NUTRITION: FOOD BRINGS BALANCE TO OUR BODIES
Ayurveda views nutrition as an integral part of the self-healing process. This aspect of daily living is one that we have complete control over. In this chapter, you will learn that dieting does not work and living with an awareness around food is what brings balance to our bodies.
Are you ready to shift your perspective on food? Food is our most available medicine. What if instead of looking to the latest fad diet or supplement to change your body, skin, or hair, for example, you look to the food you eat to make those changes?
I wholeheartedly promote the use of herbs and superfoods to boost health and wellness, but nutrition needs to come first. The next time you sit down for a meal, order food at a restaurant, or cook at home, I urge you to ask yourself the following question: “What is this food giving me?” If you’re not sure of the answer, you should consider that as a clear sign that you could make a change in your life without spending lots of money on supplements and relying on them to do the job food could be doing for you. If you want to see a change, you have to make a change!
When you go beyond looking at food as flavor in your mouth and start to view it as fuel, you begin to see what your body needs. Based on your dosha and the information you’ve learned so far, do you think you are eating foods that are balancing to your body type?
The number one piece of advice I give to all of my clients is to keep it simple. Even if you don’t have access to food that is fit for your constitution 100 percent of the time, keep it simple. When it comes to the food you are eating, keep the ingredients to a minimum, less is often more. If you put too many ingredients and complicated sauces and spices on your plate they can cause symptoms such as bloating, gas, indigestion, candida, and ulcers. The closer you are to eating food in its natural form, the better you will feel.
Another way to transition into healthier eating habits is to make simple food swaps. It’s important to select food that is as close as possible to its natural form because some products that are advertised as being “healthy” are completely modified, filled with hidden sugars, stabilizers, gums, and unnecessary additives. Eating unhealthy foods that are marketed as “healthy” won’t make you sick or unhealthy the first time you eat them, but if you consume them on a regular basis they will start to damage your body.
We either eat our food as medicine or we eat our medicine as food. It’s wise to ask yourself the following questions when buying new products or grocery shopping:
Watch out for the following marketing angles when buying food:
Just because a product is described with some of those words does not mean the food is healthy or pure. Organic candy is still candy. Yes, whole-grain food is great, but what else is in there? Always read the labels.
You are your best weapon when it comes to combating illness and keeping your body healthy. Use your knowledge to your advantage: scrutinize labels, research the ingredients if you don’t know what they are, and make the best choices you possibly can. Next are some examples of healthy food swaps.
Fiber Snacks
Fiber bars aren’t real food. They are designed for convenience, yes, but what is convenient about not getting nutrients from your food? Fiber bars are high in added sugars and low in nutrients. Remember, our mission is to eat to fuel our bodies, and this is not going to happen if we feed them with imitation foods that have empty calories and no or low nutrients.
A great swap for fiber bars is fruit; berries to be precise. Berries are the real place you’ll find bioavailable fiber. They are packed with antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, water, and natural fiber and they are low in sugar and calories. Berries make a wonderful snack for Kapha and Pitta types. If you’re looking for high-fiber foods, you’ll find that the highest form of fiber is going to come from food in its natural form rather than food that has been processed and turned into something else. Nutrient-dense and fiber-rich foods such as raspberries, strawberries, avocados, nuts, and oats can all be found in nature.
Cooking Oils
It’s understandable that most people believe that vegetable and canola (rapeseed) oils are safe to consume because we are constantly fed misinformation about the foods we consume, which leaves many people in the dark. These oils are highly processed, refined, heated, bleached, and deodorized. The amount of high heat these oils are subjected to during industrial processing (just to be bottled) has a negative impact on the healthy compounds in the oils and the finished products are ultimately stripped of their omega-3 fatty acids.
