Counting diet especially your calories will not elevate at all your healthy and balanced lifestyle. It will only create stress, anxiety, confusion, overwhelmed, dissatisfaction. and by the way food disorders.
You hear about keto diet, paleo diet for weight loss diet…all are fad diets.
Before all this idea of diets, have you ever asked yourself this: how people was eating decades ago without any sensational fashion diets?
The food we eat has a major impact on your mental and physical health.
Life is simple, diet is simple.
With natural daily style and clear thinking you can get your own balanced eating habits, far of dieting business.
Why you should avoid nutritious food if your body needs them and even if it’s a high calories foods?
Don’t you think the body’s functioning is little more complex than counting your calorie. Your body does not work like that, a calculator. What is important is the nutritional value not the calories in your diet.
I know when a charismatic person is passionate about a particular diet, it’s hard to resist the urge to try. Especially when they’ve seen dramatic results on their own.
But unfortunately when you apply a method to the letter, you cannot be sure that it will work for you. And far from it!
Because we are all different and each body has radically different needs. Each one is unique in his functioning.
And you can be your own dietician or nutritionist just by learning your body, and be able to listen to it. Then to make your own diet.
Best diet is to have good nutrients in proportion of your ayurvedic constitution : loose weight, better mental and physical health, good immune system, strength, focus…
I will do a series on diet, understanding what you need and how to adapt your diet to be your own healer. Just learn and follow those simple rules, it will make a difference.
Self-care is the first habits to get. Eating well with mindfulness will also improve your digestive fire and metabolism.
You can take all those advices to build your healthy plan diet. Get a sustainable one to promote your health and reduce the risk of many today’s diseases
Unlike many framed food accompaniments (vegan, paleo, ketogenic, raw food etc …), this is not about locking yourself into a strict diet model.
Your diet : the freedom to act in conscience
What I want to convey to you is radically different. I want to give you back the freedom to act in conscience by essentially transmitting you principles of diet.
I will give you of course recipes but first, you will learn the fundamentals to understand how the human digestive system works and what its needs are.
The question of food should not be as complicated to tackle as it is now. Diet has also had catastrophic consequences.
Every time we eat, stereotypical representations come to mind: such and such a food is good or bad, it will have such and such a consequence on my body … We are paralyzed and stressed at the idea of to do wrong with your diet, which is counterproductive.
In this article, I will therefore apply myself to give you peace, tranquility, serenity, by focusing on a few very simple principles and by not deciding for you.
Of course, unlike this hyper intellectualization of food that is present today, the fact of not being interested in it can also prove to be deleterious.
Diet and catabolism
I will first start by defining catabolism.
A living body has several characteristics, including that of adapting to its environment. In the body, there is an adaptive function (at the digestive, thermal, nervous, hormonal level…).
It encompasses a large part of the working mechanisms of the human body, but we have the ability to adapt to our environment as long as he can adapt to his environment and has the resources to do so, all is well.
Symptomatic manifestations that we commonly call “disease“, disorders in the functioning of the body which are in fact only signals, occur when the body can no longer adapt.
For example, if you decide to stop consuming animal productsin your diet, you will inevitably be told about vitamin B12 deficiency. Despite everything, it is considered that there is a stock of this vitamin in the liver for a period of 2 to 4 years.
As soon as the body no longer receives vitamin B12 from the outside, it will adapt and initially show no symptoms as long as this resource is still available.
The day when the stock is exhausted, the first symptoms will appear.
Diseases are really just symptoms, warning signs that our adaptive capacity in a particular area or more generally is overwhelmed.
Our body no longer finds in its environment or in its resources what it needs to adapt to current conditions. To adapt, the body always follows the same process. It takes in its reserves or in its environment and it produces waste by its operation. Every living organism consumes resources, acts and produces wastes which will be evacuated.
Diet and disease
Now what is disease?
As explained previously, the disease corresponds to the exceeding of our adaptive capacities.
The body can no longer eliminate its waste or the body cannot find in its environment the very nature of what is necessary for it to nourish this adaptive capacity.
Among these elements which strongly participate in the adaptation of the body, there are the nutrients in your diet. These are the nourishing parts that are found in the products that we consume.
