Health or Friends?

I'm sharing a personal experience about how eating clean or rather your intention to eat clean could hurt other parts of your life. Being rigid about my meals doesn't help me.Why? Isn't it good to eat clean all the time? Isn't it healthy? I will create problems in my body if I don't eat clean. These maybe some thoughts that go through your head when you've chosen to go the alkaline way and someone asks you to eat a meal you shouldn't eat as part of the diet.

Friendship is all about experiences you share with a person, the more number of experiences you share with a person usually leads to friendship. If a friend is giving me something to eat, even if it's something that isn't good for you, but a single spoon isn't going to have any negative impact on your body. I'm talking about food, not alcohol or cigarettes. Those are a complete no.

What happens when you say no?  As a normal part of friendship bonding, you have to do several things to get closer to people. So if out of love and affection a friend is feeding you, and you say no, they'll feed someone else and they'll get closer to other people.

This is a challenge I faced in my life and I don't want any of you to ever have to face this ever. It doesn't feel good when you're losing your friends for your health and when you feel that you're losing friends for health. You'll stop caring about your health and choose friends.

We're human, we crave love more than we care about anything else in the world. That's why even though our loved ones are doing things that may damage their health and their lives, we continue to be with them and not lecture them about their health all the time because of our fear of losing them.

Eating at fancy restaurants, guys night out full of drinking, all these things have been promoted by the culture, people do that because it's what they seen in movies and on TV. Since people became health concious, super markets started an organic section, and now, there's an entire super market for organic foods called 'Whole Foods' in US. Multi national companies give the people what they want, people want burgers, they get burgers, they want pizza, they get pizza.

It's simple how these things work. But in my experience, you're friends probably won't support your endeavours, they'll probably say you're out of your mind. But facts and data don't lie, the same friend who doesn't care about health will probably have a heart attack at the age of 35 or 40. He'll be diagnosed with diabetes, and will live the rest of his days repenting his situation. If you're the person headed for those signs, heed this advice now and get healthy.

Change for your life, others will follow. Your true friends will support you nevertheless.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Emotions Are Acid?

Hey guys,

This post is not related to food at all, this is completely related to the emotional state of being and how it effects acid alkaline balance in our body.

Before you debate whether emotions actually play any role in the chemistry of the body, I'd like to clarify, our emotional states DO make a difference in the body.

Negative emotions are associated with acid, anger, frustration, hurt, guilt. All of these are pure acid, they create more acid in the body than the actual food you eat. If you're super stressed about eating right and not eating the wrong things and every single moment you feel like heavens will come crashing down if you eat something that contains a little fat, then you're creating more acid in the body than the actual food will create. This is especially true about the people who can't seem to lose the last few pounds and they're under constant stress and that is the acid that's holding onto the weight.

On the other hand, positive emotions create a stress free environment in the body that allows alkalinity to grow, it sounds like this may not be accurate but the truth of the matter is that the emotions in our body have a big role to play in our acid alkaline balance.

On a side note, while this matter isn't completely related to the topic, but I feel it's important to stress this matter that it is our emotions that often cause us to eat things that we aren't supposed to eat. This is probably the biggest factor because of which people never control their eating.

I'm not discussing solutions, but I'm making you aware of the problem. Look out for patterns of emotional eating and bursts of negative emotions in your life. We'll discuss how to deal with them in our next post.

Cheers,

Prithvi

How does it feel?

Every single day, I have someone or the other asking me about how I can live off of salads. I simply reply, I'm used to it. They question why I eat salads, they say it's unnecessary, say health isn't such a big deal.

Well, every time someone speaks about such things, I never preach to them about health or about the alkaline diet, they're probably very happy in their respective lives and don't want any stress about their health issues. It's happened so often that I never talk about eating healthy to them nowadays, except for in the case where they actually want to talk about it.

Everyone young, I won't define young, but I think you get it. Young people feel like they will live forever, and eventually they have some problem with some part of their lives, this is in reference to health. They shrug it off as if it happens to everyone, and live on. Rarely do they reflect on the reason of the lapse in health, there are few who do and those are the people that come into healthy eating.

There is a single point I'm making in this post, and this is redundant, I've spoken about it before and I speak about it again. Health is the most important aspect of our lives, it can't be bought, money can help you get in better health, but it can't bring you out of death. I'm not referring to death by cancer or some deadly disease that could be cured with a million dollars, I'm referring to the death that is caused by years and years of poor health habits.

