Fletcherism – A Weight Loss Method

What is Fletcherism? Will it help you lose weight?

When I was in 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 of eating!

So what exactly is fletcherism? According to Wallace Wattles, who wrote about it about 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 gobbling up the food, it chews it 20 to 30 times or more until it becomes a liquid in the mouth and mixes well with the saliva. The digestion process begins in the mouth, with saliva mixing with and beginning to break down 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 that you’re hungry. A simple and healthy way to lose weight. You really don’t 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’ve left some of your food on your plate, hehehe!

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

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

Both methods take practice and can be done together. But it takes changing your lifelong habit from the way you eat to a new one. Oddly enough, you’ll find 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.