We can distinguish 2 categories of nutrients:
– Macronutrients: lipids, carbohydrates, proteins
– Micronutrients: vitamins, minerals, trace elements
It is on these elements that the body is based to perform the function of adaptation. If he does not find in his environment or in his own resources the elements he needs, the signals become symptoms and the symptoms become illness. It means that our adaptive capacity is overwhelmed.
To achieve the adaptive function, he will manifest symptoms related to this deficiency (for example symptoms of demineralization due to a lack of available minerals). The whole issue of food is first of all to meet this need inherent in the organism for both macro and micro-nutritional quality. It is thanks to this fundamental understanding that we will be able together to understand and then draw a framework in which you will evolve subsequently. This is what will guarantee you autonomy in your diet. Our adaptive capacity when it comes to food is based on our nutritional reserves.
How do you prevent and respond to the onset of the disease?
Everyone wants to avoid the onset of the disease.
And for that, our adaptive capacity must not be overwhelmed. That is to say, our body must have sufficient resources to be able to compensate for the adaptive demands of its environment on a daily basis. Our diet is one of the keys (it is far from being the only one).
This is a fundamental key, especially since over the past 50 to 60 years, our food has experienced an unprecedented transformation in the quality, quantity and nature of the food that we find on our plates. I will suggest that you adopt a daily diet that will ensure that the alarm signals (symptoms) do not go off. By consuming what your body really needs, you will not need any specific treatment or diet to compensate for possible dietary errors. This is the whole point of what I am proposing to you.
For that it will be necessary to promote the cleansing of the body.
A body consumes resources and products of wastes.
Hence the capital importance of providing it with adequate resources in terms of quantity and quality on a daily basis.
The second challenge is to treat waste. The body is also perfectly equipped to process waste. We have a waste treatment system that normally works well. It goes through:
– The lymphatic system: waste collection system
– The 4 emunctories: the kidneys, the intestines, the lungs, the skin
When the quantity of waste exceeds that which the body can process, there is have an accumulation of waste in our body. Food is a major contributor to this because modern food is a major source of waste. There are elements in this diet that our body cannot handle in terms of nutritional resources. They automatically become waste that the body must eliminate.
Approaches to find the right diet
So an Ayurvedic approach to food will focus on 2 essential principles: provide food in sufficient quantity and quality to allow the adaptive system to function properly, and have a diet that will promote treatment and waste disposal.
There will be 2 essential poles.
During the last few years, I have analyzed many dietary approaches to find the right diet. As a result of my research, I was able to identify what was in common in all these diets.
These are the2 principles that I will present to you in a next article. By keeping only 2 fundamental principles, we aim for the greatest efficiency for the minimum of effort. And above all, we do not enter into a diet religion which cuts us off from society. On the contrary, diet should give us more vitality, more joy and more enthusiasm. That’s what I’m aiming for: nutrition and waste disposal.
Then, it is necessary to restore the reserves… Reserves of what?
What does it mean to restore the reserves?
These are micro-nutritional reserves (vitamins, minerals, trace elements). Since the end of the Second World War, our food and more generally our entire environment has undergone profound upheavals. Before the war, 100% of the food produced in France was organic. We had a fresh, local and very little processed food. Pesticides and synthetic fertilizers did not exist, the peasants used animal droppings and cultivated on living soils.
However, for a plant to assimilate the nutrients from the soil, there must be a set of microorganisms (fungi, yeasts, bacteria) at the periphery of its roots (fungi, yeasts, bacteria) which allow the assimilation of soil minerals. in the plant. Plant which after being consumed, will then provide the body with these vitamins and minerals.
At the end of the Second World War, we witnessed the advent of a productivist agriculture based on the use of herbicides and fungicides which destroy the life of the soil, which greatly depleted the micro-nutritional content of our food.
There was also a phase difference between the macro-nutritional content and the micronutrient content. Carbohydrates, proteins and fats remained intact as the proportions of vitamins, minerals and trace elements collapsed over time. This certainly explains the increase in our appetite: the body may receive enough macronutrients, it remains in micro-nutritional deficiency and compensates by always eating more to have the minimum micro nutrition it needs to function on a daily basis. The tools that I offer will free you from the constraint of fad diets by giving you back your autonomy and restoring your health.
