In Okinawa, they practice a Confucian teaching called hara hachi bu, roughly translated to "eat until you are eight parts (out of ten) full."
Okinawa is also known for its disproportionate number of people older than dirt (or at least over 100 years). And a tendency towards non-obesity. Is their longevity and general health related to hara hachi bu? No one knows for sure. But let's take a closer look at it anyway.
What It Means
When the food you eat enters your stomach, its internal stretch receptors help relay a message to your brain to tell it you’re full. But it's not an instant message; it can take 15-20 minutes to arrive. This means that if you eat until you’re (100%) full, you will wind up being over-full at each meal. And because your stomach stretches every time you do this, you’ll gradually have to eat more and more to feel satisfied.
While it's normal for the stomach to expand after eating and shrink back down as it empties its contents into the intestines, there is evidence that eating too much can lead to a stretched-out stomach and eating less can cause its capacity to shrink. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22real.html) In other words, constantly overeating (which is what eating quickly until full means) will increase the stomach's capacity, requiring more food to make it feel full.
Also, in 2007 a Cornell University study investigated "whether people who use internal cues of satiation when eating a meal are likely to weigh less than people who instead rely on external cues." An "internal cue" would be feeling full, while an "external cue" would be something like an empty plate. The study found that: "Normal-weight people indicated that they were more likely to be influenced by internal cues of meal cessation, while overweight people indicated that they were more influenced by external cues."
How It's Done
So how do we hit the 80% mark? There's no magic signal that we're at 80% but once we begin to feel any stomach pressure that's a really good hint. Beyond that, there are some things we can do to make it so. We'll be hitting on more of them later in the Blitz. Here are the ones we'll be starting with:
- Slow down. This is #1 on the list for a reason.
- Chew your food. This will help you slow down. It could be 1.5.
- Eat half of what you normally eat and then check how you feel. More on this later, but give it a go now.
- If you're using big plates, then use smaller plates. If not, be smug.
- Keep water drinking to a minimum during meals to allow your gastric juices to be potent.
That's it! For now, anyway.
When you first start following hara hachi bu, you might feel a bit uncomfortable getting up from the table before you feel full. However, you may notice that about 20 minutes after the meal is over you suddenly do feel full.
It can take 15-20 meals to reset the muscle memory of the stomach to get used to less food. Trust that it will happen and anata ga shiawase ni narimasu*.
Be seeing you.
-gary
* "you will be happy" in Japanese, if Google Translate is to be trusted.