Canola oil can be found in many prepared foods, even in the health-food stores. It can even be found in some forms of dried fruit! Always read the food labels and try to opt for a heathier form of oil. Extra virgin olive oil is a good swap. It is produced by cold-pressing (a process that avoids high-heat treatments), which leaves it full of heart-healthy fats.
Canola and vegetable oils can be found in fake butter substitutes as well. Instead of buying those, opt for a healthier and more nourishing option such as ghee. Ghee has a high smoking point, is packed with omega fatty acids, and is full of vitamins A, D, E, and K. For those who are lactose intolerant, ghee is great because the milk fat is cooked out of it, leaving it lactose free! Always buy organic oils. Rancid or overly processed oils can aggravate Pitta.
Sweeteners
Agave sweetener has been advertised as healthy but unfortunately it doesn’t really live up to the standards that the food industry is holding it to. Although agave sweetener is better than white sugar and other processed forms of sugarcane, it is highly refined and the end product contains large amounts of fructose, which is an inflammatory and damaging form of sugar. A healthy swap for agave sweetener is organic maple syrup. Maple syrup is much less processed, it is high in antioxidants and magnesium, and it tastes amazing.
If you don’t like maple syrup, you could also swap raw honey for agave sweetener. When buying honey, it’s crucial to select raw honey, which is rich in gut-healing enzymes, high in antioxidants, and barely processed. Heating raw honey changes its medicinal properties, so never add raw honey to hot liquids—wait until they have cooled to a warm temperature.
Other possible swaps are monk fruit sugar and stevia. Choose stevia in its raw form or a minimally processed form like the one recommended on page 157. Stevia is much sweeter than agave sweetener and processed sugar, so only use a little at a time.
Flour
Wheat flour is often advertised as being “enriched,” which essentially means the product was stripped of its natural nutrients and then those nutrients were added back to the flour in a synthetic way. Once this has happened, the flour is toxic. White flour is highly processed, refined, and bleached by applying chlorine dioxide. Not only is it low in fiber but also it will inevitably lead to unnecessary and unhealthy weight gain, congestion, inflammation, and bloating. The unfortunate truth is that even the “healthiest” food products often contain seemingly harmless white flour.
Almond flour is much less processed than white flour and can be swapped in almost all recipes with minor or no adjustments to the rest of the recipe. Almond flour is higher in fiber, protein, and healthy fats than white flour. It is great for those Kapha types who need an easily digestible carbohydrate. Other swap options are oat, millet, brown rice, coconut, chickpea, and tapioca flours. If you’re looking for a swap for white bread, try Ezekiel bread (sprouted grain bread), paleo bread, or sprouted sourdough.
Salad Toppings
You’ll find croutons in most Caesar salads. Most people think that croutons are healthy because they are part of a salad. Wrong! They are actually made from white bread, cooked in highly processed oils, contain little to no protein, and have less fiber than nuts. This is why a healthy, crunchy swap for salad croutons is raw sprouted nuts, such as almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and macadamia nuts. They contain no damaged fats, are full of antioxidants, and are high in fiber, good fats, and protein, plus they will keep you satisfied for longer.
Cheese
Processed cheese is full of added hormones, genetically modified ingredients, and chemicals, and it doesn’t even resemble real cheese. Even blocks of real cheese are not that great unless they are unpasteurized and raw. This is because pasteurization kills the natural good bacteria and enzymes that help us breakdown the proteins and fats in dairy products. Too much dairy can cause inflammation and mucus build-up in the body, especially if you don’t have a microbiome (healthy gut bacteria that breaks down food and protects against germs) that is strong enough to digest it.
Raw-milk cheese is a wonderful swap for processed cheese. However, most of us don’t have access to raw-milk cheese, which is why the real swap goes to nutritional yeast. It tastes great on salads and in soups and it is also a good way to add a cheese-like flavor to sauces. Nutritional yeast contains 50–100 percent of your daily requirement of B vitamins and it is high in protein and fiber.