Let this post be a reminder to get back onto health. It's never too late, start now. It's for the best. Start small, but start.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Time Flies, Habits Bring Results

I just look back at the time I turned vegetarian, It was June 2012, how time flies, I seems like just yesterday that I switched on to the alkaline diet, but it's been more than two years. I just felt like turning veg and  I did it. Most people probably don't feel it's so easy, I'll leave going vegetarian for another post, but for now, I'd like to discuss  how habits bring results.

"Nothing Tastes As Good as Health & Vitality Feels" - Tony Robbins

I want to reinforce the notion that it's not possible to change everything overnight, you will never succeed unless you have too many things depending on it. I'm sure you have scores of examples in your own lives. If everyone is doing it, you're much more likely to do it. Since most of us don't have that option, or perhaps a better way to put it is that most of us can't create such situations easily, we must use whatever will power we get on a daily basis and direct it into developing one single habit.

This principle has worked for me time and again, but I still keep hunting for newer techniques, but I fail at all of them, the tried and tested method of adopting one single habit seems to be the only way we can actually achieve longer term success.

This point is subjective, in essence, if I've got the discipline to do this for an year, I'll have gained some momentum, to add fuel to the fire is easier, but starting the fire is the hard part.

For most of us physical health and fitness is not at the level we want it to be, the irony of the fact is that if you have this are under control, everything else becomes so much easier.

I've felt the feeling of how it feels, it's totally amazing. But it's not an addictive state, junk food has an addiction to it.After eating any junk, you feel a craving for about 3 days, if you eat to satisfy the craving, you feel it for another 3 days and the vicious circle goes on forever. On the other hand, quality food never has any of such addictions, it just makes you feel good. It has a higher taste, something that can't be explained. But it will satiate your desires, after a couple of months, the cravings reduce,  you will feel a need to eat maybe once a month, if you overcome it, you'll feel it less frequently.

The urge may never go away forever, but this is the way life works.

Choose your habits wisely, because time magnifies habits.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Some Facts About People Who Follow Through

Most people find the hardest part of a diet is to follow through, I'm referring to a diet but basically anything in life when new, people find it hard to figure out.how to keep going. From the experience of my life of spending 15 months in the alkaline diet as of today, I have the clear answer to this question and that is what I will delve into this article about.

The phases of my life when progress was happening, things were going great, everything seemed perfect were the times when I had the best results with the diet. I lost several kilos, looked great, felt amazing, didn't have to worry about food at all.

The common thread through all these things is one reason, it is that I never thought about food at all. I ate whatever was planned, but the plan was made when I was in the right state of mind. I was busy before breakfast, busy after breakfast, busy before lunch, busy after lunch, even during lunch, I was thinking about things to do after lunch. Lunch (or any meal) was simply a chore that made my life better, it enriched my life.
After you create habits, they keep serving you even if you don't want them, whether good or bad, habits are habits.

I really like this quote from a lady called Patricia Fripp "Habits are like railway tracks, they take a long time to form, but once formed, they take you where you want."

There is a simple way to make habits, the concept goes like this, you pick one thing that you want to imbibe to yourself, make it an executable task, for example, if you want to eat alkaline, decide to make an alkaline breakfast everyday and have it, that is an executable task. Then perform this task for 30 days. The habit is ready.

If you feel overwhelmed by the executable task, break it down further, make it so simple that you feel like it's a piece of cake.

This is a simple but powerful message, just keep this in mind, it can change your life. It changed mine.

Vegetarian for Life

A lot of my friends and relatives are asking me how I manage to abstain from eating non veg. I used to eat chicken, lamb (mutton), fish, prawns etc. One day, I just decided to stop, well, after that day, my life has never been the same.

Vegetarian food has the excellent benefit of keeping the body light, this is a hard concept to explain, to understand what I'm talking about, on 2 separate days, have one vegetarian buffet and one non vegetarian buffet meal, the difference will be clearly evident, vegetarian feels much lighter after you consume it, non veg on the other hand gets you feeling drowsy and often times you feel like taking a nap after it.

The benefits of being veg are numerous, firstly, I never have to deal with bones or thorns, veg is always boneless. The second benefit is something that's not obvious, but it really gets you feeling good in the longer term, when we consume animal flesh, we also consume the cholesterol of the animal, this is the reason our arteries are clogged and blood capillaries struggle to allow the blood cells to pass, this in turn is the primary reason for heart disease.

