to mix that up and—one—literally mix it up and make some salt and sweet together, but also to start moving away from salt and put in other spices. And then, while you’re eating—again, we’re talking about how to extend the mealtime—really try to appreciate the individual flavors of the spice in addition to the blend. When going to a restaurant, a fun exercise might be imagining what the recipe might be for what you’re eating.

Allison: Mm-Hmm

Judi: Yeah

Allison: I like it.

Bert: Yeah, just trying to identify the ingredients could be very challenging. But if it’s something that’s not too finely ground together, you could piece it apart.

Judi: Well, and there’s aroma.

Bert: Yeah.

Allison: I think most people would be surprised

if you’re really thinking about how that food tastes—how salty it is.

Bert: Mm-hmm.

Allison: And when we eat quickly and don’t really think about it, it doesn’t really occur to us. But if you’re mindfully and consciously tasting that food, you’ll be surprised, I think, how much you’re consuming. Salt, that is.

Bert: Mm-hmm.

Judi: I think so. Yeah, I think so. That might be the prompt and the encouragement to—when we’re doing our own preparation—to move away from salt and every now and then, just add none. Or buy things that have no salt added and then put some spices in there—something you’ve never tried before—and then during the meal, try to really appreciate what it tastes like.

Bert: Good luck trying to buy things that don’t have any salt in them. It’s everywhere.

Judi: It is, but I’ve been happy to find that a few grocery stores have started to carry some canned vegetables and such with no salt added. You have to look everywhere for them, but some!

Allison: I just want to say a shout out right now to all the keto people that are

trying to just add a ton of sodium to their diets. And that’s a topic for a totally different podcast that we can discuss later. But, I just thought I’d mention that because I know that the keto folks are all about the sodium.

Judi: I like that Allison, because that illustrates one important concept in our Studies of One and in our individual pursuit of health and happiness, there are a lot of varieties—

Allison: Absolutely.

Judi: —of what works.

Allison: Mm-hmm.

Judi: Yeah. And so, when we’re talking about any one topic like pulling salt out of something that’s for, you know—as one ages, the degree to which kidneys can handle salt goes down a bit—so, what’s the best thing for someone who’s in one circumstance may not even be close to the best thing for someone in another circumstance. So, thanks for saying that! Absolutely.

Allison: You’re welcome.

Bert: This gives somebody that latitude to get creative with how they’re going to meet their objective of slowing things down. There are things that you can do like eat with chopsticks—if that’s not your usual style of eating—to slow yourself down.

You can eat with your non-dominant hand and, if you’re right-handed, put the fork in your left hand. And the funny thing is that that leaves your right hand available to do something. Maybe you can write a letter or you’re going to type something one-handed.

Allison: How about this, Bert? A chopstick in one hand and an empty other hand? What do you think?

Judi: Oh, yeah.

Bert: That would be a slow, slow go for sure.

Judi: Stabbing meals.

Bert: Just stabbing whatever works. That would slow things down a good bit.

Judi: When we’re talking about tools, there’s also using smaller plates and smaller flatware—spoons and such.

Bert: Like a demitasse spoon instead of a regular spoon?

Judi: Right. It really forces a slower—I mean, I’m going to use the word, because I know myself—a slower shovel-in. It’s a smaller little shovel.

Bert: Yeah. I like that for ice cream. And even in an ice cream store, you can get their little sample spoon and eat with that instead of using their big old plastic spoon.

Allison: You guys,

I’m just…I’m just imagining the person sitting at the dinner table with the tiniest spoon ever made eating a bowl of soup looking like a complete weirdo, but, you know, whatever works.

Judi: But you have to choose your food.

Bert: Choose whatever works and assemble your toolkit and find what works for you.

Judi: Okay, so here’s another idea—and that is, as we’re talking about taking in smaller portions with each mouthful. Cutting things into smaller portions than one might typically. I remember when I was a kid going to my granddad’s house. I was always amazed at the size of the piece of food that he would open his mouth and that thing would go into his mouth and he chewed it and he swallowed it. And yet, sometimes I look at the same thing on myself and I go, “Wow, I’m going to stick this in my mouth!” And I do and I chew it and swallow it. So—one way to extend the meal and make this take longer is to cut things into smaller bite sizes. And

since we’re talking about playing with our food, I can imagine things like cutting interesting shapes—like a carrot into little triangles and then taking the little round parts off and making a hat out of them for the little triangle person or whatever. It can be really silly, and it’s good to play.