If you are predominantly a Kapha type, stay away from dairy altogether and use nutritional yeast instead. Vatas are aggravated by dry-aged cheeses, which can cause constipation, and should replace them with a soft probiotic nut cheese, which is actually much easier to find and make than you think (see Cashew Cream Sauce, page 85).
Flavoring
I know flavored coffee can be yummy but there are many ways to get the flavor you desire from natural food sources instead of flavored coffee creamers. Coffee creamers often contain unhealthy oils, thickeners, preservatives, sweeteners, and dangerous emulsifiers that degrade our precious gut mucosa. Drinking a substance like this can cause many different digestive upsets, one of which is leaky gut syndrome.
Healthy swaps for coffee creamer are coconut cream, ghee, and coconut oil, believe it or not. All three alternatives contain the healthiest form of fat available with no added sugar or emulsifiers. The best way to make flavored coffee is to blend about ½ teaspoon of your chosen alternative creamer in your coffee.
If you would like to add extra flavor to your coffee, like French vanilla, hazelnut, or toffee, I suggest buying flavored stevia drops (see Resources, page 157, for my suggested brands) or using spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, or even raw cacao. All these options are natural and safe to use.
Store-bought Jam
I know jam can be convenient and cheap but jam is not fruit, jam is not healthy. Commercially produced store-bought jam not only contains loads of added sugar but also contains ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and other preservatives. There are maybe a handful of jam brands that use real fruit, apple juice to sweeten, and citric acid to preserve. These “more natural” options are still not ideal, though. I would recommend them over the others if you have to buy jam in a store—but you don’t.
To be honest, unless you’re getting your jam straight from a farm, I suggest swapping out jam altogether and replacing it with mashed-up berries. This is a great alternative to jam and it only contains one ingredient. You could even add chia seeds to the berries if you want to get fancy. The chia seeds work a bit like gelatin, absorbing the liquid from the mashed berries to give them a more jam-like quality. Chia seeds are also high in omega fatty acids.
Resolving Your Relationship with Food: Learning How to Eat Intuitively
The beautiful thing about Ayurveda is that it truly teaches you about individualized medicine. It instructs you not to compare yourself to others and recommends that you follow the natural rhythms already inside your being and—above all—become more intuitive in your daily life. I hope by now you are beginning to understand that you are in control of this journey: you make the decisions, you take the lead when it comes to your own body.
Intuitive eating is about having freedom around food. You can eat what you want, when you want without guilt, shame, sickness, bingeing, or triggering negative thought patterns. Practice intuitive eating by paying attention to how food makes you feel, how much food you want and need to eat, what food you actually enjoy, and what food affects your moods and physical body. This is intuitive eating with Ayurveda. The more you become acquainted with your body, the better you will feel. Your body wants to trust that you will fill it with balanced fuel; it actually gives you the ability to make the right decisions. Over time, it’s common for our bodies to lose trust in our ability to nourish them. Letting go of the fear of who you truly are beneath the diets, labels, body image, and more will help you become happier and healthier in body, mind, and spirit.
Diet vs Intuitive Eating
The first myth I’d like to bust about intuitive eating is that it makes you fat and gives you mood swings. This is far from the truth. In fact, you are more likely to gain weight and have mood swings when you deprive your body of what it wants. When you give yourself permission to eat what your body wants and there are no “good” or “bad” foods, it acts like reverse psychology. Now that you can have whatever you want, you don’t really want it. Suddenly you can have one bite of something and be done with it, knowing that food is there for you if you want more.
Even though you understand that it’s best to follow a lifestyle and nutritional plan that is going to balance your specific body, it’s vital to know that you can still indulge in the food and drink you love the most. This is an important factor when it comes to my teachings of Ayurveda. It may not be the most traditional way to approach eating and Ayurveda, but I think it makes sense because we live in a time when we are all really disconnected from our senses, our emotions, and our knowledge of what we truly need. Most of us have grown up in a society that is so attached to image—what we should be and what we should eat—that we have to break the diet mentality to help us get to a place of knowing our own bodies on a deeper level.