Another fact to keep in mind is that the way these animals are raised to meet our needs for meat. These animals are fed specialized food that makes them grow big and juicy so they can be cut. They are genetically engineered to have different body parts that people want. I won't go into the details, but I'd suggest you do your own research, watch a documentary like 'Food Inc'. The animals know that they're going to be slaughtered and this releases all sorts of stress hormones which we consume as a part of eating flesh.

For me personally, I found veg to be a cleaner way of eating, I found it to be better. That's the reason I switched, for you there maybe many reasons, but you'll never regret the decision.

Cheers,

Prithvi  

Weight Loss

The main reason 90% of people get into healthy eating or diets is for weight loss. They are not aware of what they feel like because it's so normal to feel drowsy and low on energy. After they do get into health,  most people never actually track everything to the tee. They eat healthy sometimes and eat junk other times, but overall, if you look at the people who've invested their time into healthy eating, they DO lose weight.

Over a span of 5 years, the change is clearly visible, the problem here is that most people want to lose weight immediately, within a week or a month, sometimes even days. They want to look great for that special party. They don't put in the effort, their life goes back to the same old rot they used to be in.

I want to clarify one thing today, in this information age, there is more information than a person can read in a lifetime, let alone understand and execute, so the best information is the information that you apply. It means whatever spend time reading, spend more time executing. Simple habits like one salad a day, do wonders for your digestion. A wheat grass drink every day also does a lot of good.

Get this, nature abhors a straight line, if you see a straight line anywhere in nature, a man made it. If you look at our lives, we don't consciously think about all the things we do, we do things for many reasons. It is required of us to add useful habits to our lives which take us far over time.

Everything happens over a span of time, if I weigh 120kgs, I'm obese and have tons of fat to lose, there is no way I can get six pack abs in a week. It's just not possible. But over the span of a year, consistent workouts (consistent doesn't mean everyday, it just means on a consistent basis), a six pack is easy. Look at any person who's been going to the gym for a couple of years, I bet you, he'd look better than a person who's never gone to the gym at all.

The purpose of this post is not to introduce new 'alkaline berries' or 'alkaline shakes' that will get you to lose weight today, but rather to get you to focus on the only way to long term sustainable weight loss.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Health Goals

This post is simple, it deals with goals related to health. I think you'll find my take interesting.

Before I delve into the meat of the subject, let me be clear, if you want ripped abs or want to look like a supermodel, please don't take any advice I give in this post. It's probably not for you. If you want energy at the end of the day to do the thing you love or need the extra energy to invest in your part time business, then this is probably for you.

Health and appearance are often talked about in the same conversation because of the massive media attention on appearance in today's culture, this puts stress on people to have an attractive appearance, this in turn puts even more stress on people who want to look good through health.

I think having goals for something like health for the average Joe is useless,. the average Joe has many goals for his career, for his relationships and what not. He probably is already having difficulties meeting all the other goals and requirements of his life, health goals will simple add stress and do nothing to help him out.

So if there are no goals, then how do you become healthy? Instead of goals, I suggest some processes that can be added to our daily lives, processes like one healthy meal a day, a couple of minutes each day for breathing, having wheat grass drinks.

Health is an ongoing process, it never stops, we need to change small and change often to ensure that we can achieve the things that we want. Average normal human beings i.e, All of us. Have tons of things to do in our daily lives, our objective is to be able to do all these things and in addition, also do the things that we love.

Processes inside of a system make all the difference, it is them that we need to analyze and change, one off things rarely make an impact on anything long term. Think about this in your own life, I'm sure you'll come to the same conclusion.

Regards,

Prithvi

Milk: Acid or Alkaline

Milk is Acidic

A big thing in vegetarian diets is whether or not milk and dairy products fall into the vegetarian category. But today, that's not our focus. We're looking at it from another perspective, from the perspective of an alkaline lifestyle.

Before we go further into details, we need to understand that when we speak about milk or about any food, and we refer to it's post metabolism effect on the body not the alkalinity of the product itself. This means that we need to look at what effect it has on the body rather than the what it is.

Now, coming to milk(cow's milk), it isn't alkaline, it's in fact a little bit on the acidic side. Not only that, The sweet nature of milk and the additional growth hormone is unnecessary for the body. Humans have growth hormone, there is no need for extra growth hormone, but by taking in cow's milk, we're taking in additional growth hormone which is causing us to grow more than necessary. (This isn't the focus of the article, so do some research on this yourself.)

