Finding freedom from food stress through Japanese gratitude

How to navigate mindful eating for beginners

The holidays used to be a very complicated time for me– it’s a confusing time where we are simultaneously encouraged to indulge in desserts and treats, but warned to watch what we eat.​

Enjoy pies (but watch your sugar!)

Have some gravy (but tsk tsk, that’s a lot of saturated fat!)

Take some mashed potatoes (but carbs!)​

Even if the people around us aren’t saying these things, it can be a tough inner voice to shake off. Eating can feel stressful during this time.

But when navigating the worry we sometimes feel around food (especially “non-healthy” holiday food), instead of just trying to ignore the inner voice, maybe we can try practicing gratitude– a solution I found effective after learning about the seven gods inside my grain of rice.

Finding freedom from food stress through Japanese gratitude

There is a Japanese proverb that translates to “in a grain of rice lives seven gods”. It’s a proverb someone may admonish you with, should you leave a plate with food still on it or a particularly messy bowl of rice.

一粒のお米には七人の神様がいる — Japanese proverb

When my grandmother first used this on me, I thought it was such a strange expression. My young brain would imagine seven tiny gods living inside a tiny grain of rice, and that somehow, the gods inside that rice would be happier if I ate them. Or maybe the gods inside the rice made it more valuable to eat?

I didn’t quite understand, but my grandmother intimidated me so I would obediently clean off my bowl. But I later learned the real meaning of that proverb.

And understanding it had turned out to help me change the way I approached and thought about food.

First, let’s look at the Japanese character for rice 「米」. It is actually composed of the characters 8, 10, 8 or「八十八」. This is…