What is Fletcherism? Will it help you lose weight?

When I was at school, boarding school, we tried all kinds of different ways of eating. Probably because we were hungry and could drag out the meal. One of the games we played was fletcherism. Someone had heard that this way of eating was a really healthy way to eat!

So what exactly is fletcherism? According to Wallace Wattles, who wrote about it some 100 years ago, “it consists of tasting and chewing each mouthful of food until it is reduced to liquid, so that it escapes you by swallowing it involuntarily.” The reason for doing this is to aid in the digestion process. Instead of devouring the food, he chews it 20 to 30 times or more until it becomes a liquid in his mouth and mixes well with his saliva. The digestion process begins in the mouth, with saliva mixing and beginning to break down the food before it reaches the stomach.

Using fletcherism as a method of eating has two advantages. It helps with digestion but also helps with weight loss. And why would this be? Well, you’re usually only hungry for about 20 minutes, so if you’re eating slowly using the fletcherism method, you won’t consume as much food in the twenty minutes you’re hungry. A simple and healthy way to lose weight. You don’t really have to change what you’re eating for this method to work, as long as you stop eating when the hunger pangs pass and you feel full. Even though you left some of your food on your plate, hehehe!

This method is easier to implement when you eat unrefined foods because these foods naturally, due to the fiber they contain, need more chewing. White bread and cakes made with refined flour and sugar slide down without chewing and you have to force yourself to keep chewing, counting the chews when you eat these types of foods. Yuck! But it can be done!

If you put down the knife and fork between bites, you will see that you slow down the speed with which you eat. It works similarly to fletcherism in that they force you to eat more slowly.

Both methods take practice and can be done together. But it takes changing your lifelong habit of the way you eat to a new one. Oddly enough, you’ll find that you’re not overeating, and you’ll leave the table feeling satisfied and not bloated. By helping your digestive system with saliva it will work better. Not forgetting the fact that you can lose some of those extra pounds.