All animals in nature drink milk only of their own kind, zebras drink zebra milk, humans should drink human milk, but in addition to human milk, we also drink cow milk that doesn't give us anything.

Now, some milk like goat's milk before pasteurizing is actually alkaline, I won't go into the exact specifics, to be honest, I've not had goat's milk, but this article is simply to remove the element of doubt that you may have regarding milk's alkalinity.

We don't want to give excuses and fool ourselves that certain things are alkaline and can be had. Milk doesn't stop with milk alone, it includes dairy products like butter, cheese, ice cream, yogurt and all other milk based products.

Keep in mind that milk is acidic, because of the sugar in it.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Balance

Simple Title, Balance. How simple is it? Well, in reality, most of us have some sort of balance in our life, it may not be good for us but we can't live in a frenzy stressful state all the time.For example, if you continue a negative behaviour like excessive eating for a certain period of time, eventually you'll forget that it is not in balance, you'll feel it's normal. Today, let's briefly delve into balance and how it affects you in the alkaline lifestyle.

Balance is defined as the mental steadiness and emotional stability. This is our objective if we wish to sustain anything for the longer term. Coming to the alkaline diet and how will function in balance, let's see.

Let's suppose that we don't eat alkaline most of the time, and we don't even know what we're eating. It's true that fast food is acidic in nearly all cases, but there are several subtler items that pass into our daily diets like milk and dairy products. In India especially, we are accustomed to having milk,butter milk,yogurt,ghee and butter so on and so forth. White Rice is a big criminal when it comes to alkalinity, so is bread.
I've eliminated many of these foods from my life, but occasionally I get in some of them.

Now comes in the concept of balance. It may not be possbile for us to let go of these foods entirely. But we have a solution, neutralize the food we eat. What to do? Simple, eat a small salad with every such meal. Does it completely take away all the acidic nature of the food? No, but it significantly reduces the acidic effect the food will have on your body.  

I eat a salad everyday for brunch, it's a habit, many times it's the same salad, but it feels good and refreshing to have that salad. It gives you an amazing feeling at the beginning of the day and makes you look forward to the day. This feels amazing, this keeps the acid alkaline balance. Yes, our goal is alkalinity, but is it better to have a balanced lifestyle than an acidic lifestyle? The answer is an overwhelming Yes!

Most people think of success as this giant thing, either you have it or you don't, either you eat alkaline or you don't, either you have a great body or you don't.But that isn't the case at all. If you look at people who go to the gym, even irregularly, they're in better shape that those who never goto the gym at all.Because their body is used to some sort of exercise on some day. Whichever day they give it to the body, the body takes it and in turn after a couple of years you look at them, and they look great even though they don't think they goto the gym regularly.

Focus on the small wins, they build the momentum to keep the train going and when the momentum is high, that is when you get the big wins.

Have a balance, only a balance is sustainable long term, any one sided behaviour never lasts long term.

Cheers & Regards,

Prithvi

Breathing & it's effect on Digestion

Hey guys,

Although breathing isn't exactly alkaline or acidic, it has a very important role to play in digestion and in the alkaline lifestyle. Let me take you through some facts about breathing and let's look at where most people stand in case of breathing.

Breathing is the process of taking in oxygen, well, it's more than that, but we want to consider only oxygen intake. Oxygen burns food that we eat and produces energy, so basically, more oxygen = more energy.
All this seems hunky dory, what's the problem? Well, most people don't breath properly. To get you to understand better, look at the diagram to the right.

What you need to do is breathe deep into your diaphragm where all  the blood vessels are, so as to ensure maximum absorption of the oxygen..However, most people breath only into the upper part of the lungs and the oxygen rarely if ever reaches the diaphragm. Thus, oxygen doesn't burn the food and this in turn doesn't provide the energy required.

My breathing was also shallow initially, I did the exact same thing I described above, breathed lightly into my lungs. This was totally useless for my digestion. After I learnt, what I was missing, I found it difficult to breathe deep. I started with Tony Robbins breathing technique of 1:4:2. Breathe in for 1 count, hold for 4 counts and let go for 2 counts. This means if you breathe in for 4 counts, then you hold it for 16 counts, and exhale for 8 counts. Please note that 1 count ≠ 1 second, 1 count is simply 1 count, you may equate it to 1 second or not depending on your choice.