Learning to differentiate an emotional or memory craving from a physical craving will help you eat intuitively. When the body needs a nutrient it sends signals to the brain so we eat those nutrients. It’s kind of like a car, a little light comes on when it needs to be fueled or needs oil. Unfortunately, we don’t have it that easy and we must tune into our bodies and question those signals to understand what we need. If you ever notice yourself craving sugar, instead of letting that craving take over, ask yourself the following questions: What did I eat today? Am I getting enough variety? Is my blood sugar low? Your answers will help you discern what your body is truly signaling you to eat.
There are such thing as beneficial cravings and nonbeneficial cravings. Nonbeneficial cravings are usually linked to our emotional state. They can come up if we aren’t nurturing our bodies and can cause feelings of tension, guilt, shame, or regret. If you eat a lot of junk food or skip meals often you may find yourself constantly craving oily, sugary, and processed foods. This can be an indication that you are stuck in a cycle of not feeding your body with nutrient-dense foods. Beneficial cravings mean that you are in control of what you are putting in your body and your emotions are not driving you to eat.
Our intuition is a great guide when it comes to making the best choices for ourselves. To implement this, start to notice what’s going on in your body and mind when you crave a specific food. The more conscious and aware you are, the more you can nurture your body. When we trust our internal body cues over external diet rules we can begin to move and flow through life with more ease.
The beauty of integrating Ayurveda with intuitive eating methods is that you become a powerhouse of knowledge and can start living from a place of full enjoyment. Each dosha has its own eating guidelines to help heal and balance the body but this doesn’t mean you are never again allowed to eat other foods. Once you know your dosha and understand how your body’s energy naturally ebbs and flows, intuitively you will know which of the energetic elements within your body are out of balance and be equipped with the tools to help bring yourself back into balance.
Focus on learning the energetic qualities of all types of food, rather than simply studying a list of ingredients suitable for Vata, Pitta, or Kapha as if you are memorizing a diet plan. You need to know what all food can do, not just the food that you might need because of your main dosha. If you eat with a purpose, there is no need to restrict or diet. When you do impose restrictions or cut out entire food groups, your body can go into shock, which can cause more imbalances (another reason that diets don’t work). The information about food that comes from Ayurveda will provide you with tools that can be applied to anyone’s life. Remember, these are tools not rules.
Indulging in your favorite food is okay. It’s inevitable that you will indulge from time to time because this is a lifestyle not a temporary diet. This is a long-term process. There will be times when you decide you want to eat a piece of cake made with sugar, flour, and butter even though your constitution will not agree with eating that cake. You need to throw out everything you’ve ever been taught about diets and restrictions. You need to address your relationship with food and learn your body’s signals. If you are feeling out of balance and have been overindulging, this is not an excuse to indulge further. Be honest and real with yourself about your habits and your health. Don’t allow yourself to feel sick because emotionally you are out of balance and placating those feelings with food. That is not intuitive eating, that is emotional eating; they are two different things.
In Ayurveda, food is categorized by its energetic qualities, how it affects each dosha, and its taste. Rasa is the Sanskrit word for “taste.” Opposite you will find a chart that breaks down food into six different rasas: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent. These tastes are important because each one can cause either balance or imbalance to a dosha.
The principal of “like attracts like” can be helpful when trying to understand the concept of the six tastes. For example, Pitta types generally love spicy or pungent foods, but if they eat too much of either they will become out of balance and may suffer from indigestion, heartburn, and skin rashes. Likewise, if Vata types eat too many drying, cold, and raw foods they will become out of balance and most likely experience bloating and gas. And if Kapha types eat too many creamy, heavy, and sweet foods, over time they will form an imbalance that could lead to weight gain, lethargy, and excess mucus build-up. Imbalances are often an initial cause of the food we eat.