Fruits and diet
I will discuss fruits in our diet and next week I will talk about vegetables, then oilseeds, cereals and I will end the series with animal products.
The intake of fruits is essential.
Why the fruits?
First and foremost for reasons of availability and digestibility. When we talk about nutrition directly accessible by the body, fruits are perfectly indicated. In fruits, sugars are in simple form, so they do not require a digestive process to be assimilated and therefore no enzymatic capital is depleted.
The fatty acids present in avocados or olives, for example, are also short-chain and therefore particularly digestible and assimilable without inducing for the body too great a digestive process. Our instinct spontaneously pushes us to consume fruit.
We need sugars and fats in a simple and attractive form. Fruits represent the reproductive organ of a plant. “Its advantage is that you eat its fruits to disseminate the seeds further and thus grow a new plant. Nature therefore encourages us to eat fruit. Thanks to the sugars present, they represent a directly assimilable source of energy, it is the fuel of the cell. Fruits are therefore a base because they provide us with nutrients that can be used directly.
Sweet fruits: simple sugars versus complex sugars.
Sugars are intended to be broken down into simple sugars in our body so that they can be used. So why not focus on simple sugars from fruits that require less digestive effort?
There are several reasons for this. Already, cereals can be stored longer than fruit. But in our time the problem is different because we find fruit all year round on the shelves of our stores. This can be an advantage for tired people who do not have sufficient enzyme capital to digest a lot of complex sugars. Fruit is a perfect snack. They are easy to take away and do not require preparation before being consumed. They are one of the pillars of the diet
The virtues of fruits beyond sugars: antioxidants, tannins, astringents
Beyond the presence of macronutrients (sugars of course, fatty acids but also proteins), fruits are rich in micronutrients : vitamins, trace elements, minerals and active ingredients:
– Astringency which slightly dries the mouth when consumed, activates the circulation of all fluids in the body and in particular lymph.
– Tannins (bitterness) will have a positive action on the liver and on the circulation of fluids
– Antioxidants which give fruit color, neutralize free radicals produced by cells. The body produces it, but the fruits give us a lot of it and allow us to fight against the premature aging of cells by neutralizing the waste they produce.
Rather than going for these elements in often highly processed and very expensive dietary supplements, it is in your best interest to consume fruit. Hippocrates said: “Let your food be your medicine”. With fruits, you have a fabulous reserve of nutrition and active ingredients that is almost incomparable in terms of bioavailability and nutritional richness when it comes to organic fruits that have grown on healthy soils.
But isn’t that too much sugar?
We are sometimes wary of fruits because we are afraid of consuming too much sugar.
But when we talk about fruit, what are we talking about?
Because there are different categories of fruits: – Sweet fruits (apples, melons, blueberries, strawberries, cherries, watermelons, bananas…)
– Oil fruits (nuts, almonds, cashews, macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts…)
– Fatty fruits (avocados, olives)
– Fruiting vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers…)
There is therefore not only sugar among the fruits. All these fruits share this ability to feed us directly with minimal digestive work. If you take your food from the whole range of fruits, you will have a quality macro-nutritional and micro-nutritional contribution. Fruits Vitamins Minerals Trace elements Astringency Tannins Antioxidants which does not risk unbalancing and providing too much sugar.
This is also one of the risks when you change your diet: adding too much sweet fruit and forgetting the other categories of fruit. Avocados and olives will provide you with excellent fatty acids. Oilseeds should be soaked beforehand. They are also rich in very high quality fats and proteins (directly assimilable short-chain amino acids).
Sweet fruits, as we have seen, are digested quickly. The sugars pass through the blood, the body produces insulin which will command the body to enter the storage phase. Insulin will promote the passage of sugar through cells and programs the storage of excess sugar, first in the form of glycogen, then fat.
It will therefore be important to regulate 2 factors: the amount of sugars consumed and the speed at which they will pass through the body. There are tips I will show you to avoid spikes in blood sugar.
Dried fruits…
Compulsory soaking!
Among the dried fruits, there are various products such as dried figs, dates or raisins for example. Because they have lost a lot of their water, they are very concentrated in sugars.
For all people who are overweight, diabetic or have a metabolism disorder, they should be consumed sparingly and imperatively soaked overnight in water.
