Eating quickly raises the risk of being overweight by 84% for men and more than 50% for women, Japanese research has found. The results of the study, published in the British Medical Journal, suggests that eating more slowly may help with natural, healthy weight loss.

Scientists studied the eating habits of 3,000 Japanese men and women and assessed their weight. They found that eating quickly significantly raised the risk of being overweight, as did eating until one felt full. And, if a person both ate quickly and continued to eat until they felt full, they were at a even higher risk of being overweight or obese.

Being overweight or obese significantly increases your risk of developing high blood pressure and with it, the risk of future strokes or heart attacks. The reason why excess weight causes high blood pressure is that it makes the heart push harder (it has push the blood further round a greater mass of tissue) and increases the pressure.

• More on high blood pressure

Many of us will have been told to chew our food slowly when we were children to avoid stomach troubles, but it appears that this is also the perfect advice for losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight.

There are many theories as to why eating slowly and stopping eating before feeling full may help to avoid becoming overweight. One of them is that the body's natural signalling system to let us know that we've had enough works quite slowly. It is thought that the food we eat makes our stomach wall expand and this sends signals to the brain. But if we eat quickly, the stomach expands faster than the system can keep up with and we don't get the message that we've eaten enough until long after we've eaten too much.

Eating slowly means that we receive the message to stop eating at the same time as we have had too much, helping us to stay at (or go down to) a healthy weight.

Yet being a healthy weight is good our bodies, our minds and our blood pressures. Being the right weight:

• reduces the risk of developing heart disease and stroke
• reduces the risk of developing diabetes
• lowers blood pressure
• reduces back and joint pain and increasing mobility
• reduces breathlessness and sleep/snoring problems
• increases your self esteem and control over eating
• gives you more energy.

But eating more slowly and following a healthy diet plan, you can start to reap the benefits:

• Discover your healthy weight
• Healthy weight loss
• Eat your way to lower blood pressure
• Activity and exercise to lower blood pressure.

Reference

Maruyama K, Sato S, Ohira T et al. The joint impact on being overweight of self reported behaviours of eating quickly and eating until full : cross sectional survey. BMJ 2008;337:a2002.