“Most of us have heard that eating fast can lead to food overconsumption and obesity, and in fact some observational studies have supported this notion,” said Alexander Kokkinos, MD, PhD, of Laiko General Hospital in Athens, Greece and lead author of the study. “Our study provides a possible explanation for the relationship between speed eating and overeating by showing that the rate at which someone eats may impact the release of gut hormones that signal the brain to stop eating.”

In the last few years, research regarding gut hormones, such as peptide YY (PYY) and glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1), has shown that their release after a meal acts on the brain and induces satiety and meal termination. Until now, concentrations of appetite-regulating hormones have not been examined in the context of different rates of eating.

In this study, subjects consumed the same test meal, 300ml of ice-cream, at different rates. Researchers took blood samples for the measurement of glucose, insulin, plasma lipids and gut hormones before the meal and at 30 minute intervals after the beginning of eating, until the end of the session, 210 minutes later.

Researchers found that subjects who took the full 30 minutes to finish the ice cream had higher concentrations of PYY and GLP-1 and also tended to have a higher fullness rating.

“Our findings give some insight into an aspect of modern-day food overconsumption, namely the fact that many people, pressed by demanding working and living conditions, eat faster and in greater amounts than in the past,” said Kokkinos. “The warning we were given as children that ‘wolfing down your food will make you fat,’ may in fact have a physiological explanation.”

Other researchers working on the study include Kleopatra Alexiadou, Nicholas Tentolouris, Despoina Kyriaki, Despoina Perrea and Nicholas Katsilambros of Athens University Medical School in Greece; and Carel le Roux, Royce Vincent, Mohammad Ghatei and Stephen Bloom of Imperial College in London, United Kingdom.

 The body has its own body clock and is aware of the time of day. It also knows that night time is ‘sleep’ time so there is no need to keep those calories ‘near the surface’ available for instant use because you are unlikely to need to run away from a sabre tooth tiger or produce a sudden burst of energy whist you sleep. Consequently, it will convert these excess calories into fat storage. And this is the reason for problems with night shift workers because they are forced to eat at times that are not natural (evolution wise).

This adds credence to that old adage “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper.” So, it is not just about calories in and calories out.

Slimquest is a unique approach to weight loss as there are no weigh ins, no diets, no targets. Slimquest courses are limited to a small group of like minded people meeting for one hour a week for six weeks.

Each class is facilitated by a full qualified Cognitive Hypnotherapist and Neuro Linguist Programming Master Practitioner. Check out my SlimQuest page for the next course in the Stroud / South Gloucestershire area

Or, visit the Slimquest website (http://www.slimquest.co.uk) for more details and to find your local SlimQuest Trainer.

An ex-Met Police Training sergeant once told me how he was given a remedial class to bring up to speed.

He decided to use anchors so instructed students when studying to have with them a tissue with a few drops of peppermint oil on it. During studies, the students were instructed to sniff the tissue now and again. Then, in the exam, they were told to take the tissue with them and to sniff it whenever they needed to recall details. The result was that on average, the marks went up by 25%.

The British Athletic Team also used ’smell anchors’ in the Olympics. They took the form of a wristband which had been used during training. Whenever they achieved a personal best or recorded a good time or felt totally unbeatable, they took a sniff of their wristband. Again, looking at the TV coverage, you might see them sniff their wristband when lining up for their event in order to get them ‘into the zone’. They may have got into the zone but that year the medal count was a bit disappointing.

Another example was when researchers looked for a rugby club that would volunteer to go out and get drunk. After several months they found a volunteer club and got them all drunk, took them into a kitchen and showed them how to bake a cake.

A month later, the rugby players were split into two groups. One group was sent to the kitchen to bake that cake again. The others were taken  to the pub first and then sent to the kitchen. The result: The drunken players produced better cakes than the sober players because they were in same state as when they were taught.

Become aware of your thoughts and you can begin to manage them which means you can directly influence how you feel and how you behave. We have been talking to ourselves continually since we learned to speak which means we have been programming our behaviours all our life. And because this process have been going on for so long, there are many people who are even unaware of this continual internal dialogue that goes on and on inside each and every one of us.

Start to notice what you say to yourself and how you say it and you will also start to notice how the things you say dictate your life.  Do you constantly criticise yourself? Do you constantly criticise others? Or complain about your life, your failings, or how life ‘treats’ you? Or do you internally rant about the injustices of life?

The things we say to ourselves not only programs our behaviour but also generates self limiting beliefs – things we believe about ourselves that limits our potential such as “I’m too old” or “I could never do that” or ‘I’m not clever enough” or “I can’t cope with this”. And, if constantly saying these things builds the belief that it is true, then constantly saying nice things about yourself will build a nice belief.