Eating For Your Dosha
TIPS FOR VATA
TIPS FOR PITTA
TIPS FOR KAPHA
Increasing a Dosha
To increase a dosha means to aggravate it. If you aggravate a dosha too many times you can start to build up a long-term imbalance. However, if you are out of balance and your dosha is low, you will need to increase the dosha in order to bring yourself back into balance.
THE SIX TASTES
Agni is the Sanskrit word for “fire.” When people talk about agni, they are generally referring to the digestive system. Your agni is your digestive fire. Not only does your agni tell you when you are hungry, but it also transforms food into fuel. If your agni doesn’t run smoothly, you may experience gas, bloating, indigestion, and ama (a toxic build-up that slows down all bodily systems).
VATA types tend toward a fluctuating agni, one that can be strong at one moment and weak at another. It is very important for Vatas to maintain a steady agni throughout the day so they can avoid fluctuating energy levels.
PITTA types tend to have an intense, fiery agni, one that has the ability to run smoothly when in balance but can quickly be thrown out of balance, creating a hot and acidic agni. Long-term acidic agni can cause heartburn, ulcers, indigestion, and more.
KAPHA types tend to have a slow, wet agni, one that often needs a little help to get going and maintain. The damp and cool nature of Kapha can cause sluggishness and depression if not managed daily.
QUESTIONNAIRE: HOW IS YOUR AGNI DOING?
For each of the following statements, check the box if it applies to your current bodily state. If you check all of the boxes, you know you’re in good shape. If not, you know there’s room to improve and balance your agni.
QUESTIONNAIRE: SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF AMA
For each of the following statements, check the box if it applies to your current bodily state. If you check all or most of the boxes, you know that your body is out of balance and you have toxins that need to be removed. If none of these apply to you, consider yourself in good condition to focus on other areas.
How to Keep your Agni and Ama in Balance
Now that you know the state of your agni, here are a few tips to help you keep your agni in balance.
Another way to ensure your agni is working properly, and to avoid digestive disturbances, is to follow Ayurveda’s proper food-combining guidelines.
As with everything in Ayurveda, listen to your body, get to know your natural rhythms, and adapt these guidelines to suit your needs. As you embark on this new process of food combining, take note of which food combinations work best for your body type and which are worst. Take the combining slowly so you can really understand, see, and feel what your body needs.
Food combining may seem like a daunting task and can feel overwhelming at times, especially because most cultures don’t combine food properly. Poor food combining can lead to an array of digestive issues and a build-up of ama, both things you absolutely don’t want.
You will learn more about which food is good to combine in chapter 3, but for now, without making things too complicated, let’s go over some common food combinations that are a no-no in Ayurveda.
Tomatoes and Cheese
Tomatoes and cheese are basically a belly bomb of gas and bloat. It’s never advisable to combine the two. Food from the nightshade family, including tomatoes, eggplants (aubergines), potatoes, peppers, and goji berries, should rarely be consumed due to the toxic alkaloids they give off during digestion. Alkaloids are basically a defense mechanism some plants have to ward off their predators. Unluckily for us, delicious nightshades have the highest active alkaloids of all plant food. These alkaloids make nightshades very difficult to digest. When paired with cheese, which is already hard to digest, you have yourself a stressed belly. Nightshades aren’t necessarily off limits but it’s best to consume them in small portions—and not often because they are disturbing to all three doshas.
Fruit and Milk
Fruit and milk are a pretty common combination, especially if you are into smoothies, milk shakes, or ice-cream. (I definitely had my fair share of strawberries, bananas, and whipped cream as a kid.) Have you ever squeezed a bit of lemon juice into a glass of milk? Probably not, but if you had you would have seen that it curdles and tastes downright awful. The same reaction occurs within our bodies when we combine fruit and milk; things essentially ferment in the stomach. If you are addicted to your fruit smoothies, try opting for coconut milk instead of regular milk.