Although a soaked dry fruit no longer has the same properties as a fresh fruit, it at least has the advantage of seeing its sugar content diluted. You will be able to consume the fruit as well as the soaking water. In the end, there will always be the same amount of sugars but it will have been diluted, resulting in a lower glycemic peak. You can, by mixing dried fruits with their soaking water, obtain an absolutely delicious raw jam. It can be kept for a few days in the fridge.
White sugar and refined sugars
Unlike white sugar, fruit sugar is accompanied by fiber and minerals. These two elements have a huge impact on the speed of assimilation of sugars in the body. And above all, it changes the nature of the nutrition that is provided.
With white sugar, you will not have any nutritional contribution other than sugar. These are empty calories.
It induces a significant blood sugar spike leading to fat storage and exhaustion of your body.
Moreover, we are currently facing an obesity epidemic, linked to an explosion in our consumption of refined sugars in our diet. I recommend no refined sugar and uses several sources of natural sugars such as soaked dried fruits or honey.
The difference between white sugar and fruit sugar therefore lies in the speed of assimilation. This is why we invented indexes such as the glycemic load index which tells us, for a given quantity of food, the speed at which the sugar level will increase in the blood. And among the sweet products, fruits are among those with the lowest glycemic load thanks to the fibers present.
These are so-called soluble fibers which will form a kind of gel in the intestines on contact with water, thus promoting a gradual passage of sugars through the intestinal barrier. You will have energy for longer without a significant spike in insulin or alternating between hypo and hyperglycemia.
It is also very likely that many psychological disorders that we find in our time are linked to these states of hypo and hyperglycemia. In hypoglycemia, the body produces adrenaline which can lead to major emotional crises. Fruits provide much more constant energy, which will also stabilize your mood and the whole organism as a whole.
Why and when to eat fruit?
We have just explained it.
When to eat fruit? When you are hungry.
But I’m still going to encourage you not to eat fruit all day. Because even if they are rich in soluble fibers and minerals limiting blood sugar peaks, they are still sweet products.
Eating fruit throughout the day can cause you to fall into a vicious cycle of making you want to eat fruit soon after you’ve already eaten it, causing you to yoyo through your blood sugar spikes. I will therefore encourage you to concentrate your consumption of fruit outside of meals, at least starting your meal with fruit. But there again, when we talk about fruits, it is not necessarily sweet fruits, it can be oleaginous fruits, fatty fruits, according to the needs and the appetite of each one.
If you take your fruits, consume them along with other products that will have the advantage of avoiding those glycemic yoyos.
What works very well with a fruit meal are either the greens or fat from the fruit (eg coconut fat). The advantage of consuming fruit meals is that it makes it easier for the body to digest them, thus freeing up the energy available for action during your day. One of the criteria you will be watching to verify that your fruit meal is right for you is how tired you are at the end of the meal. If you are tired, it is a bad sign, there was probably too much fruit. If you are cold, it means that you have consumed too much juicy fruit, it will be necessary to densify.
Favor quality fruit
Between an apple sprayed with pesticides that has grown almost above ground and a local and organic apple, there is a colossal difference!
Reducing the quantities will allow you to move towards more quality.
When you go to buy your fruits, you will first need to have done some sourcing work, that is to say, look for good producers in your environment. A fruit that has just been picked from the tree, that has not gone through refrigerators for weeks or months, will be infinitely richer in micro-nutrition and also in taste. This will require you to take the time to find quality products. And they are found in all regions. In your organic store, look at the address of producers on the crates and contact them directly.
It takes time and organization, but there are fruits that keep a long time, such as apples, watermelons or dried fruits. On the other hand, strawberries or cherries will have a very short storage time requiring you to return there regularly. It is from the quality of the products that the ease of transitioning to a diet that includes more fruit will come.
All common fruits
Among the sweet fruits, there are several categories which will meet different purposes.
• Acid fruits (orange, grapefruit, lemon, pineapple, kiwi…).
The weak acids present in these fruits have the property of cleaning the body. These are solvents that dissolve deposits inside your digestive system in particular and even throughout your body. This is why we can prescribe grapefruit or lemon juice cures for people with calcifications.
