To start with, what in the world is the definition of full? I used to know no end to fullness. It seemed as if I could eat all day and not get full. I know that slightly full meant that I had to take off my belt, moderately full meant that I had to take off all my clothes and put on my robe, and painfully full meant that the only position I could get in was horizontal. Those are the full sensations, right? Well, not anymore. Full is a very polite feeling. In fact, when you are approaching fullness and you can still bend over and reach down and pick up your napkin off the floor without losing all your food, then you can be sure that you are not over full! It is also a good sign that you can leave your clothes on—especially your belt! If you think that you are having trouble with going beyond the polite full feeling, then maybe a few tips will help you.

The best advice is to slow down your eating until your heart's desire has changed so that it is repulsive and too painful to eat beyond full. The habit of eating fast developed as you became more magnetized to the refrigerator. It does not take food lovers long to learn that the faster they eat, the more food they can get down before it is too painful. This is a choice. Keep in mind, if you are having difficulty with stopping, perhaps it is because you have spent years obeying the food. Now is the time to reverse that behavior and take control over the food.

To help learn how to slow down, let us first look at why we should slow down. It seems that many of us have used poor role models for how we are to eat. The average meal is consumed inside three minutes. Let us just follow food through the digestive tract and see what happens when we eat very quickly.

Here are the major stops food takes on the way into the bloodstream. First, the food goes down your esophagus. As you swallow, two sets of muscles will push the food downward (peristalsis). This looks similar to the waves you see when a snake eats. At the base of the esophagus and stomach are sphincters. A sphincter is a circular ring of muscles that can close tightly. The esophageal sphincter regulates the passage of food through the upper digestive tract.

If you eat too fast, then you could possibly eat beyond fullness because your food has not had sufficient time to be digested and sent into the bloodstream. So—slow it down. Savor your food bite by bite.

Another problem you might encounter occurs when you eat only solid foods at the mealtime and then drink liquids afterwards. Keep in mind that your food must be diluted with water before your stomach can digest it. The more solids you eat, the more water the stomach needs. This fluid can come from the bloodstream or your thirst mechanism may cause you to drink more fluids.

The bottom line is that you need to drink or sip between bites. This really helps keep you from getting too full. You need to know that fatty foods will float to the top of the stomach, and their presence will slow down digestion. It takes approximately twenty minutes for the brain to detect the replenished blood sugar—but a skilled thin eater will notice a full stomach pouch and a decreased sensitivity to the flavor of the food.

When you develop your skills for recognizing the full feeling and stopping when you are full, you will be able to eat faster if you want to. You will learn to recognize when you are approaching full—even if you eat fast. Our goal is not to slow you down in eating—our goal is to help you to not stuff yourself. Once you lose the greed for food, we do not care how you eat. That is between you and your mother!

What happens when you frequently stuff the stomach? You get indigestion or heartburn or the acid refluxes into the esophagus. As we have said before, under normal conditions, food remains in the stomach until the acidity reaches a pH of 1.5. This is very acidic— much like battery acid. Then it will start to empty. The food will be allowed out of the stomach and into the small intestine. When you overload the stomach by eating too fast, your body is unable to manufacture enough neutralizing base to offset the extra acid the stomach produces to digest the extra food. That is why overeaters frequently get ulcers in the duodenum and heartburn in the esophagus. Acidic food literally refluxes out of both ends of the stomach, causing pain. Most people who faithfully start the Weigh Down Workshop7 never have any more pain associated with eating!

Next the small, broken-down particles move through vessels to the liver. The liver is a chemical factory that is capable of turning what you eat into the substances your body needs. If you happen to swallow a trace amount of a chemical that the body does not like, such as a pesticide, then the liver traps it and breaks it down, preventing it from entering your normal bloodstream or damaging your liver. But the usable food particles are passed on by your liver to the heart, where they will be pumped all over the body.

Once the food particles enter the regular bloodstream, your feeling is one of fullness and satisfaction. Your stomach may feel full five minutes after a quick meal, but that truly satisfied feeling, which comes from nutrients hitting the normal bloodstream, may take another ten minutes.

Children digest food much faster than adults and feel like playing right after a meal. That is OK. Let them. However, when adults eat right after meal, That is OK. Let them. However, when adults ach to digest the huge amount of food. This leaves less blood for the brain and other parts of the body. It takes a lot of energy to digest huge meals, especially after overindulgence, since the food has to be converted to fats and shipped to the hips.

Do not join those who drink too much wine

or gorge themselves on meat,

for drunkards and gluttons become poor,

and drowsiness clothes them in rags. (Proverbs 23:20,21)

If you will eat smaller amounts, you will not have this problem. You will have less heartburn, fewer ulcers, and more energy.

*30\237\2*