Episode 71 What the Japanese Can Teach us About Eating Mindfully and Living Purposefully

Why do the Japanese live longer and healthier lives despite high carbohydrate consumption? What do they do differently to those of us in places like USA, UK and Australia?

One reason is their practice of "Hara Hachi Bu", which is eating until you're 80% full. I explore this concept and discuss some of the other differences in diet and lifestyle that can make all the difference to your health.

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay

Transcript

Fiona Kane: 0:31

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Now, recently I saw a post on X that was actually talking about how people eat in Japan and how that helps with their longevity and their health, and I thought it was interesting. Some of the things I've talked about before and it's what I do in my clinic, but I thought it's sort of just worth bringing up because it is interesting to understand why people stay healthy and why people don't. In many situations, as I've said before, there's always a percentage of luck in life. So I'm not saying that anyone who ever gets sick it's their fault or anything like that. I don't say that at all. But just when we kind of look at populations and we look in general at their health, it is really interesting to see what one might be doing. That is different and usually it's more than one thing. But anyway, I just thought I'd bring this to your attention because, like I said, it's interesting and it's worth understanding, it's worth knowing. So I actually found this on the Twitter slash X of someone called at the FernandocZ, so Fernando Xiao Zheng. I'm probably saying the name wrong, sorry if I'm doing that, but uh, anyway, that's where I found it, just so I'm just referencing this, uh, this person on x.

Fiona Kane: 1:59

So he was talking about how, you know, japanese people kind of can live to 100 plus and um, but they eat tons of carbs, you know, and we always talk about how carbs are a problem, but for you know, japanese people less so, and essentially, when Americans or people in the Western world eat the same amount of carbs or not going to the gym and different things like that they end up getting sick and they die. And why is that? And he talks about how. He said in Japan they have a life expectancy. Didn't realize I had so much trouble with that word, but he said in Japan they have a life expectancy of eight or more years than in the US. They spend around half as much on healthcare, they're around 10 times less obese. And he said, on the surface they don't necessarily seem healthy. They drink and some of them smoke and all that kind of stuff. And he's like well, what's going on?

Fiona Kane: 3:03

So he's referred to a concept and my niece, who's living in Japan at the moment, will probably laugh at my pronunciation of this. I apologize if I get it wrong, but it's a concept called Hara Hachi Buu, and apparently it's an old Confucian teaching that instructs people to eat until they're 80% full. And this is actually something that I talk to my clients about and what I recommend is to learn about different elements of being satisfied when you eat. So there's eating till you're satisfied, there's eating till you're full and there's eating till you're bursting. And in the Western culture a lot of us eat until we're full and or bursting. That's kind of what we've been taught is normal. We kind of just keep going right, and there's many reasons for this. So it can just be a cultural thing that that's what we've been taught to do. We've been taught to eat till we're full, so we kind of wait until we start feeling like, oh, I'm full, you know. So it's a cultural thing that we've kind of been taught that.

Fiona Kane: 4:11

But also, I think a big reason for that in the Western world was a couple of things right. One, it's the speed at which we're eating, because many of us are eating super fast. We're not really stopping to chew properly, we're just getting straight in there, eating super fast and not really paying attention. So one is that we kind of just tend to wolf down our food and we're in a hurry and we eat really quickly and when you do that you won't notice how you're feeling. But also, it does take time for all of the mechanisms in your body the feedback mechanisms for your stomach to start to feel full and your body to recognize that you're eating fat and the brain to start responding and saying okay, it's time to slow down. That might take 10 or 20 minutes and if you're eating really fast, if you're downing a meal in three to five minutes, that's not going to kick in. But the other thing as well is that we're just not something I've talked about before we're just not eating consciously, right? So if you're eating in the car on the way somewhere, or if you're eating while you're scrolling through your social media or while you're watching television or while you're doing some other activity, while you're working, you're on your laptop getting your work done. But essentially, if you're not paying attention when you're eating and you're not focusing at all on eating, then you just don't notice stuff, you don't notice how you feel, you don't notice that you feel You're just downing the food, right. So you need to tune into your body and be present to notice all of the subtle feelings.

