Hara Hachi Bu

If you do any reading about healthy diets and lifestyles, you're bound to come across something hailing the people of Okinawa, Japan. They live long and amazingly healthy lives. Living to be 100 and still being healthy and active is fairly routine. Also, as an interesting aside, breast cancer is so rare that women do not have routine mammograms. They don't need them!

Many factors play into these statistics. Genes, I'm sure, are part. But the lifestyle is also a major contributor. Healthy diet, lots of veggies, active lifestyle, and strong, supportive communities are important elements that all of us can emulate. One principle the Okinawans follow, however, that has recently been driven home to me is Hara Hachi Bu, or "eat until you are eight parts full." Or, in other words, stop stuffing yourself.

Of course, we all know that we shouldn't be stuffing ourselves, but it does raise the question, what *is* full? It's something that I have struggled with in my time practicing IE and that I have worked on with my therapist. I have made progress in this area and thought I had finally hit on what full means. Then I started the spend less, eat more project and a funny thing happened. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I began to realize that I needed far less to be satisfied than I thought.

How did this come about? Well, I was eating smaller portions, not because it was a diet or because I was *supposed* to for IE, but because when spending less money, I had to make the meals last the week and that meant eating smaller servings so I could have leftovers for a subsequent meal. At first, when finishing meals, I'd often feel a bit panicky. Like I was still a bit hungry and hadn't had enough to eat and I was certain I would soon be starving. But for some reason, although it was a little worrisome, it was less emotionally charged for me than it might have been if I was doing it in connection with a diet or even IE. This was my own project after all, and I could stop it whenever I wanted. Then, I started to realize that after 30 minutes or so, I felt fine and I usually continued to feel fine for several hours until my next planned meal. Turned out, that what I thought couldn't possibly be enough, was in fact, just right. Unconsciously, I was practicing Hara Hachi Bu!

But this isn't news, right? I mean, we all know that portions are too big and we should be eating less. Every diet on the planet tells you that! But, it turns out that even what I thought was a small portion was often more than I needed. And the difference this time is that because I stumbled onto it in my own way, by experimenting without pressuring or judging myself and listening to what my body was telling me, and not because I was too fat and was adhering to some restrictive plan, it felt natural. That has never happened before. In the past, sure, I could have gone to McDonald's and ordered a cheeseburger instead of a quarter pounder with cheese, but it felt like a punishment. I *really* wanted that quarter pounder with cheese, but I didn't deserve to have what I wanted. That was the penance for being fat. But through my IE work and my spend less, eat better project, I'm naturally coming to a place where I'm realizing that I don't have to punish myself. I *can* have the quarter pounder with cheese if I want it, but you know what? I don't want it so often anymore. It doesn't make me feel good. I'm just fine with a small cheeseburger. How weird is that??

Was this just a fluke? I don't think so. This week, while traveling for business and facing restaurant meals for the first time in a while, I had a meal that, in the past, would not have seemed that big to me. But at the end, not only was I uncomfortably full, I ended up with a stomach ache! Wow! Seems like my body is adjusting and I'm starting to really get tuned in to this IE stuff. Mind blowing.

Hara Hachi Bu. Those Okinawans are on to something!