I initially started with 4:16:8, and eventually moved on to 7:28:14. I do 7:28:14 till today. You must do this 10 times. In the beginning it will be very difficult, in that case, do it 3 times. Then when you're comfortable, do it 10 times.

This is probably the single most highest leverage thing you can do to aid your digestion, you will feel spot results and feel a boost of oxygen into your body. It's an amazing feeling.

Stop reading and do it now. It will feel phenomenal.

Regards,

Prithvi

Alkalinity Enriched Life

Continuing on from last week's post, I want to write more on this topic of Healthier, and how eating alkaline or following even a couple of alkaline practices can keep you in far better health than average normal people.

Consider this, average normal people, eat whatever they've been eating traditionally, occasionally they try out some new foods, and reject most of them, have almost no healthy food practices because they don't know what health means and what will add to health or take away from health.

Compare this to a person who's done a little bit of research on the alkaline diet, follows a couple of healthy food practices, like having a glass of wheatgrass drink every day, having a 500ml of water immediately after waking up, avoiding fluid intake 30mins before and after food intake.

The effect of all these practices are never seen in the short term, looking back at my own life, after I started following these health principles(I'm no expert by any standard), I've almost never fallen sick, I have energy to carry out most of my activities, I feel better and less lethargic. So, 10 years into such healthy practices, a healthy eater will be on a path far different from that of a non healthy eater.

Non healthy eaters never look up health, they goto a doctor when they're sick, the doctor gives them some pills, they take the pills, the problem goes away. But never actually ponder on the fact of why they had the problem in the first place and why is such medication necessary. Diabetes is the best example, most people think diabetes is hereditary, diabetes isn't hereditary, what you eat isn't healthy so you got diabetes, nobody ever told you how to eat healthy so you never got to know.

Now that you've read this post, you have a better grasp of what will happen if you follow alkaline eating and how alkalinity enriches your life.

Make sure you watch the video below, it's an investment of time in health. You'll gain some interesting insights.

This video is interesting and reveals some secrets regarding placements of items in super markets. The supermarkets place items based on profitability. This is good info if you want to know how to shop better.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Health Fanatic Vs Healthy Person

The title may confuse you a bit, probably because you may think they are the same thing.Well, to clearly demarcate the territories of the people mentioned above, I've written this post.

Let me first describe each of the above people and later get into what are the pros and cons.

Firstly, a health fanatic is a person who puts paramount importance on health, he strikes every t, dots every i. He knows health inside and out, follows it and preaches it. He's so much into health and taking good care of the body, he thinks it to be the way it is and feels that it is the only way to live a quality life.

Please bear in mind that there is NO right or wrong way.There are just things you do and consequences to that.

Now, let's get into a general healthy person. A healthy person (from the perspective of the alkaline diet), is a person who has a couple of glasses of wheatgrass everyday, does a little bit of breathing exercises to aid digestion, follows many rules of the diet. But he gives himself a break on a one day of the week, or on a meal per week. (People who follow all rules are health fanatics, you qualify as a healthy person if you follow some of the rules and overall feel better)

In essence, this person is healthy, he falls sick far less than any of his other non healthy eaters, lives a lighter and higher quality life, feels enriched.

Now that you get the picture of who is who. Let's get down to more details. Without the shadow of a doubt, both of these people have far higher quality lives than regular people who don't follow any sort of healthy eating whatsoever, but for our benefit, we need to know what category we'd like to fall into and what benefits it has.

A health fanatic will live a good quality life, these people are few in number, the circumstances that health fanatics require are not available for most normal people, people who're extremely busy, and sometimes even wealthy, people who can afford to have healthy food prepared all the time, are usually the ones who will fall into this category. This is the ideal of healthy eating.

Coming to healthy people, following some of the rules has brought a higher quality life to them, while they don't have all the opportunities to have a perfectly healthy life, or they don't make use of all of them, they feel alive and have a lot more energy than most ordinary people.

Since the alkaline diet or diets in particular are relatively new (less than 50 years old), there has been no long term study of generations together where there has been a higher life expectancy. But it makes more logical sense to think that people who take better care of themselves will live a longer life, how much longer? Well, that's a question that has no answer as of today, but we should have more data in the future.

All I want you to take away from this post is, which category do you fall into? Which do you want to fall into?