For people who are particularly acidified, even these weak acids will represent too much acidity for the body. It is therefore necessary to use this category of fruit with intelligence, parsimony and feeling. If you have a rather good build and good vitality, acidic fruits will not be a problem.
If you’re the exhausted, chilly, sour type with pain all over your body, go easy on the sour fruits. The body will not be able to deal with this acidity even if it is weak acids. If you are exhausted, you may have limited breathing capacity and you will have a hard time removing these acids.
• Semi-acidic fruits (strawberries, raspberries, apples, cherries, berries, peaches, nectar, melons…).
They are very well tolerated by most people, even ideal products for people who have a problem with sugar metabolism. They contain few acids, are often quite watery, and do not have too high a sugar concentration.
• Sweet fruits (bananas, persimmons, rehydrated dried fruits,…)
They contain a lot of sugars and no acids. All people with inflamed intestines (colitis, colopathies, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, etc.) will have no problem consuming sweet fruits. Note: bananas are part of the so-called “climacteric” fruits, that is to say, which ripen after harvest. All climacteric fruits can be purchased unripe. Those that do not have this characteristic will soften and then rot but will not be able to ripen after being picked.
Select fruits
Finding smooth, perfectly calibrated and flawless in store is rather a bad sign… When a fruit is stressed, as for our organism, there are 2 possibilities. Either the stress which is applied to this fruit is greater than the ability of the plant to resist it. In this case the plant dies and there is no fruit. Either it does not die and develops sweeter, tastier fruits with more nutrients.
When you find fruits that are marked, it indicates that the plant struggled to grow and produced better quality fruit. At the market, prefer small apples with stains, scab, peaches a little curled up or apricots not very beautiful. It is a sign of quality! We have to re-educate our imagination and accept that the fruits we eat are not perfect.
Storage
Forget about storing fruit in the refrigerator right away!
Your fruit will no longer have taste. The taste quality and the texture of the fruit will be directly affected. To store your fruits, choose cool places and spread them out on wooden crates. That air can circulate as much as possible between the fruits. It will be necessary to regularly monitor them and consume those which are starting to be a little too ripe. Best way not to waste and to have fruit that really ripens without having been blocked by the cold.
Here I give you a little tip to keep your fruit even better. There are commercially available mixtures called effective microorganisms (EMs). You put about 3% ME in a sprayer filled with water and spray on top of your fruits and vegetables. By increasing the amount of microbes on the surface of the fruit, you will limit the rotting associated with a too static environment.
Fruits and diabetes or being overweight
With the consumption of fruit, there are 2 situations where it is necessary to be particularly careful:
• diabetes, in particular type 2 diabetes.
Experience proves that in practice, diabetics already consume sugars in starches. Those who have replaced complex sugars with fruits are doing very well provided they follow a few rules. First, you adapt to the person by testing and checking with a glucometer. People with diabetes who take up fruit are usually very surprised to find that their blood sugar levels do not skyrocket . Use all the tips that I have given to you. Such as mixing fruits with greens, consuming other categories of fruits than sweet fruits.
• Overweight.
Here too, favoring fatty fruits will be a trick to limit the intake of sugars while benefiting from the bioavailable, assimilable, very digestible character, rich in micronutrients, tannins and astringency. Playing on the different categories will allow you to adapt the fruit consumption to your personal situation.
The most obvious diet and food for humans?
Fruits are the most suitable food for humans as long as you include all categories of fruits. (sweet fruits, fruiting vegetables, oleaginous fruits, fatty fruits).
Vegetables, seeds and cereals generally require prior treatment before being consumed, this is not the case with animal products.
We are not really equipped to transform plant matter, we are fruit eaters. The fruits are attractive, good in taste, rich in macro and micronutrients. And directly assimilable, digestible without effort and easy to carry. What happiness!
Have a good day,
Namaste
Be love and take care of yourself
The 1st priority of your life: your health
You can have more tips here or here
References
The role of diet and nutrition on mental health and wellbeing – PubMed (nih.gov)
Effect of Diet and Dietary Components on the Composition of the Gut Microbiota – PubMed (nih.gov)
Diet and Anxiety: A Scoping Review – PubMed (nih.gov)
Keto diets: good, bad or ugly? – PubMed (nih.gov)
Does diet quality or nutrient quantity contribute more to health? – PubMed (nih.gov)