There’s an app for that? One of our eating behavior musts is to eat slowly! Eating slower helps you to enjoy and savor the food, enjoy the experience of eating, increases satiety or feeling of satisfaction and help recognize when you are full. Eating slowly also helps you eliminate eating as a side activity, for example, eating while you are driving, watching TV, working on your computer or playing a game on your phone. We tend to eat faster, take bigger bites, and not enjoy our food when we eat as a side activity.

As a lap-band patient, it is crucial to eat slowly to ensure you are chewing your food thoroughly to prevent food from getting “stuck” and to prevent overeating. Plus, eating slower reaps the benefits as mentioned earlier. As we all know, habits are hard to change and thankfully we have the wonderful world of smartphone applications to help us achieve new healthy habits. Eat Slower is a free app that has an adjustable timer to help you to eat slower. You can adjust the time increments from 15 seconds to 2 minutes and change the timer tone. Try setting the timer for 30 second increments and enjoy the benefits of eating slowly!