After you choose a category, live life free of the guilt of choosing the category and live life happily.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Alkaline Water

Water, acid, alkaline or neutral? The most important element for human survival after oxygen. What role does water play in our daily alkaline lifestyles? Well, let's look at answering that question along and learn a couple of techniques to use water more effectively.

Firstly, water has a pH of 7, that means that it's neutral, neither acid nor alkaline. To make water alkaline, add some lime to it, preferably freshly cut lime juice. This isn't too great to taste, but adds a lemony tinge. You can learn to like it over time, worth it if you like living a healthy life. The taste isn't too bad, it just needs getting used to.

When to have water, well, the intake of water at proper intervals could be very effective or ineffective as an aid to digestion. Water, should be had at the following timings.
1) Immediately after you wake up in the morning.
2) Min 30 mins before food intake.
3) Min 60 mins after food intake.

It is a cycle, you have 500 ml of water the moment you wake up in the morning, this is the time when you are most dehydrated and you've not had water for hours together. You have water 30 mins before having food so that the body is clear of all liquids when food enters the body. And you have water a minimum of 60 mins after having food because your body is clear of all solid food.

The stomach secretes enzymes that digest solid food, by mixing water, you hinder it's ability to perform at it's best. Thus, it doesn't do it's job perfectly. For this reason, we keep liquids and solids separate.

This is a habitual technique, it looks small, but to implement will take a long time. Changing food habits isn't that easy, but it's definitely possible. If it were easy, the whole world would be healthy, unfortunately, this isn't the case.

Trust the process, and follow the rules, you will feel phenomenal.

Regards,

Prithvi

Feeling Alive!! After A Hard Day's Work

Hey,

This is a benefit oriented post. It's for people who want to know the secrets to unlocking the energy that is hidden in them. For people already following the alkaline diet, it gives them more fuel to keep going.

Imagine this, you come home from work, it's about 7pm, you carry home work from the office, you still have to do a lot, you don't have time to cook so you pick up something at McDonalds. You feel lethargic, not feeling like doing anything, depending on how much you're drained, you either carry on with your work or drop dead on the bed.

I know this  probably isn't your exact situation, many of you may have better or worse scenarios than the one above. But maybe you resonate with one part of the story, perhaps it's the lack of energy. I don't know how to help you reduce your workload, but I surely know that energy is a formula, you do certain things and you have it, you do certain things and you don't.

Wouldn't it be awesome did all the same things you're doing now and have the energy to do everything tirelessly. Well, then look no further than the alkaline diet. I'm not selling you on the concept of the alkaline diet, but rather I'm making you aware of the fact that it can solve some of the health issues you maybe facing.

While practicing the alkaline lifestyle, you'll notice a couple of things. Firstly, the cravings you have to eat something sugary, or fatty is dead. I seriously mean DEAD. The cravings that we have are feeding on themselves, you eat junk, it creates yeast in your stomach, the yeast craves sugar*, you crave food. This is a cycle, now, look at the other equation, you eat clean, no yeast is formed, no craving exists, you eat clean, This is also a cycle. You just need to choose the one you want.

The second thing you'll clearly notice is the ability to wake up in the morning with relative ease. This has been particularly true for me, as a part of the junk eating population, I felt a lot of difficulty waking up in the morning, I never knew the reason and I simply kept pushing myself to get up. But once I figured out there there is a systematic step by step process I'm following due to which I'm feeling like this, I changed the process, I changed my habits, it gives me no drag from the previous night.

If you don't encounter these problems, Congratulations, you're probably eating healthy. If you face anything of this sort, consider better health possibilities, it will change your life. Forever.

Regards,

Prithvi

Support System

The challenge that most people have(myself included) is that nobody will support your diet, or your exercise, or anything new. Let me give you an example , you want to eat clean, but your roommates(family/friends) probably don't want to change their eating habits and want you to follow the same habits as before so it doesn't create differences. They may not do it consciously, but overall, their attitude will be similar to this.

Now, we come to the important point, what can you do about it? Just like in everything in life, you need to get yourself through the initial stages of hurdles, the first thing to keep in mind when you are faced with hurdles is that they are going to come up. Expecting that they are going to be in your path will get you prepared to overcome them.Knowing you're going to face hurdles will keep you strong. 