This is probably the hardest food combination to avoid for most of my clients. It’s very common for the two to be served together, particularly when the dairy aspect is cheese, but this combination is actually counterintuitive for the body. Although cheese is known to contain a significant amount of protein, it is not considered a main source of protein in this instance. Meat with cheese, fish with cheese, and even beans with cheese are all poor food combinations and will inevitably lead to digestive disturbances. Protein and cheese are both heavy in nature. Eaten together they are harder to digest than, say, cooked vegetables and cheese in the middle of the afternoon—which, by the way, is a great way (and time) to consume cheese if you like it.
In addition, you shouldn’t eat two different types of protein in one meal (an example of this would be beans with fish). This is because the body finds it difficult to digest proteins, so you don’t want to slow down digestion even further or create ama by increasing the burden on your digestive system.
Fruit and Other Food
Fruit should almost always be eaten on its own. There are very few exceptions to this rule, though cooked fruit is one such case. Melon, in particular, should always be eaten on its own and it is best eaten on an empty stomach. (Sorry for bursting your bubble if you love prosciutto and melon; that’s another belly bomb!) The easily digestible melon can cause fermentation when it is eaten with other food, which leads to a build-up of bacteria and ama in the stomach if you repeatedly combine melon with other food. If you are currently combining loads of fruit with grains or other foods and have digestive issues, try separating the different types of food and eating them at least twenty minutes apart (fruit first) and see if you feel a change or notice a relief in discomfort.
OTHER COMMON COMBINATIONS TO AVOID
Sandwiches: Often combining wheat with meat or raw food (lettuce) with cooked food (meat) and/or fermented food (cheese, sour cream, vinegar), sandwiches can be very difficult to digest.
Cheeseburgers: Wheat, meat, and dairy are difficult enough to digest separately. When combined in a cheeseburger, they confound the stomach.
Yogurt with fruit: Fruit eaten with yogurt will curdle and ferment in the stomach.
Burritos: A lot of ingredients are used to make a burrito. They often combine vegetables with meat, meat with dairy (sour cream and cheese), raw tomatoes with cooked, and generally contain far too many ingredients.
Pizzas: Many pizzas combine wheat with both cheese and tomatoes.
Apples with peanut butter: Peanuts take a long time to digest. While the body churns away at the peanut butter, the bacteria churns away at the fruit. You can swap peanut butter for tahini if you like this combination.
EAT FOOD IN THE RIGHT ORDER
The gut holds onto food until all the nutrition has been extracted so always eat food that is easy to digest first, hard to digest last. For example, eat berries before granola, rice before lentils, steamed veggies before nuts. Every organism loves food that is easy to digest, including the bacteria in our gut. When easy-to-digest food gets stuck behind hard-to-digest food in a traffic jam, the easy-to-digest food ferments.
RULE OF THUMB
Conscious Eating: Becoming the Ayur-vidya
Eating should be approached as a sacred and sensual experience. You are literally joining energies together. It’s important to be mindful and conscious of your eating. Ayur means “life or vital power” in Sanskrit, and Vidya means “knowledge and clarity”—hence the term Ayur-vidya. Here is a simple yet effective ritual to increase your connection to your food.
1 Before you eat, feel and sense what your body needs and is truly craving. Make decisions about the food you are going to eat based on what is best for your body in that moment and what will serve you long term.
2 Once you have prepared your meal, sit in a calm and quiet environment, draw your attention to the food on your plate, and say a prayer, mantra, or blessing over your food. (I like to remove any negative energy that has been placed upon my food; use my positive radiant light to infuse my meal with strength, gratitude, wisdom, and longevity; and be thankful that I have the means to nourish my being body, mind, and spirit with this food.) One of the main reasons why we say a blessing and infuse our food with positive energy is to help us remember that our food is energy. Food is fuel to nourish our bodies and it’s important to honor that.
