Does Chewing Gum Help You Lose Weight?
Want to slim down?
By now, you’ve probably tried all sorts of supplements, foods, and diets with little or no success despite their promised claims but have you tried something as simple as placing a stick of gum in your mouth and chewing it?
If you haven’t, then you probably should, at least according to some people who say that gum chewing can melt pounds off, especially in the face.
But is it true?
Does chewing gum help you lose weight?
The theory is that the action of chewing gum burns calories by working muscles in the jaw. And because gum chewing is repetitive and can go on for fairly long periods of time, there’s the potential to burn a lot of calories, which in turn can contribute to weight loss at the site of the activity, that being the facial area. That’s how things should go in theory. Something else happens in practice, though.
As it turns out, continuously opening and closing your mouth to chew gum does in fact work the jaw muscles and burn calories. That amount, however, is negligible at only about 11 calories per hour. So unless you’re spending 24 hours of the day getting your Violet Beauregarde on, relying on gum chewing as a form of exercise for fat loss purposes would be a waste of time.1Further, whatever calories you burn chewing can be negated by the type of gum if not chewing one that’s calorie-free, as regular gum ranges from 10 to 25 calories a piece and sugarless gum typically contains 5 calories.
The very little energy expenditure is one reason why there’s no truth to the claim that chewing gum can help you lose your chubby cheeks and double chin. The amount of calories you can burn simply isn’t enough to do anything of significance. The other reason why gum can’t help with weight loss in the manner it’s often described to involves the misconception of how fat loss works with the idea of spot reduction, as it’s believed that it’s possible to lose fat in one specific area of the body. Instead, the body loses fat from all over, with some areas losing it faster than others. That being the case, were we to imagine that gum chewing did in fact have a greater calorie-burning effect than it does, there’s no guarantee that the body would burn fat cells specifically in the face as opposed to those in the belly or elsewhere despite the pterygoids, masseter, and temporalis getting a good workout from the gum chewing.2The pterygoids, masseter, and temporalis are the primary muscles in the face that are involved in chewing, which is technically known as “mastication”!
From what we’ve seen, gum chewing doesn’t burn enough calories to lead to significant weight loss. Neither does it zap fat in problem areas. So the act of chewing gum can’t help you lose weight in the way that it’s purported to. That isn’t to say that gum can’t help with weight loss at all, though.
If gum chewing has any weight loss effect, it may be in the activity’s ability to help avoid unnecessary calories. For some people, keeping the mouth busy with gum may prevent grazing throughout the day or distract them from wanting to reach for a high-calorie snack between meals. In others, gum may help reduce the appetite, with the process of chewing stimulating the release of gut hormones related to satiety that signal to the brain that there’s no need for food. Either way, chewing gum may be of aid to weight loss by helping you eat less in support of a diet that restricts daily calorie intake by a large enough margin to create a negative energy balance.
Otherwise known as a calorie deficit, a negative energy balance is a necessary condition of weight loss. As a necessary condition, a deficit has to be in place for weight loss to occur. There’s no supplement, food, exercise, or piece of equipment that can subvert that universal law. That goes for gum chewing, too. Without any other change in behavior, it fails like every other miracle weight loss method that’s supposed to shed pounds without much effort on an individual’s part. It’s only when you take measures to cut down on food that gum chewing can serve any benefit to weight loss by aiding in the suppression of impulsive eating and the possibility of taking in more calories than are needed, which can result in a surplus that causes weight gain rather than its loss.
So does chewing gum help you lose weight?
The answer is yes, but not in the way you hoped.3That, of course, is being able to lose weight by doing virtually nothing.
Sorry to burst your bubble!
Glossary: caloric deficit, calories, diet, exercise, exercise equipment, fat, hormones, muscle, supplement, workout
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