Eat too slow

[Dev]

Hi guys,

First post here. I'm glad I found this forum, lots of useful stuff here. Been following the advice posted here and have already made some pretty good gains from the last couple of months since I started working out again.

Anyway, the main thing that has been crucial to my gaining my 'newbie' pounds has been eating more. This has been hard, though, since my main problem that I am facing right now is that I eat far too slow... this has been a real problem with me the past few years, I used to eat fast but now it's just ridiculous. Seriously, when I'm out, I'm that guy who holds everyone up, the waiter will come around to pick up all the meals and I'll still be eating. My girlfriend likes to joke to me that I must like to eat my food cold.

Maybe it's just a matter of just powering through it and eventually it becomes a habit... but I was hoping by now that things would have changed but its not getting much easier to get through my meals... I still have that feeling of dread where it's time to have a meal and I'm not particularly hungry, and I look at the food on my plate, the rice, the chicken, whatever... and I wonder how the hell I'm ever gonna get the food in my stomach. A lot of force feeding has been going on, with meals often lasting over an hour, getting cold, while I watch TV and hope I get through it. To tell the truth, a good majority of the calories have come from very large shakes that have been supplementing my diet.

In the past, I've sometimes wondered if I have a disorder lol. It used to be worse, it just seems to me that something's wrong if you just can't make yourself eat the amount of food you want to eat, especially when many people wouldn't think it's that much. This increased intake of food has been great for me, but its getting to be somewhat counter-productive at times with the amount of time I spend eating cutting into my free time.

So my question to you all is I'm sure there are at least some of you here who started out not being such heavy eaters. What did you go through mentally and physically to get to the point where you eat as fast as you do now. Are there any methods to doing this that I'm missing somehow? I get the feeling many of you are just gonna say to just tough it out, which I am doing, but I'm just chucking this out there to see if there is anything I can do to ease the assault I am forcing upon my body :)

[SwoleSam]

Personally, I think you will need to learn to put up with a little lethargy from eating in excess. Not to mention your stomach will need time to adapt to larger amounts of food. Make an eating schedule and stick to it, something like an interval of every 3 hours is good.

It took me a while to do but once I got the hang of it, I was packing on serious weight.

And keep lifting with intensity... as a result your appetite will increase and it'll get easier to down more food.

[Eszekial]

Lots of people don't realize you need to train to eat the amounts you are going for.

Find a food you like, pound it away fast.

There is really nothing else to it..

Just keep eating until you get full. Over time this will get easier and easier.

Nothing to it.

[djreef]

Dude, I feel your pain. I'm ALWAYS the last one to finish. But you'll figure out ways around it, like eating constantly. I eat 4500 cals day but only sit down to eat twice. The rest of the time I'm chewing on 'portable' food. I graze, eating as often as every other hour some days.

DJ

[Guido]

Get more of your calories from liquids. That should help, since liquids leave your stomach much faster than solid foods.