Hello love!
Today I wanted to share something super simple you can implement to help your digestion, reduce bloating and to make sure you are eating enough!
Recently, I did a cleanse and the reason (more often than not) that I do a cleanse is because I am having some sort of digestive issue and need a reset! You can check out my cleanse experineces here, here and here. I recently moved so things have been more stressful and chaotic than usual. Whenever upheavals in life happen this throws me off digestively so I knew I needed to rest my system.
Each time I cleanse I also commit or recommit to improving something about my eating habits. This time it was chewing. I could tell I was just not chewing as mindfully as I needed to and this was creating most of my digestive issues.
Chewing is simple. Yes. But very profound and foundational to health.
Check out the video or scroll down for more 🙂
Chewing helps you to digest your food better, makes you more aware of when you are full so as to not overeat, and reduces the amount of energy your body is spending on digestion. (Note: Digestion takes up about 50-80% of our energy expenditure daily!)
How to Chew 🙂
Chew until the food is a pulp in your mouth (about 30-40 times as a number to count to). You might need to chew more or less depending on the food. You will know you have chewed enough when the food is a pulp and unrecognizable.
Benefits of Chewing Well
- As you chew you release more saliva which contains an enzyme called salivary amylase. This enzyme starts the process of carbohydrate digestion in the mouth. Digestion of carbohydrates start in the mouth and continues in the small intestine NOT the stomach.
- Chewing makes your food smaller and smaller. This creates more surface area which allows the release of more nutrition into your system.
- The stomach doesn’t have teeth – so the stomach expends more energy on trying to ‘chew’ the food when it is not chewed well. So, chewing well helps to free up more digestive energy. You won’t feel as tired after a meal because your body has used much less energy on digestion.
- You will feel much ‘lighter’ after a meal. The heavy, weighed down feeling in your stomach will not be much of an issue as your food will only spend the minimal amount of time in the stomach. When food sits too long in the stomach this can create gas and bloating. We absorb our nutrients starting in the small intestine. We want our food to get there easily and efficiently!
- Chewing smoothies and juices helps them to absorb into our system more easily. This means more nutrition into our body and less bloating.
- Chewing can ‘warm up’ or ‘cool down’ the food you are eating so that it is at body temperature. This allows the food to be digested more easily as the stomach will not need to expend energy to heat up or cool down the food.
There are many benefits to chewing. In particular feeling more vibrant, energetic and satisfied after a meal without feeling tired and lethargic. When our digestion is more efficient we ‘free up’ energy to help rejuvenate other parts of our body. That energy can go into disease prevention and anti-aging to name a few 🙂
Please try out chewing mindfully and let me know in the comments below! Experiment on yourself for a week and see if it makes a difference. This is all the evidence you’ll need 😉
To more vibrancy,
~Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist
