Harmonize your health with Ayurvedic nutrition

Harmonize your health with Ayurvedic nutrition; how can you eat a truly balanced diet? Tovia Safford has the answer

The American culture offers such diversity and innumerable choices of food that it seems we have forgotten the simple truth: food is medicine. Literally, you are what you eat. Actually, you are what you digest and assimilate, and you become diseased by the foods that your body does not digest. Americans are plagued with many illnesses, primarily due to unhealthy dietary choices. Even those who have an interest in eating well are overwhelmed by the myriad of temporary popular views; these must be juggled with eating habits deeply ingrained in us from childhood. Ayurveda provides some basic eating guidelines which have been tested and proved over thousands of years.
Here is some of the wisdom that Ayurveda teaches us to try to cultivate in our eating habits:

--Do not eat unless you feel hungry.

--Do not drink unless thirsty or drink instead of eat when hungry. It dilutes digestive gastric enzymes.

--Try to eat at the same approximate times every day.

--Don't eat after 8 p.m. or an hour before going to sleep.

--Sit down when eating and eat in a peaceful environment (that means no TV, reading, heated discussions, etc.).

--Don't eat when emotionally upset.

--Don't eat more food than what you can hold in two cupped hands. Overeating stretches the stomach so you'll need more to feel satisfied and creates toxins in the digestive tract.

--Never drink fruit juice or ice water with a meal. It puts out the digestive fire.

--Fill one-third of your stomach with food, one-third with water and one-third empty.

--As much as possible, eat fresh foods, the best quality you can afford. Prepare the food with love on your mind and peace in your heart.

--Learn more about your Ayurvedic constitution (vata.pitta, kapha) and eat foods that nourish your personal balance.

--Choose foods according to the season and daily weather, this does require some more knowledge of Ayurveda too.

--Never eat cooked honey. When honey is heated above boiling point or baked, it molecularly changes to indigestible glue-like substance, which clogs the subtle channels of the body.

--Learn and follow healthy food combining principles.

--Always eat slowly and chew food well.

These guidelines will be big changes and should be incorporated gradually and gently. Americans often do things in extremes. We haven't really been taught the importance of being gentle with ourselves. I suggest you pick a few of your unhealthy eating habits, and give yourself a month to work on breaking those habits. Then you can work on others. Sometimes it can take years to break a lifetime of patterns and establish new ones. If you follow these guidelines you will experience bountiful health benefits.

Ayurvedic knowledge empowers us to learn how to balance our internal environment with the constant changes of the external environment. When the two are out of balance, we become susceptible to disease. Dietary choices are an important starting place in understanding, regaining, and maintaining this balance.