When I was a young up and coming trainer, I would come into contact with people like myself who were desperate to put on weight. What young athlete does not want to be “swoll”? I wanted to gain as much muscle as possible, and back that I was not worried about remaining lean (I felt that we could worry about getting the fat off later). A lot of the skinny guys/”hard gainers felt the same, they were not afraid to gain fat. Really, I felt that these guys just wanted to look and feel huge and powerful, so we trained like crazy in the gym and did every ridiculous thing I could think of to gain weight. One strategy my friends and I came up with was based on an idea I learned about in nutrition class. My instructor taught us that our “satiety mechanisms” kicked in about 20 minutes after we started a meal. No matter how much we ate during the first 20 minutes of starting a meal, we wouldn’t feel satisfied or even full until we hit the magical satiety time. Of course, in nutrition class, our teacher told us that’s why many people overeat: they eat too much during the first 20 minutes, thinking they’re not full. Then, 20 minutes later, they feel “overfull” and guilty. However, if they’d only slowed down, their bodies’ natural satiety mechanisms would have kicked in to put on the brakes. (Remember that: You can and will feel full if you just slow down. The body’s natural signals will do the work for you. You don’t have to overthink it.) Ah-ha! For me and my weight-gain-obsessed friends, speed gobbling became a new eating strategy. We’d try to trick our satiety mechanisms by eating as much food as we could, as fast as we could, before we felt full.””We even went so far as to throw eating parties where all our weightlifting friends would come over to binge. (Yeah, we were cool like that.) We’d put on loud, fast-paced music and speed-eat, trying to pack in a few thousand calories within the first 20 minutes of a meal. Sounds ridiculous, I know. But it worked. I gained about 40 pounds the summer going into to my freshman year in college, Which brings me to the moral: if you’re trying to gain weight (and you are not worry about putting on fat), eat as much as you can as fast as you can. Now if you are trying to lose weight of course, do the opposite. Slow down. Enjoy your food. Stay “checked in”. Nibble for the first 20 minutes of your meal until your satiety mechanism kicks in. You’ll feel more physically and mentally satisfied with less food. Your stomach will thank you. Best of all, you’ll start to lose weight. (Think of it as practice just in case you get invited to have high tea with the Queen of England.)”

Thank you for reading! If you enjoy this information and want more, or possibly even want to start a fitness and training program made specifically for you, feel free to reach out or visit my website at www.ShowtimeFitness.com!
Brian Egwuatu, B.S. Exercise & Sports Science, Certified Personal Trainer, NSCA, CSCS