Fiona Kane: 5:41

And it's interesting when I have this conversation, there's a lot of people, well, the ones I see in the Western world and I'm not speaking to all people, but a lot of people that just don't, they haven't really noticed these signs. It's not until they actually slow down and they actually sort of you know, eating slowly, paying attention that they know that they have all these signals. People just don't know they have them. The other thing that happens, of course too, is that, um and I've seen it happen in the western world is where, as you talk, to ignore those feelings and I've seen it with children a lot oh, I thought you were a big girl and you know you really should eat everything on your plate because someone's starving somewhere or whatever. But actually it's kind of culturally taught to us as well that, well, you're not grown up until you can eat the whole plate and all these kinds of different messages some subtle, some not that we get. So we essentially get taught, even if we do initially have that intuition and that we're connected to our body and we kind of feel it, those children are often taught to ignore that right. So from a lot of my clients, it's actually just being present enough just to even notice how they feel.

Fiona Kane: 6:47

This is really really common for people who suffer from reflux and indigestion and those issues as well, because it's not unusual to end up with digestive issues when you're not being present when you eat, because what we need to do is we need to be in rest and digest when we're eating. When you're in rest and digest, your body knows to make the digestive enzymes, and so you can make the enzymes and you can break down and absorb the nutrients, so your body can use the calories, it can use the nutrients and it can do all the things it needs to do with that food. However, if we're eating when we're not consciously eating, when we're not paying attention, we're doing other things. We're often eating in what's called fight or flight mode, and in fight or flight mode our body's in a rushing around and it's in this other place. But the thing about fight or flight mode is you might be stressing about the deadline or whatever it is that you're doing or the traffic. You feel eating when you're in traffic. It's just like I can only imagine that sort of fight or flight mode going on inside your body.

Fiona Kane: 7:48

But when we're in that mode, you can't make digestive enzymes, your body is not sending any circulation to your digestive system. Because if your body literally thinks you're about to become lunch because in fight or flight mode that's what your body thinks, so it might be there's bad traffic or there's a deadline or there's something you're stressing about in your life, but your body perceives as you're about to get eaten by a bear. So if you're about to become lunch, you don't need to digest lunch. So your body is just not making the enzymes. So if we're not slowing down and we're not being present, we're not moving our body into sort of that rest and digest mode. Body is able to prepare, to digest the meal. So your body is totally unable to do that. And because it's unable to do that and you're not making the enzymes, you're not breaking the food down and it's not moving through your system properly.

Fiona Kane: 8:40

Of course, what's going to happen is it's going to be sitting in your stomach for longer than it's eventually going to be coming back up, or it's just going to make you uncomfortable in some way bloating, whatever. But what's going to happen is throughout your digestive system. You're going to get various symptoms. It what's going to happen is throughout your digestive system. You're going to get various symptoms. It might be gas, it might be bloating or it might be all of those kind of reflux symptoms. So it's not unusual for people who have those issues that when I go through these strategies with those people and encourage them to slow down and be present and notice how different foods make them feel, and notice how they feel when they're eating a meal, notice the warning signs they might get, where they're all of a sudden going oh yeah, okay, this isn't right for me.

Fiona Kane: 9:23

It might be a really healthy food, but it just might not be right for you. So, just kind of noticing the difference between, like, how you're feeling when you eat the food, are you starting to get warning signals that maybe this isn't the right thing for you to eat, at least not right now, or that you just need to slow down or that you need to. You know, I encourage my clients put your knife and fork down between bites, just give yourself a moment and two right, so just allowing all of that digestion to take place. And when we do that it gives us our body more time for all the feedback mechanisms to know that we've had enough. But when we do that also we're much more likely to be in rest and digest mode, we're much more likely to notice how different food makes us feel and give our body a chance to digest it right. So all of this kind of slowing down and being present with what we eat can make a big difference with how your body digests it, with what symptoms you may or may not get, with how much you eat and also with what you eat.

