How important are these rules for you personally?
I try to. I am bad with this, and I always get into trouble. I find them to be very important, because I eat far less, and am less hungry overall, when I follow these rules.
Of course, I also am in recovery from a very severe eating disorder. I cannot afford to go back to the speed at which I used to eat, so my situation may be different. However, the successful long-term WLS vets (10+ years out, here and elsewhere) that I try to emulate generally eat this way, so I try to replicate their success.
I follow a ketogenic diet post-op. I also have a diagnosis of binge eating disorder. Feel free to ask me about either!
It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much...the life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully. -- Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
I think that they can be super important because it will allow your body to signal you before you overeat. Slow eating helps a lot with portion control post surgery because you can tune into the signals your body gives you to stop before you overshoot the marker.
That being said I am a terrible example of this. I was a quick eater and I am still a quick eater. It is something I am always actively working on not only because of fullness signals but because if I eat quickly then I am sitting there while others continue to eat and that, for me, is prime grazing time.
But until I get a handle on it - which I suspect may never happen - two things keep me in check.
I weigh EVERYTHING I eat. Scale on my counter, travel scale in my pocketbook
and when I am done I either ask the server to wrap the remainder or clear my place and return to the table to talk. I do not sit with a plate in front of me because I just don't have control like that.
So far so good....
