on retraining myself to eat..

I DO love food. So it comes as no surprise that I have recently determined that I take BIG bites and don't chew my food. One of the most mentioned tenants of a raw food diet that I have read is that one must CHEW THEIR FOOD. The enzymes in your saliva mix with the food and begin to break it down, easing digestion and converting sugars, before you swallow. Now maybe for some this isn't a big shock. Well, and really it isn't a shock for me either, I just wasn't doing a very good job of it. I tend to bolt my food and eat as much as I possibly can before I get full. Really I think it is more to satisfy my hunger than to get full, but sometimes I eat SO fast that I become full and I eat a huge plate of food and I still FEEL hungry. I don't enjoy my food because its gone before I even tasted it. 

My new raw diet has really opened my eyes to some of my food issues. I am sensitive to sugar, even in fruits, if I'm eating too much of it. I knew that before (excema, athletes foot, food cravings) but I never saw such obvious and pin-pointable results. I started incorporating more fruit into my diet to get more calories and quickly began getting my nightly sugar cravings and needing to get up and have something sweet before I could sleep again.

Since starting this diet I have also had less cravings overall and feelings of ravenous huger, while still feeling like I can eat whenever I want and until I am full. I only started having cravings again when I was eating a ton of sweet fruit. I checked out a glycemic index chart on fruit and am trying to keep in mind what the lower sugar fruits are and incorporating more of those into my diet, and keeping the high sugar fruits in the slight minority.

Greens are the key. I need to eat tons of greens and start throwing them into my smoothies.

So back to my big bites. Since I have started focusing on chewing my food I have come to realize that I take such large mouthfuls of food that there is no way I can chew it without swallowing some. Like it is such a big bite I can't really move it around in my mouth without some going down the drain. Americans! ha

So I am working on smaller bites, chewing my food, and eating my greens.