More Thoughts on Hunger and Emotional Eating: Hara Hachi Bu

The Japanese have an expression, hara hachi bu, or “eat until you’re 80 percent full.”

Residents of the Japanese island of Okinawa, who are among the longest living and healthiest people in the world, have traditionally practiced hara hachi bu. The practice is to be mindful of your eating and eat only until you are 80 percent full.

To try hara hachi bu, eat until you feel “mostly full,” then wait 20 minutes. Pay attention to what the experience is like for you. Notice what that 80 percent really feels like.

Stopping at 80 percent fullness is actually a healthy strategy because it takes the stomach time to communicate fullness to the rest of the body. Many who stop at 80 percent will feel satisfied and will ultimately eat less. If you are accustomed to eating until you are more than 80 percent full, you might find that this stopping point leaves you less sleepy and more energetic after meals.

Practicing hara hachi bu is an excellent way to play with your experience of hunger and fullness. View it as an experiment. What does it feel like to leave the table with extra room? How difficult is it to assess that 80 percent feeling? Are there emotions or reactions that come up for you when you experiment with eating in this way?

Take good care,

Melissa

My Six Word Memoir: “Life is not the dress rehearsal”

I posted this quote (attributed to Rose Tremain) on my bedroom wall when I was sixteen and now it lives on my website--you can find it (here).

Here’s a bit about what it means to me:

Make sure you are writing the script you want to be living.

Get clear on your priorities, your values, and your goals and then spend your energy accordingly. Spending the time to do this will pay off in ways you won’t believe. Ask yourself, “Are you running your life or is your life running you?” If your life isn’t what you want it to be, spend the energy, the time, or the dollars to get the help you need to get on YOUR track.

Don’t wait for someone else to yell, “Action!”

Don’t wait for permission from anyone else to live your life. Make sure to create space for you. If it seems like there is never time or opportunity for the things you value or for your priorities, there is something wrong.

By the same token, don’t neglect yourself in the care you extend. Remember--put your oxygen mask on first. It’s essential. Self-care and attention to your needs will make not only your life, but the world, a better place.

Be brave. Don’t let stage fright stop you.

Even Oscar winners get stage fright. Courage does not mean having no fear. Courage means doing the hard thing anyway. Acknowledge your stage fright. Take a deep breath, be afraid, and then do the thing you need to do. Just take the first small step. We tend to have more regret around the things we didn’t do than the things we did that didn’t go perfectly.

Don’t be afraid to improvise.

You don’t have to know every step of the process in order to get started. If you have a goal or a dream and you can identify one step that you can take towards it—get moving. Plans unfold and evolve as we live them. Things that originally seemed impossible from a distance aren’t usually so imposing once we find a way to start approaching them. Take action and let the momentum and the plan unfold and build as you go.

This entry was inspired by Diana who blogs over at Iowa Avenue and also has a blog called The Menu Coach Chronicles. She tagged me to write a Six Word Memoir. It’s now my turn to pass the blogging baton by tagging people myself.

The rules are simple--write your own six word memoir following these five rules:

• Write your own six word (max) memoir


• Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want


• Link to the person who tagged you in your post.


• Tag at least five more blogs.


• Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

I invite the following bloggers to play. Some of you I know and some of you I haven't met. I just love your blogs and am interested in what you'll have to say. Hope you decide to play along.
Karly, Gregory Anne, Jay, Henrik and Stephanie --Tag—you’re it!

Spring Cleaning For a Better Life

I saw a chiropractor for the first time last week. I have to admit, the long series of crunches, cracks and pops that echoed in my ear when he made his first "adjustment" thoroughly unnerved me. However, within seconds after that single, weird twist of my neck, I was flooded with the most amazing feeling of relief--from a pain I hadn't even realized that I had.

Thinking back, I realize that I've been living with this discomfort for months. I'd gotten "used to it." I'd adjusted and "forgotten" about it. And it felt SO GOOD when it was gone.

The experience got me thinking. So many times, a client struggling with weight and eating will be frustrated by their lack of energy or focus or motivation. When we dig deeper, they'll realize that something is going on that is putting their life out of balance--some stress or some difficult situation or some added demand. Whatever it is, they don't quickly identify it because, like the pain in my neck, they too have "adjusted" or learned to tolerate whatever it is. They've come to think of it as "normal" and they've been trying to "work around it." For emotional eaters, "working around" or not thinking about things tends to be related to overeating--because food and eating are ways to distract ourselves or "not think about" things.