Fiona Kane: 10:25

Because when you slow down and eat something slowly and really presently, that's often when you notice that it's not very either, that you don't feel well while you're eating it, let alone after you're eating it. But you might also actually notice what it tastes like. And it's not unusual for people to not enjoy the fast food as much. Once they really slow down and pay attention to it they don't. They say, oh, it doesn't taste very good. Because when you eat something, really unconsciously and you're watching telly or you know, using it to push down some emotions or whatever, and we're just throwing it in there, we don't always notice. But when you stop and slow down and have the food, sometimes you're kind of like oh okay, I used to. Really I used to enjoy this a lot more. For some reason I don't enjoy it so much anymore. It's not unusual for that to happen, and that actually did happen with one of my mentors.

Fiona Kane: 11:15

I've talked about this on the podcast before. One of my mentors had a client who is actually a doctor, and this client used to eat maccas every day at lunchtime and he would drive to go to the drive-thru, get the food, eat it on the way back to his clinic, and it was all very fast, and he was having a lot of reflux, a lot of digestive symptoms, and he didn't want to stop eating the Maccas though. So my mentor said to him okay, well, what I want you to do, instead of eating it in the car on the way back to the clinic, can you spend 10 minutes in the car park at Macca's and just eat it there? So just eat it in a really relaxed way in the car park, then go back to the clinic. So I said, okay, I'll try that. And he did that, and you know what? His reflux disappeared, his digestive issues disappeared. He was still eating the Macca's, which is not what I'm going to be recommending, but anyway, he was still eating that, but the digestive issues disappeared. But then what happened is a few weeks later, he actually said oh, I don't eat maccas anymore because now I've slowed down and I'm eating it slowly. I'm not enjoying it, it's not nice.

Fiona Kane: 12:20

So it's interesting that, whether it be maccas or whatever, it is that when we slow down, it's not always as good as we thought it was when we were eating it, when we're throwing it down really fast on the way back to the clinic or the office or wherever we work, right? So, anyway, so this concept, this again I'm saying it wrong, but hara hachi bu, it is that sort of instruction to sort of eat until you're about 80% full, which is what I would say would be to a satisfied right. So it's a satisfaction as opposed to a fullness. And you know, and it's so again, essentially it's about what I was just talking about. It's about mindful eating and listening to your body. And you know what happens when people do this. They just stop eating earlier. They're kind of like okay, and it's based on this post he's saying it as well that it's based on that kind of like 20 minutes it takes for those messages to get through your body. You get those messages if you slow down. And if you slow down and you just start getting the signals to say that you've eaten enough and it's time to stop eating. If we don't slow down and we're not present, we don't get those signals.

Fiona Kane: 13:31

So he said that Japanese people consume about 25% fewer calories than the Americans, yet they feel more satisfied after meals. So he just said you know why is that? And it's because they're not just eating less, it's about other things. They're eating less, but they're also eating better. So then he had a bit of a look at what's in the Japanese diet. What are they eating? That's helping them feel full and that's helping them feel satisfied, as opposed to full, but keeping them sustained.

Fiona Kane: 14:04

And so he talked about this and he said all right, so they eat fermented foods. So, for starters, they have fermented foods, and fermented foods really support the digestive system. They support a healthy microbiome. So when you're eating things that support your digestive system, then you're supporting your immune system. You're often supporting your mood, and when you're often supporting your mood and when you're eating things that support your digestive system, like I said before, you're making more of the bacteria and the microbes that you need to stay healthy. And what happens, too, is that a lot of these foods. I'll go through them in a moment. And what happens, too, is that a lot of these foods. I'll go through them in a moment. But these foods are fibrous foods and so fibrous foods also make you feel full for longer. They help kind of just clear things through, clear things out, but they also feed the microbiome and when we eat a lot of you know. So these are carbohydrate foods, right, and it's like pickled vegetables, that sort of thing. Right Now, if you're eating other carbs, so if you're eating carbs from I don't know whether it be the maccas or whether it be a bag of chips or just some sort of packaged food, you're eating that food.