Imagine your best friend walking next to you all day, every day, constantly whispering in your ear the sort of things you continually tell yourself.  How long would you put up with it. How long before you told them where to go! And yet, you have been accepting those same comments from yourself for years without question – and that’s a form of verbal bullying isn’t it?

And, because you are doing this to yourself and have probably been running such mental ‘programs’ since childhood you may no longer be consciously aware of the things you tell yourself. And, as a result, they have had a powerful impact on your mood, your beliefs and your attitude towards yourself and towards life itself for some considerable time.

Our negative self-talk reduces our quality of live, it diminishes our joy. And because we are so used to it we don’t consciously pay attention to it and so tend not challenge it. It goes on and on in the background and the end result is that we are giving ourselves powerful post hypnotic suggestions to feel bad about things or to fail at things.

The first objective in gaining control of our self talk is to become consciously aware of the things we   say to ourselves. So, to start…

Write down each of your thoughts or feelings that go though your mind over the next few minutes. After an hour or so, do it again. Write down those passing thoughts several times a day. Then, in the evening,   read back those thoughts. And you might be surprised to notice the total chaos going on in your mind which, for a lot of people, just goes on & on. And remember, there is no such thing as a throw-away line. Everything you say or think has a price.  So, for a better quality of life, for a better experience of life this crazy thinking has to stop!

Now that you are becoming aware of the type of things you say to yourself you are better able to challenge them, to ask “Is that true?” and if it isn’t then change it to something more honest, something more positive.  Q) How many thoughts can you think at the same time? A) Just the one.  So, if we can only think one thought at a time then why not pick a nice one?

One of the symptoms of PTSD is the continuous flashbacks that occur – totally unexpectantly. Why is this? I believe the answer can be found in the Reconsolidation Theory published by Joseph LeDoux, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists.

His work into how memories are stored and recalled shows that short term memories are kept in the hippocampus and, when transferred to the neo-cortex, these memories are no longer in couscous awareness but are stored in our filing cabinet of memories. And, memories are fixed in this  storage area by the production of a protein which ‘sets’ the memory.

If traumatic memories are continually ‘flashing’ back into conscious awareness then it seems to me that somehow, the laying down of the memory into the neo-cortex was not totally successful.

As a Cognitive Hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner, I have been trained in many techniques some of which are aimed specifically at PTSD. Emotional Freedom Technique has been used and refined for many years and has a proven success record when working with Vietnam Veterans.  Eye Movement Integration is one of our most potent weapons in this area which can remove the emotional effects of a trauma in an amazingly short space of time.

If you are one of our armed forces or are an ex-serviceman, then I am willing to see if I can help you for free. I choose to help our servicemen because I can.  I believe they deserve our unconditional support regardless of the conflict itself or its justification.

But that is not the reality in which we live. Our group reality says this is a tree but my individual reality depends on the meaning I give to the tree. Does it provide fruit, shade and firewood or is a problem – something that’s in my way & has to be dug up.

Imagine you’ve won a free weekend to the National Line Dancing Championships being held at a Holiday Camp. How does that make you feel? For some that’s a dream come true because tickets are like gold dust. Others would rather stick pins in their eyes. So whose version of reality is right?

Well, the truth is – they are both right within their own individual worlds. It is true to say that we really do live in different realities, different worlds. “What planet are they on” or “Where are they coming from?” are commonly used phrases to suggest that somebody’s reality is different.

Two brothers could join the army at the same time; go through the same training and events. One develops Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the other sleeps like a baby. Why? Because it’s not the event itself that is good or bad – it’s the meaning we attach to it. It is the emotions, the feelings and the meaning we attach to the event that creates our perception of that event, it creates our own individual reality.

I’m sure you can think of events from you own experiences where you and several others have all witnessed the same event but the emotional reactions were very different.

If, on holiday its forecast to rain for the next week, the meaning you attach to that news could be “oh typical, just my luck! Our whole holiday ruined. I’ve been looking forward to this for months & now its hopeless” OR you can say “well, at least it could get us off our backsides and cause us to seek out entertainment or fun elsewhere. Do you know, I’ve never been 10 pin bowling”

Research has shown that if on your way to the theater you lost a £20 ticket, it would be painful to    pay another £20 to see the show because you have already paid once. However, if you were to pay at the door and lost a £20 note on the way, you would still happily pay the £20 for your ticket.
 
All of which means that reality is subjective – we all create a model of reality and it’s this model; this internal representation of the world, what it means, and how we feel about it that counts and not the actual things themselves.

Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

We all think that how I perceive this to be is real. The conscious mind fully accepts this but does not question how that perception comes about or is arrived at.

If we create our own reality – then why not create a nice one. But, before we can do that we have to understand how this perception of reality comes about. But, that’s another story.