The other problem is, these annoying, irritating or difficult things that we learn to tolerate or put up with, AREN'T WORKING FOR US. They use up our energy. They wear us out. They disorganize us. They keep us from being in optimal balance and from moving forward in the direction we really want to go. And many of them, with a little direct attention, can be dealt with.

So what are you tolerating, putting up with, "adjusting to" or trying not to think about?

Do you have a pile of anything in your life that you have to walk around anytime you want to get somewhere?

It might be a literal pile like laundry that needs to be folded or the junk in the garage that needs to go away, or it might be a metaphorical pile like a truth that needs to be told or faced or an ache or pain that you need to deal with. What is there in your life, big or small, that is sub-optimal? That gets in your way?

I'll make you a bet. I bet that if you started a list of all the things you are tolerating that could be better--or ignoring instead of addressing--you could begin to take care of many of them in less than one hour a piece. I know I'm amazed at what I'm starting to cross off my list.

So here's your Spring Cleaning Challenge:
Make your list. Put it somewhere where you can add to it as you recognize new items. Then commit to spending a minimum of 15 minutes a day clearing things off of it. Making the appointment to get your teeth cleaned only takes five minutes. Cleaning out a drawer takes about fifteen. Most tough phone calls or conversations you've been dreading will take less than an hour. You can knock out a round of errands in an amazingly short time if you make an organized plan first.

Take the challenge. I promise you that a little focused Spring Cleaning can make a noticeable difference.

Take good care,

Melissa

Avoiding Holiday Stress (and Emotional Eating): Tip Five

Take Care of Yourself

I know, it's easier said than done. And yet--when you do it--everything else really is easier. Learning to allow ourselves to prioritize our own self care is an extremely hard lesson for lots of us to learn--but it's really an essential first step. I know that many tip sheets for coping with holiday stress trumpet the value of self care, but I've worked hard to create a way to make it a lot more do-able. Here's my end-of-year gift to you: a Self-care Package(tm). The Self-care Package(tm) I've created consists of five quick-and-to-the-point audio lessons. There's absolutely no cost. Just go here and look in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Or you can use the form in the top right-hand corner of this blog. Once a week for five weeks you'll be emailed a link to a very short (about 3 minutes) audio with concrete steps (and assignments) aimed at helping you improve your self-care and get on track for 2008. I designed the weekly package deliveries to be straightforward and absolutely possible to accomplish. Check it out and leave a comment below to let me know what you think.

Take good care,

Melissa

Is gaining sleep a key to losing weight?

Researchers continue to learn more about the relationship between reduced sleep and weight gain. If you are feeling out of control with food, eating or weight it is something important to pay attention to.

Do you overeat when you are tired? I know I do. It's easy to mistake feelings of tiredness for hunger, and it's tempting to eat when we're tired to try to increase our energy or alertness.

Now we are learning that being low on sleep can actually cause you to be hungrier and that skimping on sleep may cause weight gain whether or not you eat more!

Short-term sleep deprivation seems to lower levels of leptin, a hormone that tells us when we are full, and increase levels of the hormone ghrelin, which promotes appetite. Have you had the experience after a night of little sleep where you feel like you can eat everything in sight and never feel full? That's likely the low leptin, high ghrelin effect. In one study, of 12 males whose sleep was restricted for two days, appetite increased dramatically, as did the desire for sweets, starch and salty foods. In fact, cravings for high carbohydrate, high calorie foods increased by 45 percent!

Sleep restriction seems to cause physiologic effects that may actually predispose one to gain weight, and this may be at least partially independent of how much you eat. In a study involving over 68,000 women who were followed for 16 years, knowing that a subject usually slept less than seven hours a night was predictive of weight gain, including a substantial increased risk of major weight gain (greater than 33 pounds over the sixteen years) and obesity. Women who regularly slept five hours or less were 32% more likely to have gained at least 33 pounds over the 16 years than those who slept 7-8 hours.

Even when researchers controlled for levels of caloric intake and activity, those who slept less gained more weight. The weight gain was not accounted for by the amount of food that was eaten!

Other studies of men and women have documented higher levels of body fat in individuals who sleep less than 8 hours a night. Although the complicated relationship between sleep and weight is far from well understood, certain findings seem to be consistent, and at least one point seems clear. Sleep is not a variable that should be overlooked in anyone’s self care.

For busy people, sleep is often the first thing to go when the to-do list gets too crowded. It's a huge mistake—for lots of different reasons—and staying in control of your relationship with food is one of them.

Melissa