Allison: Wasn’t there a whole diet community based around 50 bites or something?

Bert: Five bites.

Allison: Oh, five bites. That’s a lot—that’s a lot easier. Fifty bites—

Bert: There’s probably been both, actually.

Allison: There’s probably a whole—other people 49 bites, 48 bites.

Bert: 50 chews.

Allison: So yeah, that could work also.

Judi: And it does work. When I was looking at some of the literature before we got together today, I came across some Chinese studies that looked at counting bites and chewing for certain amounts of time. The evidence is pretty good that that’s effective for some people.

Bert: We laugh at some of these concepts, but when we look at how we eat—and I am guilty of shoveling some food down sometimes—I’m going to

try to give myself the reminder that if I have to open my mouth wide to get the bite in, then it’s too big a bite and I should cut it smaller and take my time.

Judi: Another thing that some people do is they sip water between bites or put their tool—whatever tool they are using to put the food into their mouths—put it down on the table between bites. There’s this whole process of the bite being something that is going on singularly and, like you said Allison, then you can savor the flavor and really think about the bite and the chew.

Allison: Put your tiny spoon down. Just put your teeny tiny spoon down! Think about that droplet of soup that you just consumed!

Judi: Oh, man, you are so funny. All right, so, other things like slow music or setting the mood for a more leisurely pace. Not standing at the refrigerator— which—that’s the teenage approach. If one is going to take their time and try to intentionally

budget more time for food and take it in more slowly, then creating a place where there’s some slow music going on or just some comfortable music could be another thing—or listening to a podcast!

Bert: Right. A lot of people wind up dining alone sometimes—so reading a book helps you appreciate it and take a little longer.

Judi: Or calling a friend. If we’re going to strive to not talk with our mouth full, then when we’re talking, it would be time for the food to be sitting there in our stomachs and our bacteria and our gut and our brain to talk a little bit.

Bert: If the person on the other end’s not doing the same thing, I can see that coming across different ways—not all of them good.

Judi: What are you thinking about?

Bert: Well, just the mouth noises when somebody’s on the phone and they’re chewing: (chomping mouth sounds).

Allison: Oh! Oh, that’s the worst.

Bert: That can be bothersome when you’re not the one making the noises.

Judi: I think that’s what the mute button‘s for.

Bert: Ah. Okay. Yeah. Considerate eating on the phone.

Judi: Yeah.

Another way to play with food is to move food around on your plate. This is a little crazy but, maybe put all the things of the same color together or we were talking about this a little bit earlier, when it comes to things like salad, there’s a million ways—no, maybe not—there are a number of ways to attack and approach and consume a salad. I’m one of those folks who likes to cut it up in a way that makes sure that there’s a big blend of all of the ingredients. So, I end up moving that around in my bowl a fair bit—or my plate. Others may not move it around so much, but it can make it take longer.

Bert: But what happens when you’ve made your masterpiece and your macaroni looks like Starry Night, and then you have to eat it?

Judi: You think there’s some grief there?

Bert: Sort of like an Etch-a-Sketch. When you had to erase it sometime. Once you’ve made your creation has to go away sometime.

Judi: Yeah. That’s living in the moment.

Allison: I know what I’m doing for dinner tonight guys: macaroni and cheese Starry Night. My husband’s gonna think I’ve

lost it!

Judi: Yeah. I was thinking about the whole idea of music and ambience. For  people who are doing intermittent fasting, you have a short period of time during which you’re eating, relative to the whole day. Taking time to create a setting where it’s a slower experience could be pretty fun. But then I thought, well, what if there were a candle that burned a specific amount of time and then when it’s done—when it hits a certain mark—then you know you’ve spent enough time for it to be considered a slow meal. I looked into that and there used to be candle clocks.

Bert: Mm-hmm.

Judi: That’s one of the ways that people would tell time. Then I thought, I wonder if one can get a candle clock in 2020 and lo-and-behold, there are such things.

