As soon as you begin scanning the recipes, and reading the food principles of the Body Balance Diet Plan, you’ll immediately notice some very clear and distinct differences between this and other diets. It is based on six common-sense principles.
Unlike the Dukan, Atkins and South Beach diets, the Body Balance Diet is not all about protein. It centres on whole grains and vegetables, hammering home the truth that, in themselves, carbohydrates do not make you fat. There are three types of carbohydrates: sugar, starch and fibre. There is nothing wrong with any of these (fruit, milk and vegetables contain ‘sugar’, and consuming this is not comparable to eating teaspoons of refined white sugar – we are also getting important vitamins, minerals and antioxidants from these foods) and it’s impossible to eat a balanced diet without them. Starchy and fibre-rich carbohydrates include mineral-rich pulses and beans, grains and cereals; these are essential for the release of energy and they’re also low in calories while being filling. The basis for many Ayurvedic dishes is a mixture of pulses/beans and vegetables (think of traditional lentil or chickpea vegetable curries) – delicious, satisfying and healthy.
Without the all-important fibre from complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains, pulses/beans and some vegetables, the food we put into our bodies will not pass through our systems efficiently. Indeed, if you’ve ever tried a protein-only diet, you’ve probably experienced the constipation that comes with it.
While I am a big lover and enjoyer of omega-rich fish, organic chicken, goat’s and ewe’s cheeses – and generally eat a lot more protein than strict Ayurvedic eaters do – I do not need to eat animal protein at every single meal. My diet does, however, contain a variety of ‘hidden’ proteins (found in some foods that you might expect to be classed as ‘carbs’): namely buckwheat, hemp and chia, which are all ostensibly ‘grains’ but are in fact complete proteins (called ‘pseudocereals’). They’re a great thing to eat if you are vegetarian, and help ensure your diet includes all of the essential amino acids that our bodies can’t make for themselves and must therefore gain from what we eat. Quinoa too is a complete protein, and also high in fibre, phosphorous, iron and magnesium, while being gluten free. Quinoa can be the dullest ingredient going, but be inventive with it, or load the food that accompanies it with tons of flavour (as I have done in the recipes at the back of this book), and you’ll soon become partial to it, and love how conveniently fast it is to cook (it also freezes and defrosts well if dinner needs to be on the table quickly).
The Body Balance Diet Plan is not a diktat. One of the most important wellbeing lessons is that continual denial and deprivation are the surest routes to failure and weight issues. I eat very well – I would never dream of going hungry – which means I never obsess about food. When I am hungry, my tummy may rumble, or energy levels wane, and I sit down to eat a delicious meal, always eating whatever I fancy at the time, knowing that in so doing I’ll feel satisfied afterwards and a lot less likely to look for quick-fix treats to deliver that absent satiety.
I will eat any food group, I will have some sugar, but I do not eat ‘fake’ food that’s laden with horrible health-sapping additives. If I check a label and see more E numbers than recognizable words, I leave it. If I see sulphites and hydrogenates, I leave it. I eat burgers and fries and ice cream, but these are burgers and fries I make myself and simple organic ice cream from the supermarket with no chemical additives. Because of this I think my body craves nutritious food. I believe that once we begin eating well, and understand what it is to feel satisfied and nourished by every meal, the body can finally balance itself – and blood sugar is a part of this. So often, we grab that chocolate bar or cookie because we’re suddenly hungry and have nothing else to hand. But, if we prepare ahead, we won’t get caught out. I use the leftovers from dinner – maybe roasted veg, salmon, chicken or lentils – and create a quick super salad by adding fresh leaves, cucumber and olives. I put it all into a Tupperware box that night, ready to take to work with me the next morning. Or I’ll simply take the leftovers as they come – whether it’s curry, soup or a tortilla. Cooking a bit extra is a good thing if you get into a habit of taking leftovers for lunch the next day. It’s certainly made my life easier (and healthier). I also try to carry some form of healthy snack on me at all times – a piece of fruit, perhaps, or one of my Chia Choc Bars (see pages 212–13) – to ensure that if I get caught out without time for a proper meal, I can at least eat something wholesome that will not send my blood sugar spiralling (which may in turn kick off a vicious sugary snack cycle!).
Being inventive is also a key part of staying satisfied. Food should be rich with flavour (and learning about the six tastes will reinvigorate your life and your palate), seasonal and exciting. Ayurveda excels here, as you’ll see!