3 As you eat, slowly breath in through your nose and out through your nose. Deep breathing will help you slow down and feel your food. Not only will you taste your food with heightened senses but also you will gain more energy from it.
4 Use the tools already embedded deep within your body. Chew your food as well as possible. The saliva in your mouth is loaded with digestive enzymes to help you break down your food before you even swallow it.
5 After you’ve eaten, draw attention to how each part of your body feels:
Practice this ritual as often as you can. Choosing to be in a calm environment while you eat is choosing to heal your body through the practice of mindful eating. Try to abstain from negative conversation while you are dining with others—this will help your body stay in a calm and neutral state.
An Eat-Healthy-Anywhere Guide to Eating Out
The main reason eating out causes so many disturbances to our health is because we are not in control of what our food is made with or how it’s prepared.
It’s very important to know what kind of oil is in your food, how much salt and sugar have been added, and the source of the ingredients, which isn’t easy when you aren’t the master of your own food. The trick to ordering the right food while dining out is to be aware of which dishes will throw you out of balance.
Generally, people go out to eat for a special occasion or celebration. If you are eating out daily, however, I highly suggest you make yourself a little more comfortable in the kitchen because one of the best tools you have for healing your body is your own ability to nourish yourself. When you are cooking, you are in complete conscious control of the food you are combining, the quality of the ingredients, and the love you put into the meal. Of course, we all want or need to eat out from time to time. Here are some suggestions to help you make the best choices.
Tips and Tricks for Eating Out
Further Suggestions to Dine Out with Ease
Specific Tips for Your Dosha
VATA types should avoid raw food and beans.
PITTA should avoid fried, oily foods. You can always ask for some butter or olive oil on the side to fatten up your dish.
KAPHA should avoid wheat, dairy, and sugar.
THE BEST FOODS TO EAT OUT BY RESTAURANT TYPE
The following chart provides a handy guide to the best and worst foods to order when eating out, organized by type of restaurant. There is usually something available within any cuisine, as long as you choose carefully.
How to Relieve Digestive Discomfort
If you have just eaten a large, poorly combined, and heavy meal, follow these tips to relieve yourself from discomfort.
Overleaf are simplified versions of ancient Ayurvedic tricks that will relieve digestive discomfort and help you stay balanced.
WARM WATER WITH FRESH LEMON JUICE
This should be drunk first thing in the morning (see page 149) to cleanse your bowels, promote digestion, and remove toxins. If you are following the 7-Day Meal Plan for Vata (see pages 110–111), make the recipe as below, adding a grated ½-inch (1-cm) piece of fresh ginger to the water in the saucepan before heating. If you are following the 7-Day Meal Plan for Kapha (see pages 112–113), make the recipe as below, adding 1 teaspoon raw honey to the finished drink when it has cooled to a warm temperature (see page 99).
1 lemon
1½–3¾ cups (350–900 ml) water
Serves 1
Wash the lemon and then either juice half of it or cut the lemon in half and squeeze some juice into a large mug. Add the rest of the lemon to the mug. Heat the water in a small saucepan on the stove until you see little bubbles forming at the bottom of the pan—do not let the water boil. Pour the warm water into the mug with the lemon juice.
Alternatively, if you don’t have access to a stovetop, feel free to use a microwave. Heat the water in a microwave-safe cup (ceramic is preferred) in 30-second increments. Heating the water in a microwave for 40–50 seconds will usually warm the water to an enjoyable temperature.
AMA GUT FLUSH
This recipe stimulates digestive fire (agni), flushes toxins, and keeps ama at bay. It will be particularly helpful for Vata and Kapha. Pittas should almost never use this remedy and should instead drink Warm Water with Fresh Lemon Juice (see left), unless otherwise advised by a specialist. Yes, the Ama Gut Flush is that potent, and you don’t want to cause more imbalances in the body.
