WisdomPeace Lightforce
WisdomPeaceLightforce.com
Lightforce
Copyright © Chérie Phillips
Japanese Tourist
Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii
70
Percent Solution
Japanese Wisdom Diet Protocol
Most of the tourists that visit Waikiki are from Japan. Therefore, I can tell you as an eye witness that virtually all of the Japanese tourists who travel to Hawaii are slender and healthy. If any country could get a healthy diet award, it would have to be the Japanese ladies and gentlemen.
The Japanese diet is the most healthy in the World.
However, most assuredly, we cannot attribute their slender figure to genetics. The evidence is from observing that those who move to Hawaii, often become fat when they assimilate the "American" diet, which I believe, gets the most unhealthy award.
However, the mystery was that even though they continued to eat the same Japanese food, those who lived in America became fat. Therefore, in order to find a solution, I had to focus on how they ate, not what they ate.
The
American diet is the most unhealthy in the World
in both food choice and quantity.
Many children in America are taught to eat everything on their plate. If you leave anything, even a crumb, you are reminded of the "starving children in Ethiopia" and, therefore, "we must not waste food." Somehow, during childhood, that made sense, but as an adult, it evomorphed into a fear of starvation, but which made no logical sense.
How does my eating in excess help anyone who is starving? If I really want to help hungry children, I would eat half as much in my diet, and donate the monetary savings to missionaries who feed the Ethiopian children. In fact, there are children starving in many countries worldwide, but rarely in America.
Lose
Weight
Feed Others
When I lived in Washington, D.C., as a young adult, one night I had dinner with a friend who fixed a huge fantastic meal, and, after we had stuffed ourselves silly, he went into the kitchen and poured the entire remainder in the garbage disposal. I was horrified, and, said, "What about the starving children in Ethiopia?" He said, "The starving children?" "You know, we cannot waste food," I explained.
He stated, "Well, I never save any food. I don't keep leftovers. If it's not eaten, it goes down the drain." He was from Poland, but I not sure whether it was just him, or what was taught to him from his heritage. I would have to do a diet study on that country.
Ethiopian
restaurant
A fun place to eat in Washington, D.C.
One night I decided to go to an Ethiopian restaurant and find out how they eat. In Washington, D.C. you can find a restaurant for any country in the world. At the Ethiopian restaurant, the table was a large round silver platter that was covered with thin flat bread (as thin as a tortilla). There was no silverware. We were told to eat with one clean hand. "You eat with your right hand only," the waiter explained. "The other hand is used to touch other things, but not food."
Wow, to eat everything with my hand was a unique experience, and, there were many children in this restaurant having a great time.
The waiter brought out many different kinds of food and placed it in front of us. "You take your clean hand and tear off a piece of bread, and scoop up the food," the waiter explained.
You certainly do not waste food eating like this. Instead of stuffing yourself silly with every morsel of food in your dish, you share food from the same dish with your family and others.
Therefore, sharing your food is essential to the Ethiopian diet protocol, and, those I have met from Ethiopia, are slender and look very healthy with glowing bronze skin tone and thick hair. Their facial features are distinctively pleasant, and the ladies are softly feminine, and my gentleman friend described them as beautiful. Okay, so moving onto the diet . . .
While recently living in Hawaii, I observed how the Japanese tourists ate. You could always find them eating oriental noodles, even as much as or more so than white rice. There are many outdoor restaurants in Hawaii, and I would notice at these noodle eateries that the Japanese tourists would always get up and leave some of their food. This is unlike Americans who are taught to eat everything on their plate.
Further, at the Japanese restaurants, such as the sushi bars, there would be many kinds of foods in small dishes which would be circulating around a large platform that functioned like a conveyor belt. When you see food you like, you pick up the small dish from the circulating platform.
When it is time to pay for your meal, you are charged according to the number of your empty dishes.
When you begin to feel full, then you stop eating, and, there is less waste with this method of service. You eat only what you want, and then you stop, rather than feeling obligated to finish everything that was piled on your dish and which you thought you could eat, but you really cannot. Most people do not realize how much they can actually eat comfortably.
The circulating platform of small servings method certainly keeps you from over-eating, compared to the American style restaurant that serves you huge quantities of food in a large plate, and, by golly, you are expected to eat everything on your dish no matter how full you begin to feel.