Of late, the way we eat seems to have a lot less to do with what we actually want, and more to do with what we’ve been led to believe we ought to want. Most people will have a rough idea of what constitutes ‘healthy eating’ – yet, more people than ever are now succumbing to deprivation-based diets. Having worked for a long time in magazine offices full of people who seem to be on permanent diets, I’ve lost count of the number of times colleagues have compared the calories of their lunches and deemed everything from grapes to goat’s cheese ‘evil’.
What has struck me, again and again, is how gullible the dieting masses are. And how keenly dieters seem to set aside common sense in the pursuit of a very quick fix. Calorie counting is, in my book, a problem. Why? Because it overrides common sense and assumes we must live by a very simplistic equation. Women assume they need around 2,000 calories a day, men 2,500, yet we are all individuals, made up of differing ratios of different materials (fat, muscle, water), and as such, we all require a different calorie intake. Our metabolisms differ; we may be sedentary or very active; we may or may not have allergies and intolerances . . . the list goes on. The moment we trust the calories on the packet before we trust ourselves, we have a problem. I don’t mind that the homemade banana bran muffin I enjoy possesses what any dieting person would deem to be too many calories. I know that it is low in refined sugar and made with coconut oil, a far superior fat to ‘fake’ refined margarine (it has also been shown that coconut oil can increase good HDL cholesterol in the blood and restore normal thyroid function). I know it’s good for me. I know my body likes it and, by god, I know I enjoy eating it. So I’ll have it all, and won’t waste a single moment weighing it and calculating whether I should feel guilty.
I believe that if you trust yourself to make the right food decisions, your body will find its happy weight, completely naturally. You may have to retune your palate and refine your attitude toward food, but once you’ve done it, it will become second nature.
What has struck me most is that, in all of my time working amid perpetual dieters, I’ve yet to see a single example of someone maintaining a healthy ‘goal’ weight. From the girl who bought every new diet book on the market and proclaimed Monday ‘fresh-start day’, only to end up bingeing on cake by Wednesday afternoon, to the woman who counted every calorie so obsessively that she would not even loosen the yoke enough to eat a grape – I’ve seen so much fear, confusion and shame around food that I have no doubt that diets never work for life. And that’s why they have no place at my table.
The Body Balance Diet Plan doesn’t have rules because I truly believe that rules guarantee failure. At some point you will break one – I know I will! – and then you’re left feeling guilty, as though it’s all gone to pot, so you might as well eat that packet of cookies, crisps/potato chips, fries, leftover pizza . . . and while you’re at it, why not the advent calendar chocolates that have been hanging around since Christmas too?
But, if you remove all rules and simply teach the principles of eating according to your dosha (see Chapter 2) – eating well, satisfying your body’s unique dosha, and taking cravings into account – then you take away that awful, sense-robbing panic that can make us fear food.
A friend said she would spend all morning nervous with fear about what to have for lunch, and then was depressed all afternoon at having made the wrong decision. How exhausting! Even after paying for a personal trainer for several years, my friend never managed to maintain a healthy weight. A drop was often followed – and swiftly, to boot – by another, bigger, gain. Why? Because her chaotic food confusion had gone on to confuse her body. Her body didn’t know when the next meal would arrive, or where it would come from; whether it would be entirely devoid of nutritional value (the classic ‘I’ve not eaten all week, so I’m going to treat myself to two pots of ice cream’ mentality), or too small to cause even a ripple in her already-flagging metabolism. As a result, her body was living in permanent starvation mode. During the weeks when my friend trained for several hours a night and ate next to nothing, she would be frustrated to tears in seeing no shift whatsoever in the scales.
What I saw in my friend was someone who knew so much about ‘dieting’ that she knew nothing about eating. Someone who trusted the black-and-white rules in every book so much that she utterly distrusted herself, and her own instincts. Someone who feared food so actively, it made her very ill, and very stressed – and more overweight than ever. Food was not to be enjoyed, but to be measured, weighed and avoided for as long as humanly possible – and then, ultimately, gorged upon, once hunger and desperation and self-hatred got the better of her. It is heartbreaking, and the most vicious cycle of all.