Why you will or will not follow through all comes down to the one thing. The state in  which you are at the the time of the action. Let's say you're pumped up, you won't even feel the need to eat some junk. You're probably doing something productive anyways and you're so engrossed in it, you forget about eating and by the time you should eat, your mind is in the right state. But let's say you're dull, maybe you had a bad day at work and you don't feel like going and making the salad. What will usually end up happening on the initial stages is you'll probably eat some cheat meal. Why I say initial stages is because after it becomes a habit, you'll find yourself doing it unconsciously. But it's the first 30 days that make all the difference.

This post is small, it's meant to keep you on track. Knowing about the alkaline diet will not make you healthy, implementing it will. You must focus your will power on making the alkaline diet a part of your life. Watch the video posted below, it may give you the necessary focus to take the action needed.

What I want you to take away from this post is
1) Nobody will help you unless you help yourself.
2) Habits are like railway tracks, they take time to form, but once formed, they will take you where you want to go.

Be sure to watch the video of this man who had an encounter with death and survived. It's a very motivating video.

Habits, Food Habits

Reflecting on my habit of eating a salad every single day without fail, I thought "What is it that makes me eat this salad every day?", the first answer was, "Because my mom made it.", but after a little more thought, it dawned on me that I put things in perspective a long time before I actually ate that meal.

If you eat clean, your blood sugar remains stable, what this means is that there are no sudden drops or spikes in blood sugar. You know those sudden cravings you have to eat something, mostly junk? That's because of a drop in blood sugar. If you're diabetic, a drop in blood sugar is a very serious thing, you could faint on the street if you're low on blood sugar. Coming back to our main point, clean eating maintains our blood sugar, and you won't get those cravings. If you've eaten some McDonald's or KFC kind of junk, there are high chances that you feel these kind of cravings often, watch the documentary 'Supersize Me' for more info on this.

So, in the cycle, you eat clean, you don't feel the craving to eat junk, that leads you to eat clean and so on and so forth. Similarly, you eat junk, the candida yeast in your body crave sugar, you feel like eating junk again and again and so on and so forth. To break this cycle, you need some kind of external force, this usually comes in some sort of realization or someone that you meet, or something that you watch or read(like this blog post!!!!). When such an event occurs, you must take a decision, a decision to focus on health. If this is the first time you've done so, it will be difficult, but it's the first step. Take it with the faith that you can achieve whatever it is that you want.

This is the seed of a habit, a habit that forge a better life for you. "Habits are like railway tracks, they take time to make, but once made, they take you where you want" - Patricia Fripp. To make it simple, just start with one meal per day as a salad. Small bowl or big bowl, you decide, but start a salad, the advantage here is that you don't put on any weight whatsoever regardless of the quantity. Salads feel better on the stomach, they are light, they aid digestion, even if you eat junk for another meal, a salad will facilitate smooth digestion and assimilation. Try it, it's an amazing feeling.

This post was to make you start a habit, If you start any one habit that creates better health for you, then I'm satisfied. Small habits are things like, taking 2 deep breaths after each meal to send more oxygen into the body to speed up digestion and keep the brain fresh after a heavy meal. Another small habit could be having 500ml of water first thing every morning when you wake up because the body is most dehydrated at the time.

Possibilities are countless, but start small, and keep at it.

Regards,

Prithvi

Wheatgrass Drink

Wheatgrass is the ultimate in alkaline food, or at least that's what they say. In my experience, wheatgrass has played a big role in my alkaline diet. Read on and find out. As a bonus, I've made a video of the wheatgrass that I use.

As a regular routine, I have a wheatgrass drink a couple of times a day. Earlier, I used to have Tony Robbins Green Drink, but I later switched to an Indian alternative. There are a couple of reasons for this, firstly, TRGD needs to be imported from the states, it's not available in India. Secondly, it costs around INR 5000(USD 100). But I must stress that TRGD is truly awesome in it's feeling. It will make your body feel light, this feeling of 'being light' can't be explained, but once felt, it feels truly amazing, there is no other feeling like that.

Coming to the point, I want to discuss wheatgrass powder, available locally in India and made in India. Simply put, wheatgrass has many 'benefits', but the only benefit I can feel in my body is that it makes your digestion system and excretion system function properly. Usually, when you eat junk, you mess with the system. Wheatgrass drink does some damage control and helps the food digest faster.

Wheatgrass powder is very cheap it costs INR 200(USD 4), you get 75g of powder which will last for about a month. To show you the exact details, watch the video for this.

