Hara Hachi Bu
Live longer with the 80 percent rule
© Alena Ozerova / Shutterstock
The Japanese island region of Okinawa is known for having a particularly large number of healthy 100-year-olds there. Your secret of success: The Hara Hachi Bu principle.
Which person would not want to live as long as possible – and then please do so in a healthy way? There are numerous tips and tricks that should help us improve our health and extend our lives. If you ask the many 100-year-old healthy people from the Japanese island region of Okinawa, they would explain their secret with a certain principle – namely the so-called Hara Hachi Bu.
Confucius says …
The principle goes back to a rule of Confucius, which says that you should only eat enough until your stomach is 80 percent full. This automatically saves calories – and prevents obesity. And indeed, this rule has its hand when you look at how the human feeling of satiety works. According to scientists, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes for the body to register that the stomach is already full and to react by actually creating a feeling of satiety. At the same time, this means that if you eat more slowly, you will be full faster. Thanks to this 80 percent rule, Okinawa residents consume a moderate 1,800 to 1,900 kilocalories a day, which is a factor in their long health and old age.
We don’t know a measure
The fact that overweight and obesity are spreading more and more in the western world is mainly due to that we often eat more than we should, thereby consuming more calories than we are consuming. With fast food, the short lunch at the snack bar during the lunch break and snacks in between, we usually consume quickly and sometimes unconsciously, which means that it takes a long time for the body to register saturation. In addition to obesity, the consequences are also diseases such as diabetes or metabolic disorders.
Hara Hachi Bu in everyday life
So if you want to live a long and healthy life, you should first and foremost make sure to eat calmly and consciously and to listen to the saturation of your body. Then you can simply save yourself strict diets or counting calories. Incidentally, the principle of Hara Hachi Bu can be applied not only to nutrition, but also to our other lives: Treat yourself to things that make you happy, but only in moderation. An example: Make sure you only spend 80 percent of your monthly salary and save the rest. This way you can build up a small financial cushion in just one year.
Sources used: stern.de, Karrierebibel.de