Eating slowly offers effective holiday weight management.

As holiday season rolls in, so do those favorite holiday rolls and the turkey, the stuffing, the potatoes and gravy, the sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping, the cornbread with butter, the cranberry sauce, and the pumpkin pie with lots and lots of whipped cream.

Not to mention the next day’s feast of leftovers… You get the picture.

It’s tradition. And by the end of the feasting, come January, you can usually bet on having gained an average of 1 to 10 pounds. So much for your weight loss goals.

Well, according to a study just accepted for publication in 2010, you might still be able to enjoy all those seasonal flavors without piling on the weight.

Just eat very slowly.

Could it really be that simple? Apparently so—at least with ice cream. The researchers found that subjects who ate 1¼ cups of ice cream over an entire 30 minutes were most likely to feel satisfied when the ice cream was gone, but subjects who “wolfed down” the same amount were more likely to want more and overeat.

How does it work? It’s a brain thing.

As you eat food, appetite-regulating hormones are produced in your stomach. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to eat so fast that your stomach can’t deliver the message in time. Eating over a longer period gives the hormones the chance to signal your brain that you’re “full”.

According to Susie Rockway, Ph.D., Isagenix director of nutritional sciences, “It can take about 20 minutes for the gut’s hormones to reach the blood and then to the hypothalamic satiety center of the brain.”

 So, to keep the pounds off, don’t just enjoy your pumpkin pie, savor every slow bite.