You're Probably Eating Too Fast

I am genuinely good at being efficient. It's one of those traits that has served me well in almost every area of my life. I move fast, I get things done, I don't linger.

Eating is where that whole thing backfires on me completely.

I'm a fast eater. I eat while I'm working, while I'm watching TV, while I'm scrolling. I eat from boredom sometimes, not hunger. I've caught myself finishing a meal and realizing I have almost no memory of it. And as someone who coaches women on their health habits, I am fully aware of the irony here.

So this is me talking about something I genuinely struggle with, why it matters more than most people realize, and what actually helps. Not from a place of having figured it out, but from a place of actively working on it.

What's Actually Happening in Your Body When You Eat Distracted

Most people think of digestion as something that happens automatically, regardless of what else you're doing. It doesn't quite work that way.

Digestion actually begins before you take a single bite. When you see and smell food, your brain triggers what's called the cephalic phase of digestion, initiating saliva in your mouth, acid in your stomach, and enzymes from your pancreas. All of that is your body preparing to break down and absorb what you're about to eat. When you're distracted, stressed, or rushing, that process is compromised before you've even started.

Your nervous system has two modes that are relevant here. The sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight mode, the one that kicks in when you're stressed, busy, rushing, or trying to do five things at once. The parasympathetic nervous system is your rest and digest mode. Those names are not metaphors. Your digestive system functions significantly better when your parasympathetic nervous system is running the show.

A review published in the journal Nutrients found that chronic stress disrupts gastrointestinal function in multiple ways, including impairing nutrient absorption, increasing intestinal permeability, and disrupting the gut motility that keeps food moving through your system the way it should. And you don't have to be in a crisis for this to apply. Eating at your desk while answering emails counts.

There's a well known 1987 study published in the journal Gastroenterology that drove this point home in a pretty striking way. Participants absorbed 100 percent of the nutrients from a mineral drink when they were relaxed. When researchers introduced a distraction, specifically asking participants to listen to two different people speaking simultaneously in each ear, nutrient absorption dropped significantly and remained lower for up to an hour afterward. The distraction alone was enough to change how their bodies processed what they consumed.

Harvard Health Publishing notes that it takes approximately 20 minutes for the brain to register fullness. If you're eating fast and distracted, you've likely already overeaten before that signal ever arrives.

The Boredom Eating Problem

This one is worth addressing separately because I don't think it gets talked about enough.

A lot of eating has nothing to do with hunger. Research consistently shows that people eat more when distracted, not because they're hungrier but because they're less connected to their body's actual signals. Emotional eating, boredom eating, stress eating, these are all forms of eating that bypass hunger entirely.

If you find yourself opening the fridge without really knowing why, that's worth pausing on. Are you actually hungry, or are you looking for something to do, something to feel, a break from whatever you were just doing? Both are useful information. Hunger means eat. Boredom means you probably need something else.

What Actually Helps

None of these require you to turn every meal into a silent meditation. They're just small, practical adjustments that give your body a better chance at doing its job.

Take three slow breaths before you eat. This is the one I recommend most. It's not a wellness affirmation, it's physiology. Slow breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the one that supports digestion. It takes about fifteen seconds and it genuinely shifts your body's state before you start eating.

Sit down. Even for a snack. The physical act of sitting sends a signal that this is a meal. It changes your pace and your awareness without requiring much effort.

Put your food down between bites. Your fork, your sandwich, whatever you're eating. It creates a natural pause and slows the pace in a way that doesn't feel forced.

Eat without your phone for part of the meal. Not forever, not every meal, just sometimes. Even ten minutes without scrolling changes how present you are. Research published in the journal Nutrients found that people who ate without distractions showed a trend toward eating less overall compared to those given no guidance at all.

Check in before you open the fridge. Especially if it's not a meal time. Ask yourself if you're actually hungry. It sounds simple and it is, but most of us skip it completely.

Chew more. Digestion starts in your mouth. Chewing thoroughly begins the mechanical breakdown of food and gives your digestive enzymes more surface area to work with. Most of us chew a few times and swallow. Slowing that down alone makes a real difference.

The Honest Part

I still eat too fast. I still watch TV during dinner more nights than not. I'm still working on the phone thing. What's changed is that I'm more aware of it, and awareness is genuinely where behavior change begins.

The goal isn't perfection. It's building in enough moments of presence that your body can actually do what it's designed to do. You can spend a lot of energy eating the right foods and still undermine the whole thing by how you're eating them.

Three breaths. Fork down. Phone face down. Start there.