For convenience, you can make this mixture at the beginning of the week and store it in a jar in the refrigerator. Take a shot prior to each meal or add it to a glass of warm water.
2 cups (475 ml) water
2-inch (5-cm) piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated juice of 2 lemons
2 teaspoons Himalayan pink salt
Serves 2
Put the water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the remaining ingredients. Once the water returns to a boil, remove from the heat, cover, and let stand for 2 hours.
Using a strainer or cheesecloth (muslin), strain the liquid into a jar and store for up to 1 week in the refrigerator.
Drinking celery juice on an empty stomach helps to produce the stomach acid HCL, which breaks down proteins in the gut, restores electrolyte balance, detoxes the liver and kidneys, hydrates the skin, and lowers blood pressure. Celery is also an excellent source of natural sodium, which can help beat salty cravings when consumed daily. This elixir is suitable for all three doshas.
1 bunch of celery, chopped
1 lemon, halved and peeled
Serves 1
Juice the celery and lemon. Alternatively, if you don’t have a juicer, put the celery and lemon in a food processor or blender and blend on a high speed until well blended, then use a nut bag or cheesecloth (muslin) to strain the juice. Drink on an empty stomach for most benefits. The elixir will keep for up to 2 days in an airtight container or jar in the refrigerator.
CUT SUGAR CRAVINGS
Cardamom is one of those beautiful spices that is used throughout this book. If you happen to crave sweet things frequently, specifically after eating a savory meal, chew on fresh cardamom seeds. This may sound strange but it actually works— it calms the nerves in the brain and diminishes the craving for something sweet.
THE FENNEL TRICK
At one time or another, most of us have eaten too much in one meal and instantly felt bloated. That’s okay. Remember, this is a lifelong journey and lapses are bound to happen at some point. Luckily, there is an easy fix for a stuffed and bloated tummy: Fennel. One of the simplest ways to incorporate it into your diet is to chew about twenty fennel seeds after a meal. Fennel helps to digest heavy sauces and carb-centric dishes, which is why you see a bowl of fennel seeds at the exit of most Indian restaurants. Drinking warm water will also help lessen the bloat.
Sometimes we can overload our system and no remedy seems to help. Kitchari is a tool I fall back on when my body needs a rest, the change of season has me feeling out of balance, or I simply need to cleanse and reset. It can help give your digestive system a break and reset your body back to balance. It is an easy-to-digest complete food that balances all three doshas (hence why it’s so powerful). Kitchari can be eaten every day if you enjoy it. If liked, you can serve this dish topped with your favorite steamed veggies.
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1½ teaspoons cumin seeds
1½ teaspoons fennel seeds
½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
¼ teaspoon black mustard seeds
1½ teaspoons ground coriander
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
pinch of asafetida (hing)
4 cups (950 ml) vegetable stock or water
½ cup (100 g) split yellow mung beans, soaked overnight in a bowl of purified water and then drained and rinsed
½ cup (85 g) sprouted quinoa, rinsed
1-inch (2.5-cm) strip of kombu
sea salt
TO GARNISH
½ cup (25 g) chopped cilantro (fresh coriander)
1 lime, cut into wedges
Serves 4
Heat the coconut oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a medium heat, then add the cumin, fennel, fenugreek, and mustard seeds and cook for a few minutes to release the aromatics, until the mustard seeds start to pop. Add the remaining spices and stir to combine. Add 1 cup (250 ml) of the vegetable stock or water, followed by the mung beans, quinoa, and kombu, then add the remainder of the stock or water. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 40 minutes or until the beans and quinoa are tender and the mixture has thickened to a porridge consistency, checking from time to time to make sure the quinoa does not stick to the bottom of the pan. Season with salt. (If you prefer a soupier consistency, add some extra water and simmer for longer to get a thicker stew.)
Divide the kitchari between bowls and garnish with cilantro (fresh coriander) and lime wedges to squeeze over. The kitchari will keep for up to 4 days in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
