Happy Easter!

This Easter has been wonderful. For the first time in many years, I / we haven't gone away or had tonnes of commitments, and it's been great. We've just pottered and I've had lots of time to reflect and think.

One of the things that I have been reflecting on is mindfulness. I know I've talked about that on this blog before, but times like Easter (where we are encouraged to gorge ourselves on chocolate, despite the fact that Australians eat 4.5 kilograms of chocolate year), I find that the notion of mindful eating particularly gets a bit away from us. How often have we nibbled on chocolate (or any food for that matter, particularly at festive times) to the point where we didn't realise how much we've eaten / feel completely ill / self flagellate over our lack of self control?

I think I've gotten much better at avoiding over eating over the years, but last night we went out for dinner with friends and I ate waaaaay too much - cue, waking up with a food hangover (this is an actual thing - see here).

Whenever the food hangover hits, I find myself thinking about the Japanese principle of hara hachi bu. 

Hara hachi bu is grounded in Confucian philosophy. It encourages people to eat until they are 80% full. This encourages you to eat mindfully, thinking about the food being consumed. The idea is that this practice curbs excessive eating and slowly teaches you to learn how to stop when you have eaten enough.

I should say at this point, I'm not about demonising food. I really do believe in 'everything in moderation.' I just find this often difficult to exercise when eating out and being served massive portions, and particularly difficult when I am busy. These times, I'll often find myself eating - on the go, while watching TV, talking with friends - without really thinking about it (I think everyone knows this feeling - starting with a packet of Tim Tams and realising the entire package is gone).

Which leads back to eating mindfully. The New York Times did an excellent piece on this a few years back which I often find myself referring to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/dining/mindful-eating-as-food-for-thought.html?_r=0

The other thing that feeds in to this, of course, is emotional eating and drinking - reaching for the wine, chocolate, pizza, whatever - when we are feeling stressed and harried, simply telling ourselves that we deserve it for making it through a difficult  day / week.

So my goal for this week is to remember to slow down (in life generally), and think about what I'm actually eating / drinking. It certainly takes more time, and requires you to consider what you're actually putting in your mouth, but with a huge bowl of chocolate eggs staring at me as I type this post, I think it's very necessary.