And, then, there is the all-you-can-eat American restaurants. The protocol there is that you are going to get your money's worth, and the more you can eat, the more valuable is your meal, but you pay only one low price. The last time I ate at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, I was so sick after I stuffed myself nearly to unconsciousness that I prayed, "Oh God, if you let me live, I will never eat at an all-you-can-eat restaurant again." I just cannot handle it.
I have been programmed since childhood to eat everything on my dish, and this kind of restaurant provides an endless supply of food that leads to excess consumption.
After that, I went to Waikiki, and looked at the Japanese tourists, and asked, "How do you do that? How do you stay so slender when all this food is around you everywhere?" She said/he said: "No speak English."
70 Percent Solution
Okay, so I sat down and researched the Japanese diet, but it is quite easy to find descriptions of the kind of food eaten, but not very easy to find out about "how" the Japanese eat. After months of patient investigation, I finally discovered an article in a Japanese newspaper that mentioned "70 percent full" when describing how one should eat. That's it! That's what they are doing! Eureka!
When the Japanese sit down to a meal, their protocol is that they stop eating when they feel 70 percent full. How different from the American protocol of eating everything on your plate, and thereafter, eating desert, or saving the leftovers for between meal snacks.
Now, I tried it, and I concluded that the 70 percent full protocol is to eat only to the point of feeling 70 percent full, and, therefore, you still feel hungry when you stop eating. However, in a few minutes, the hunger subsides, and you feel quite satisfied.
I discovered at this point, that the satiety feeling (that is to feel comfortably full) comes "after" - I repeat for the hard of hearing and visually impaired - the satiety feeling comes "after" you stop eating, not before!
All my life, I waited to stop eating when I felt full, and then, of course, I had to finish everything on my plate, and, so, I was making two big mistakes in my eating protocol. Thereafter, I learned to donate to the starving children instead of eating their food for them, and secondly, to stop eating when I am 70 percent full, but not completely full.
Here is what happens:
hunger -------------------------------------------------->
satiety ------------------------->
Satiety moves at a slower speed than hunger
I realized that I had developed this childhood fear of starvation, and to stop eating before I am actually full was a very frightening experience. My first attempt was accompanied by the thought: "Well, I'm not going to starve myself at every meal like this." But, I patiently gave it a chance, and that is when I discovered that my satiety feeling moves much slower, and, even as much as half the speed of my feeling of hunger.
Therefore, even though I stop eating when I am only 70 percent full, the satiety feeling continues to move, and in a few minutes I actually feel full, but comfortable.
Satiety chemical not synchronized with Hunger
Now I know why I always felt over-stuffed after a meal even though I stopped eating when I felt full. The secret is the slow moving satiety chemical that for whatever reason, is not coordinated in time - not synchronized - with the feeling of hunger.
It is like sticking your finger with a needle, but not feeling the pain until 10 minutes later.
Ordinarily after a meal, my body is saying, "eat more because I do not feel full yet," while the satiety chemical is moving at a slower speed and is singing, "she'll be coming round the mountain when she comes . . . " and then when satiety finally arrives, she says: "Wow, you pig! How could you eat so much?"
And, then my body in confusion says, "Oh, I am so sick, why did I eat so much?" And, I am saying: "What, what, I only ate until I felt full.
What is going on here? How could my body be made to cause me to suffer if I eat until I am full. How could my body be made to feel good only when I am starving myself? What is wrong with me?"
There are two chemical processes involved:
1. Hunger feeling, and,
2. Satiety feeling (full).
These two chemical processes are different and independent. Because the feeling of satiety moves at a slower speed than the feeling of hunger, I have to stop eating while I still feel hungry, realizing that satiety is slower and will keep moving even if I stop eating.
This two-step process functions the same when you are drinking an alcoholic beverage. For instance, if you drink a glass of wine, and feel like, well, I can handle another one, but after you drink a second glass, you get loopy and wonder what happened.
That is because the satiety process, being slower, takes more time to signal that you have had enough to drink. In fact, alcohol moves even faster than food, and, therefore, understanding the two-step process is essential to preventing overindulgence.
The 70 percent solution, therefore, is beneficial when applied to both eating and drinking, and, should be researched extensively so that we have good technical words to explain this phenomenon. For this great protocol we greatly appreciate the sharing of Japanese Wisdom.
* * * *