Wheatgrass is good for you, so is using the breathing techniques,nobody is alkaline or acidic, its a continuum,  adding alkalinity to your daily diet, helps, it makes the diet better. It does some good stuff. It takes 20 parts of alkalinity to neutralize 1 part of acid, so work on keeping to reduce your acidity and increasing alkalinity.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Mango: The Alkaline Summer Fruit

This is the last post of the month, it also happens to fall on the last day of the month. To end this streak of posts, let me pick the king of fruits, the Mango. One of the many specialties of summer is the availability of Mangoes. It was quite a surprise to me when I found out that Mangoes are alkaline, the large sweet fruit could be easily mistaken for something non alkaline, but it is alkaline.

I just started using mangoes in my alkaline diet in this past week, for several years I avoided mangoes because I thought they were heavy on the stomach.But now, I've got a different perspective. It's not natural mangoes that are heavy, it is the man made artificial sugars that are heavy.

Let's delve into ways we can use mangoes in our alkaline lifestyles.

1) Cut Slices: The easiest way to eat a mango is to cut it open and eat it. Depending on the size of the mango and it's variety, this could serve as an entire meal. If it is sweet, you're lucky, if it isn't, it is still alkaline and natural.

2) Shakes: Easy to misunderstand a shake for a milk shake, but there is no milk involved. Peel the mango, chop it up, add to blender, blend, add water to reduce thickness, blend, add ice cubes for chill effect, serve.

3) Salad: You will not realize the huge difference that adding mangoes has made to my salads. The salads taste so good, the taste of mangoes is strong, it does an excellent job of not only neutralizing, but also adds a sweet taste. Add small pieces to the salad, it tastes phenomenal.


This week, I did all of these 3 and that's why I mentioned these 3. It looks repetitive to a reader, because the previous 2 posts have similar usages, but to the doer, it is very refreshing.

Tell me what you think. I wanna know.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Alkaline Bananas: A Superb Snack

Woah!, I was just looking at the calendar to see how many days are left in May and I saw another whole week. 5 Fridays in this May, that means 5 posts. As you know, I keep alkaline eating easy, I don't go into complex exotic recipes involving half a dozen fruits half of which you won't find in India and the remaining half for which you don't know the Indian term. My ideas are fairly simple, primarily because, if they weren't, I wouldn't be using them myself.(lazy me ;)).

Having said that, let me take my favorite fruit of all time for this week's alkaline food, banana.The fruit that is available throughout the year, is cheap to buy. The benefits go on and on, but let's take a closer look into how we can use it as part of our alkaline diets. As an important note, bananas have a high glycemic index, what this means is that the sugar(glucose) content is high in them, this causes the sugar to be absorbed into the blood stream faster and causes a spike in the blood sugar levels. This isn't very good, because it is best to have a sustained blood sugar level without fluctuations. If a fruit/vegetable has a low glycemic index, it will get absorbed into the blood gradually and keeps the body stable. If you've ever felt a sudden spike in energy after eating some junk like McDonald's or KFC or something like that, this is what it is. Fluctuating blood sugar causes sudden feeling for a craving, sometimes in the middle of the night, or at odd times, this won't happen if you eat healthy foods and maintain the alkaline balance.

To be clear, a banana and a McDonald's meal can in no way be compared, in other words, don't worry about a high glycemic index as it is a natural sugar and as a part of an alkaline diet, it will blend in perfectly. (If you plan to go on a banana diet for an entire week, that maybe a different story ;)).

3 Ways we can use Bananas in our alkaline diets are
1) Fruit: As simplistic as it sounds, bananas and a couple of almonds make for a terrific snack during the evening, I usually feel hungry at about 7pm, I grab a banana, grab a couple of almonds and I needn't worry about dinner till about 9:30.

2) Banana Sundae:  Typically, sundae is a word used to describe an ice-cream sundae, but in our case, we are referring to an entirely alkaline dish. Sliced bananas, served with honey on top make excellent dessert. Slice the bananas, place them horizontally on a plate and pour honey over them and it is ready to eat.

 3) Salad: You may know from my previous posts that I mix and match fruits and veggies in my salads. Well, a banana is no exception, multiple times per week I add bananas to my salads and it makes for an awesome salad. Bananas, being sweet, neutralize the taste of any non sweet alkaline foods and make the salad palatable.

This concludes my post on bananas and their alkalinity. Although bananas are not highly alkaline, focus on natural foods is my priority as I believe that nature has made food available to us if we just look.

Give me your thoughts, I want to know. What do you want to hear about? Post in the comments.

Cheers,

Prithvi