Ayurveda New Years Resolution
New Year’s Day is resolutions day.
What if you just changed one thing and it could have a profound impact on your health throughout the year.
Here it is!
Eat your meals at the same time every day and eat your largest meal at breakfast or lunch, have a small dinner and do not
eat after dinner. Once you do this your hunger patterns will change. Simple, effective and can be easily done for the entire year.
In Ayurveda, food therapies are Ahara Chikitsa. This is one of our basic principals of good health. We believe there is more to eating food that just eating healthy, fresh, organic food. When you eat, how you eat, who you eat with, how much you eat, who cooks your food, your mood when you eat, how your food is cooked, what elements are in your food and what tastes are in your food all influence a healthy you.
Ayurveda says that when you eat is more important than what you eat. This may be surprising to most North Americans that believe that what we eat is of ultimate importance. I am not saying that what we eat is not important , it is, but when we eat will have a more profound effect on your health.
Science has discovered that insulin resistance is linked to the sun. Ayurveda has followed the rhythms of the sun for thousands of years and , if you are eating 3 meals a day, eating your largest meal at noon and eat your smallest meal at the end of the day. This will produce more energy and ama will not build in our system. Eating large meals at the end of the day produces ama, fat and clogs channels.
North America has been eating its largest meal at the end of the day for centuries. This was based on a rural, farming society that worked hard all day. We no longer live like that, yet we have not changed our eating behavior. A Spanish study has proven that if most of your calories are eaten before 3 you can lose up to 25% more weight than if you eat those same calories after 3. And that eating after dinner will turn food to tricycerides and fat. Intermittent fasting has been always been part of Ayurveda so no food after dinner to breakfast is important. This fast of 12 to 16 hours is an anti -aging pill!
Start eating breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. Heavy meals late in the day will put denatured proteins into the blood. Start changing what you think is right for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And remember that not all calories are the same. It was once thought that all calories were the same and a calorie was a calorie. But all calories are not the same, it depend on when they are eaten and what elements are in those foods.
Remember no fasting in mid winter.
Happy New Year!
Love, Light and Laughter
Erica