Consider this: ‘Breakfast like a king and dine like a pauper’. I’ll admit, I swore by it. Until I realized that I always suffered a post-breakfast energy slump and noon sugar-craving spike on days when I’d had a right royal feast at the start of the day. It took me a few months of trial and error before I understood that my ideal breakfast was somewhat lighter than I’d grown used to. Instead of a large bowl of cereal, or two thick slices of wholemeal toast with peanut butter and jam, on my Ayurvedic immersion I rotated fresh fruit, goat’s yogurt with sweet berries, a light millet and pear porridge (see pages 174–6) and eggs (sometimes whites only) on spelt toast almost every morning for a week. It left me feeling more satisfied and energized than I had been when eating a more ‘filling’ breakfast. Often, the intense ‘hunger’ we feel upon waking is actually thirst. If you drink a large glass of warm water as soon as you wake, you’ll be able to gauge that your digestive fire (agni) is not overly strong. Lighter breakfasts are easier on the stomach – our bodies are waking up, remember – but they’re also less taxing on energy levels. Digesting any food requires energy, so we can only comfortably eat larger meals when our digestive fire is optimal, and won’t overly tax our bodies in the process.
For this reason, a lighter breakfast and larger lunch is optimal. But, because I have to adapt Ayurvedic wisdom to my own modern-world routine when I often have breakfast meetings around 9am, I will wake and have a large glass of hot water and a piece of ripe fruit around 7am, which gets my digestive fire stoked, and then enjoy a good breakfast a couple of hours later (favourites include eggs and smoked salmon, porridge or kedgeree) during my meeting. At 1pm I will then sit down to a simpler lunch – some soup, a small bowl of stew, a warm seasonal salad. This means I don’t have any huge dips in energy because meals are evenly spaced, and also means I don’t overtax my digestive system with too much to eat too early on in the day.
During my immersion I also proved my long-held belief that watermelon is a bit of a miracle food. Being of Cypriot heritage, I’ve spent more summers than I can count on this sun-drenched island, where my breakfasts always revolve around the ruby-red watermelon. Enjoyed in wedges with lightly salted grilled/broiled halloumi, drunk first thing as a fresh juice, accompanied by a clutch of salty black olives, or simply eaten alongside toast and local honey, watermelon is one of those amazing foods that gets the body working more efficiently. It is a phenomenal hydrator – being 97 per cent water. Dr Howard Murad’s book The Water Secret explains that when you get your water from food, it has a big impact and the cells absorb the water more efficiently, quenching your thirst more effectively than drinking glass after glass of water. I craved watermelon like a lunatic while I was pregnant, and now my children love it too.
So, in short, I went from being a life-long big breakfast eater to a morning grazer. I learned another lesson along the way: you cannot change your body, or your energy, until you have learned its language.
During my Ayurvedic immersion I learned a great deal about myself. Even when I am hungry I cannot force myself to eat something I do not enjoy. At the retreat, not all of the food was to my liking. I have spent too long having a bowl of cereal or peanut butter on toast for breakfast to switch to spiced mung bean curry at 7am! So, I sat down with the doctor leading the retreat and explained that, although the curry would have made a lovely lunch, I just could not stomach it for breakfast. He explained that it’s better to be relaxed and eat well than to panic and eat nothing. So, rather than going hungry – hunger, is as I have already said, the surest route to diet failure – I wandered down to the buffet, served myself some eggs, then a spelt croissant with honey, and enjoyed another glass of watermelon juice. Although it was not the Ayurvedic breakfast, I felt absolutely no guilt. It was what I wanted that day. It tasted delicious. I enjoyed it. Did it set my ‘diet’ back? No, not at all. Because the breakfast I really wanted paved the way to my wholesome lunch, and a lighter dinner.
The next day, I ate the Ayurvedic breakfast of lightly poached pears and grain porridge, had a lighter lunch, and after an hour’s snorkelling and a long beach walk before sunset, returned to my room to see a very small bowl of vegetable soup for dinner. Now, I know Ayurveda traditionalists encourage a light dinner . . . but . . . it left me wanting. The moment I wanted, I began to wonder what was in my mini-bar, and that chocolate bar that had been left there began to look more and more attractive. So yet again, I looked back over the foods my dosha gets on best with, and ordered some lentil kebabs and a fresh green salad. Tasty, filling and good for me – unlike that chocolate bar! And when it came to my weigh-in at the end of the week: well, what can I say – no hunger, no pain, no headaches, no withdrawal or denial, and a still a loss of eight pounds.
When you do not deny yourself, you become calm and collected around food. You begin to make the right decisions rather than being swept along in a chain reaction of all the wrong ones.
Your body will find its balance – if you trust it to do so.
So, there you have it – the six common-sense principles that underlie the Body Balance Diet. Next, determining your dosha type.