Fiona Kane: 15:21

Mostly they're carbohydrate foods. You're eating those. That's actually not feeding the good bacteria, it's feeding the harmful bacteria. So when you eat the kind of those empty carbs to come from that junk food, then you're feeding the wrong kind of bacteria and that sort of creates imbalance and makes you sort of crave carbs more, crave sugar more, because that junk food is essentially because it's feeding that wrong bacteria. It's populating more and more, it's replicating more and more and it makes you crave more junk food and more carbohydrates, right. So, and that kind of fiber, it's kind of fiberless carbs or very low in fiber carbs and that just doesn't sustain, it doesn't feed the healthy microbiome and it makes you just your blood sugar goes up and then it drops later. So you still may be like carbs, but it has a very different response in your body.

Fiona Kane: 16:17

So what's happening is that they're having these pickled vegetables. So they're having it might be fermented miso, which is kind of more there's protein in that as well, or natto, but also pickled vegetables, which is the carbs, and so these are prebiotic, probiotic foods and they support your body right. So most American diets, or just standard American, standard Australian Western diets, aren't eating all of these kind of pickled and fermented foods. So that's for starters, that's sort of what they do. So the other thing he says in this article he's talking about, the Japanese have a lot of green tea, and so green tea is a little bit lower in caffeine than black tea, just a little bit. But also, you know, it has things like it boosts your metabolism and it reduces inflammation and it boosts your metabolism, it reduces inflammation and it's sort of cancer protective. Basically it has catechins, which are the antioxidants, and they do all of those things. They drink an average of five cups of green tea per day. So there's all of this benefit from having this green tea as well.

Fiona Kane: 17:32

It's not just having the green tea, it's what they're not having. If you're having five cups of green tea, that's probably five other drinks you're not having. You're not having the soft drink, you're not having the milky, syrupy, fancy coffees. I'm not saying coffee's bad, but just the kind of ones that a lot of people drink. Coffee. I'm not saying coffee's bad, but just the kind of ones that a lot of people drink. They're these giant things which are just full of milk and syrups and sugars and things like that. These people are having this green tea and not having all of these junky drinks that they might otherwise be having. It's also just fluid itself, so it's staying hydrated.

Fiona Kane: 18:10

So green tea contains L-theanine and that promotes relaxation without drowsiness, right? So it sort of helps people with stress and with sleep. So L-theanine we now know like it's something that they use in sleep formulas and stress formulas. So we know it helps with sleep and stress. So five cups of that a day, it's helping with your sleep, helping with your stress. All those antioxidants, it's five other drinks you might not be having. So either, you're not drinking at all, which happens a lot in the Western culture. We're just not drinking enough fluid at all, or if we do, like I said, we're having the kind of milky syrupy coffees or we're having the colas or the juices or some other sort of junky sort.

Fiona Kane: 18:51

So then the next thing he talks about in here again with the Japanese pronunciation, sorry, but he talks about a concept called ikigai and apparently it translates to something along the lines of reason for being, and it's about finding purpose in life, no matter how small, and I've talked about this before, I've talked about this when I've talked about longevity before that it is really, really important to have purpose, and as human beings we need to have purpose. We need to have some purpose of some kind, and that doesn't really matter. It can be the smallest thing or it can be the biggest thing, but if we have purpose, if we have somewhere to be, somewhere to show up, someone that's going to miss us or notice that we're not there, makes a big difference. And you see this in all the communities where there's longevity, that people have purpose. Right up until the day they die, they're not there, they just kind of retire and then just disappear and end up in a nursing home and no one's ever heard of them. Again, these people have purpose in their lives and so you know it could be that they're involved in a community group, they're doing some sort of volunteering there's a million different things that could be but they're just not kind of just stopping and not being involved in anything right.