Bert: Are they courtship candles?

Judi: Oh no, they’re not. Well, they don’t…they didn’t market them as courtship candles. I’m not sure I know what that means.

Allison: Are you into voodoo, Bert?

Bert: Hmm. No, it was a kind of candle that had this

spiral holder. The parent or chaperone would adjust it to say how much time a couple could have together and when—

Judi: Okay, so that’s exactly what it is!

Bert: —the candle went out, time was up.

Judi: They didn’t call it a courtship candle, but I guess that’s what it is.

Bert: Okay.

Judi: So—one way to extend your meal is to “court your food,” so to speak. Have a real relationship with your food. Use a courtship candle. And you can’t finish the meal until the wick goes out—the candle snuffs itself out.

Bert: Right.

Allison: So, would you leave that one pea just sitting in the middle of the plate—looking at the pea and looking at the candle, looking at the pea?

Judi: Uh…no, I think it would take some practice to pace it just right. Yeah.

Bert: So, we’re talking about something like half an hour as being an appropriate length of time for at least the first course of a meal. If you’re not thinking about it, how long would you typically take? It’s easier to imagine this in terms of fast food, like going into a McDonald’s and you have a meal, how long do you think that that takes?

Burger-fries-drink?

Allison: Well, I can say that the only times that I have been to McDonald’s in the past 15 or 20 years is when my husband and I are driving cross-country or we are on a long trip. We never go in, so—unless we use the bathroom, and then we order, but we still eat in the car. It’s probably about 2 minutes or 3 min— I mean it’s so fast. And for my husband as well. He orders a hamburger and fries and just tries to shove it in his mouth as quickly as possible because he’s driving. That’s a strange answer to your question, but it’s typically very fast.

Bert: How about other, more typical meals?

Allison: At a restaurant, I try to really savor the moment and the ambiance.  Maybe—I don’t know—thirty, forty-five minutes, or even more if we’re with friends and are enjoying ourselves. But if it’s just kind of a git-‘er-done lunch or something that I just need to be done, maybe fifteen minutes, I would say.

Bert: Mm-Hmm.

Judi: Does that include prep or is that the sit down/eat part?

Allison: That would include prep—I guess.

Judi: I’m just thinking about myself.

Allison: Is prep having the waitress come to the table?

Judi: Oh, no, no. I’m talking about when you have a sandwich—like—

Allison: Oh, at home?

Judi: —if you have a sandwich at home something. Yeah.

Allison:  Still, prep and eating, I would say 15 to 20 minutes.

Judi: Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Well, that’s where—one of the things that can happen is creating—I mean literally saying to oneself, “I’m going to experience my food. I’m going to choose to make this longer.” So, maybe create that restaurant experience. Have a fancy glass—

Allison: Oooh.

Judi: —even though you’re having water or whatever. Put the scenery in your head. Here I am. I’m on a tropical island. Use that opportunity to have fun—

Allison: This would a really long meal because, in my imagination, someone is going to serve me. And that person actually never shows up!

Judi: That’s pretty funny.

Allison: I understand what you’re saying, Judi. I don’t mean to tease.

Judi: No, it’s good.

And I have one other thought which is, sitting down across from people— I’m drawing on experience that I have with colleagues when we didn’t have time. We’d sit down and everybody’s hogging down their food. I mean, that’s just kind of what you do. And yet, when deciding to take the time, we can get out of practice in talking to each other. So, one way to make a game out of it is like the talking circle, when someone would pass around a stick and whoever had the stick was the person to talk. The person who is going to talk has some sort of a device that says, “Now is the time to let your meal sit there for a minute.” You talk and then, the next person. There’s some sort of a rhythm to that. Or even a card where it says, this is what we’re going to talk about. Let’s turn over a card, and each person gets a chance to talk about this thing or this idea, a favorite—what is your favorite this or favorite that. Is that making sense?

Allison: Yeah.

Bert: It does and even conversation by itself without any prompts is going to be a way to slow things down, because you won’t be talking

with your mouth full, hopefully. Just having an engaging conversation—unprompted or prompted like you were suggesting—can slow things down a good bit.

