2 replies to this topic

[100YearsToGo]

Would you guys consider the practice of Hara Hachi Bu an effective form of calory restriction? That is, providing some or all of the benefits of a full blown CR diet?

[Michael]

Would you guys consider the practice of Hara Hachi Bu an effective form of calory restriction? That is, providing some or all of the benefits of a full blown CR diet?

No. If practiced rigorously, it might make a good obesity-avoidance diet, but it's not going to yield CR: the Calories wouldn't be low enough or well-enough controlled, and of course you wouldn't have the required monitoring of nutrition.

Indeed, the Okinawans, who are famous as the sole clear natural experiment in human CR and are said to live by Hara Hachi Bu, haven't managed to stay on CR thereby: their original CRed status was imposed by good old-fashioned poverty, combined with an unusually healthy mix of staple foods (notably, the sweet potato instead of rice, and a ready supply of fish and some seaweeds) so that it wasn't malnutrition. Once living standards climbed in the 1960s, they lost their CRed status; any impact of Hara Hachi Bu is now manifest in 'merely' healthy eating patterns which -- combined with their exercise -- allows them to maintain nonobese BMIs (1).

The fact that their exceptional longevity is associated with 'only' 40-60 y of CR, rather than a lifetime, is one of the reasons why their relatively modestly extended longevity gives (rather than detracts from) confidence in the human translatability.(2)

-Michael

1. Willcox BJ, Willcox DC, Todoriki H, Fujiyoshi A, Yano K, He Q, Curb JD, Suzuki M.
Abstract
Caloric restriction, the traditional Okinawan diet, and healthy aging: the diet of the world's longest-lived people and its potential impact on morbidity and life span.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2007 Oct;1114:434-55.
PMID: 17986602 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


2. Rae MJ.
You don't need a weatherman: famines, evolution, and intervention into aging.
AGE. 2006 March;28(1):93-109.

Edited by Michael, 09 February 2009 - 09:42 PM.

[kenj]

The principle works to actually make CR happen. Making your body know you're eating for nourishment helps alot with appetite satisfaction and ultimately controlling food intake in pursuit of a CR lifestyle.
Try eating with 100% full attention for good fun. Preferably ZERO stimuli other than the food, - even close your eyes when chewing slowly, to help yourself pay absolute, utter complete attention to everrry bite and making it an meditative act. Focus all your available 'energy' into *tasting* the food. (In the beginning: it's helpful to 'overdo' it, to help youself become aware of this mind shift.)

One problem is, many people are not eating with attention. They eat in front of the TV, the PC or when on the phone, etc. And while we are a clever species, easily able to 'multitask', we're not really designed to handle a parasympathetic activity (eating, digesting) while being stimulated externally. If you are distracted by the TV or whatever you inhibit gastric and digestive secretions, and are intellectually or emotionally aroused by something else than the food, so you simply don't *sense* you are eating. And then we may eat more to compensate. Plus, overweight people, and binge eaters etc. have unfortunately found out that high calorie food can become a drug to modulate external stimuli.

When we eat with *full* attention, we release more of the important oxytocin and CCK, AFAIK and that makes it (surprisingly) easy to walk away from a smaller meal feeling completely satisfied. It seriously makes a night>-<day difference, IME.
(After the first few bites it's 'easy' to get distracted, so it does require a conscious effort throughout the whole meal to keep up focus.)