Eating slowly may affect changes in obesity, body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference, according to recent research published in BMJ Journals on Feb. 28.

In a first-of-its-kind panel data analysis, Japanese researchers sought to assess whether a general habit in those with type 2 diabetes affects overall health measurements.

“The major finding of this study is that changes in eating speed can affect obesity, BMI and waist circumference,” wrote coauthors Yumi Hurst and Haruhisa Fukuda at the Kyushu University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, in Fukuoka, Japan. “The control of eating speed may ... be a possible means of regulating body weight and preventing obesity, which in turn reduces the risk of developing non-communicable diseases. Eating quickly is associated with impaired glucose tolerance and insulin resistance and is a known risk factor for diabetes through increases in body weight.”

The researchers used patient data from more than 59,000 Japanese men and women obtained from the Japan Medical Data Center (JMDC), including gender, age, medical diagnoses, specific treatments and expenditures. Study subjects were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes during the study period. Researchers measured BMI for the cohort and considered obesity as being 25 or more.

Lifestyle habits were collected during physician visits. They included eating speed, after dinner snacking, skipping breakfast, alcohol consumption, sleeping habits and tobacco consumption.

The habits were analyzed using a generalized estimating equation model and a fixed-effects model to measure obesity and BMI/waist circumference, respectively, which showed eating more slowly stopped the development of obesity.

The “slow-eating” group included 44 percent of women with an average BMI of 22. Only 22 percent of the individuals were considered obese by researcher standards. The average waist circumference was 80 centimeters (31 inches).

The “fast-eating” group included 27 percent of women with an average BMI of 25. Almost 45 percent of the group was considered obese, and the average waist circumference was almost 87 centimeters (34 inches).

Approximately 52 percent of the study subjects changed their eating speed during the course of the study—with 171 going from fast to slow eaters and 92 subjects moving from slow to fast.

The chief limitation the authors noted was that eating speed and lifestyle habits were self-assed and could be vulnerable to reporting bias.

“Many studies have shown that eating habits are associated with BMI and weight gain,” the researchers concluded. “However, this study used panel data to show that changes in eating habits have a strong relationship with obesity, BMI and waist circumference. These findings indicate that weight loss can be supported through the reduction of eating speed, the cessation of eating dinner within 2 hours before sleeping, the cessation of snacking after dinner and consistently having breakfast.”