Allison: Well, there’s a game that my husband’s family plays when they eat dinner together, called “Thorns and Roses.”  Everyone goes around the table and talks about their day—about the thorns, or the sticky parts—the parts that weren’t so great or negative things that happened in the day. And then you talk about the roses, the great things that happen to you. That’s always been a fun game to play when we’ve been together.

Judi: I like that.

Bert: Nice.

Judi: That’s really nice. Yeah. And if you want to add activity to your meal, because part of what we’re talking about breaking some rules—things like having dessert first and using small funny little tools to eat and cutting your food up and playing with it. There’s also this kind of rule that I think that we teach children sometimes—just sit and eat and don’t move. Don’t fidget, just sit and eat. I can imagine—let’s say you’re playing a game of Thorns and Roses and somebody says something really lovely. Then everybody could get

up and have a spontaneous dance party in the middle of the meal!

Allison: Wouldn’t that be so fun?

Judi: Wouldn’t it be fun! I would love that!

Allison: Would the kids ever sit back down?

Judi: Maybe not, but then they wouldn’t be very hungry if they didn’t.

Allison: That’s true.

Bert: Yeah, if they’re really hungry, they’ll sit back down and if they’re not then they probably shouldn’t be eating any more.

Allison: Good point.

Judi: I thought of one more way to make the meal go longer and I think you guys will think this is really silly. Maybe even more than silly—

Allison: Let me guess, you hide the food—scavenger hunt for your dinner.

Bert: That’s like a reverse escape room. Your food’s inside and you have to puzzle it out!

Allison: You can’t look in the—

Judi: I love that.

Allison: You can’t look in the refrigerator. It’s somewhere else. It could be underneath the seat cushions.

Judi: No, no, no, no, no. I think that one thing would be to—okay, so again, we’re trying to find ways to interact with our food and not just shovel it in our mouths, but think about it, right? So, what if we silently spelled out the name of the food

as we’re chewing it. You can get really creative and choose foods with hard to spell names like hors d’oeuvres or something.

Bert: I would just stick with the little bagel dogs so I could spell that.

Judi: Great. No, you wouldn’t.

Allison: So, do you chew it and you have to chew it as long as it takes you to silently spell out the word?

Judi: Maybe so. That would be nice. Or if it ends up that you’re chewing too quickly, then maybe silently spell it out twice. This is all silly stuff and the reality is we’re winging it and trying to imagine ways to have fun while making a meal longer. As always, its connection with other people, connection with ourselves. I think extending that to experiencing our food in ways that are fun, enriching and make us laugh a little bit, make us smile.

Bert: Yeah, and step away from the cultural programming a bit, which is a lot of what guides people to eat to an excess and gets us in

trouble in the first place. Breaking those rules is a big deal.

Judi: So, tonight I think I’m going to have dessert first. Doesn’t it sound good?

Bert: Then the macaroni.

Allison: I-C-E  C-R-E-A-M. I-C-E  C—

Judi: Are we going to have to put a trigger warning on this podcast?

Allison: I think so!

Judi: We’re talking about playing with our food, which means we’re mentioning a lot of foods and we’re all laughing and thinking about our favorites. So, I guess we could at least—if we’re going to have a trigger warning on it—what is your favorite food? Bert?

Bert: Right now, I’m still thinking about cayenne brownies.

Allison: Oooh. I think just brownies—those brownies. Just straight-up brownies.

Judi: We’re not the authorities on how it is best to extend your meal or even our meal for that matter, but we think it’s a good idea to give it a try. If you feel like doing it, maybe one of these ideas will strike your fancy and make you smile, or maybe you’ll come up with another one that’s just a whole lot more fun in your world.

That’s it for today’s episode of the D.I.E.T. podcast! We’re so happy that you joined us and look forward to hearing about ways that you have added more play and fun into your mealtimes and maybe even extended them out and made them just a little bit longer.

Allison: Visit DidIEnrichToday.com for more information about intermittent fasting and links to purchase AC: The Power of Appetite Correction on Amazon and Audible. And don’t forget to subscribe. Sign up for the newsletter and we’ll let you know about upcoming events and when new episodes are available. We promise not to spam. Leave us a note—tell us what you want to hear on the next episode.

Judi: Thanks a lot, guys! Bye!

Allison: Bye!

Bert: Bye!