Fiona Kane: 20:20

So he said here in Japan, retirement isn't the end goal. Many people work well into their 80s and 90s, not out of necessity but out of choice. So again, it's not kind of just retiring and stopping, it's actually staying engaged and contributing to society and that leads to better cognitive health. So their brain stays active, so that leads to that. So it's just like, if you do retire, it's ways to make that still happen. So it could be doing craft, it could be doing puzzles, and it could be going out and being involved in community, being in groups, but it's just staying active as part of the community, using your brain and being engaged. If you're engaged in this world, if you're engaged in society, that makes a big difference to how you feel and to your overall health, and we see it in all of the groups around the world who have longevity. This is what we see. So wherever we're looking, italy, wherever we're looking China, wherever we look, this is the kind of thing that you see.

Fiona Kane: 21:15

The other thing is incidental exercise. So he's saying that Japanese cities, they're designed for walking and cycling. It's not intense cardio, but it's consistent, constant, low-impact exercise, and so he just said it keeps their metabolism going and it's like consistent movement. So that makes a big difference as well, whereas in the Western world, a lot of us drive everywhere and that's a really, really big thing. Excuse me, I'll just have a sip of water.

Fiona Kane: 21:50

So then he talks about, okay, social connections. So what I was talking about before as well, what I've talked about quite a few times, they've got a strong culture of community and family ties. So they actually have. So in Okinawa, which is one of the places that's been in all of these kind of like blue zone, kind of a place known for wellness for centurions, all that sort of stuff he was saying, got a tradition I'm going to get this name wrong too called MOAI, and it's a social support group that lasts for life. Okay, members meet regularly, providing emotional and even financial support.

Fiona Kane: 22:35

The sense of belonging and purpose is a powerful antidote to the isolation many face in modern societies. So they've got these social connections. So community is important, family is important and they have these lifetime social support groups right, which is not what happens in all Western societies. Many of us we live in our own homes with our own family. We live a long way from relatives and from family often and don't necessarily have aunties and uncles or grandparents or whatever around, and so we're quite isolated and we don't necessarily have constant social support groups. It's something that is missing a lot in the West and which is what we're trying to sort of get back into the West.

Fiona Kane: 23:20

So he's talking about here is you know, the secret to longevity. It's not about strict diets or intense workouts. It's about balance, mindfulness and community. So having a sense of community being associated with your community, having mindfulness, like when you're eating, to be present, to be present enough to eat until you're satisfied, not full, not bursting, and notice which foods are nourishing or which foods are not. Getting that balance of foods where you are eating kind of fibrous foods that are kind of like fermented and vegetables and things like that that support that microbiome.

Fiona Kane: 23:53

But also that sense of community, community being involved in your community and, like I said before, moving your body, but it's not necessarily that you have to go to the gym and you have to do cross feed or whatever, and if you do that and it works for you, great, but you know it's just that they they have towns that are made for a lot of walking, so I just think that that is really really interesting to talk about today. Hey, I'm wearing a Japanese-inspired print as well, by Samantha of Melbourne, but it's really important to understand the things that encourage health and well-being and longevity and the things that work against it. So a lot of what the Japanese are doing very clearly is what supports that longevity, and so we could learn a lot from that. So, being a part of your community, eating in a balanced way, eating in a really conscious way, where you are paying attention and you are noticing, and eating slow enough so that your body can digest the food, but also slow enough so that you're eating till you're satisfied, not full All of those things moving your body, all of it makes a big difference.

Fiona Kane: 25:04

So, anyway, I just thought that was really interesting information to bring to you, and it's some of what I've talked about before, but kind of just it's an important message to. That's how we avoid overeating, that's how we eat well and that's how we stay active and stay cognitive functional all those things for a healthy life. So, anyway, I will leave it there. Please remember to like, subscribe, share If you're on Rumble or YouTube, or you can go to Rumble on YouTube and you can comment on this video as well. I'd really appreciate if you share this podcast so more people can benefit from the health information I'm giving here. I hope you have a great week. See you next time. Bye.