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

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  

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

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

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.

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

Cucumbers: The Alkaline Food

Continuing with the theme of the month of alkaline recipes, the veggie* for this week is the cucumber. Alkaline inside and out, cucumbers make for awesome alkaline foods. They are light, fill your tummy and they are alkaline, what more could you ask for? Well, before you say 'taste', let me accept the fact that cucumbers don't taste all that great, but they don't taste all that bad either, they are simply neutral.

Let's dive into ways we can use cucumbers in our alkaline diets.
1) Cut Slices
2) Cut Slices in Salads
3) Cut Slices as a side dish

Yes, you read it right. The famous cucumber is best used as cut slices. Let's go into some details about how we can use them to the best possible way.

1) Cut Slices: The most common and easy way to eat a cucumber is to peel it, slice it and serve on a neat plate. It will be ready in 2 mins, best for a snack, in the initial days, cucumbers were my breakfast and lunch. Over time, newer dishes have come up in my menu. If the plain cucumber is too bland for your taste, add some chat masala (spicy & tangy powder), although chat masala has non alkaline ingredients, since we are adding them in minuscule quantities, it's alright.

2) Cut Slices in Salads: As you may remember from some of the pictures of my salads, cucumbers are a daily feature in my salads, sliced up a little differently than usual, cucumbers make a great filling, they are cheap to buy and one cucumber is often enough to fill up nearly half of the salad.  The important thing to remember if you're one of the people that can't eat cucumbers directly, make sure you add some fruit that can add some sweetness to the salad to neutralize taste factor of the cucumber. This is a big one for me.

3) Cut Slices as a Side Dish: Cucumbers are present in every restaurant, and many times they are just placed as starters before the meal and the best part is that many times they don't even charge for them. A note to over eaters, cucumbers are the way to go if you want to eat less of junk. You have only 1 stomach, you can either fill it up with salads, with soup, with starters, with biryani*, or with ice cream. But the end result is that your stomach will be full after a while, and if it's full with cucumbers, you've put on no weight whatsoever, if you're full with biryani, you've put on 1500 calories.

Note: The satiety reflex, the reflex of the stomach that tells you you're full is triggered faster when you eat healthy, That means that if you're eating healthy foods, you will eat less and still have all the energy you need.

True, the list above is small, but  it's not list that makes the difference, it is the application of the list in your daily life. I eat cucumbers in the way I mentioned above, it makes a huge difference to the quality of my life. I feel phenomenal, very necessary element to balance out acidic foods.

Keep this in mind while using cucumbers from now on.

Please post your experiences with cucumbers, and let me know about anything you'd like to hear more about.

Regards,

Prithvi

* in India, we refer to cucumbers and tomatoes as vegetables.
* Biryani is steamed flavoured rice that often includes Non Veg.

Tomatoes Alkaline Possibilities

With the beginning of a new month, let's go deeper into specific fruits and veggies that we can use every single day in some form or another.It's never possible to continuously create new recipes and try new veggies, we need to find something that works and repeat it over time. For the first week of May, let's pick tomatoes, tomatoes are everywhere, they are ubiquitous, they've been here for as long as we can remember, and will stay for as long as we live. Best part, they are alkaline.

Today, I'll delve into 3 different ways I use tomatoes in my alkaline lifestyle, how tomatoes are playing their part in my alkaline eating.

The 3 basic ways we can use tomatoes in our Indian alkaline diets are
1) Curry
2) Juice
3) Chutney

1) Tomato Curry: Simplest and probably the most common way of using tomatoes alone to create a curry, tomato curry is easy to make(no discussions about recipes here today sorry ;) ), tomato curry in itself can be a dish, it can be eaten with rice and with rotis (disc shaped item made of wheat). It tastes good if the ingredients have been added correctly, best of all it is light. After eating tomato curry, it fills you up, but keeps you feeling neutral, it doesn't make you feel drowsy. This is an excellent dish to add to your diet.

2) Tomato Juice: A much rarer use of tomatoes is tomato juice.Juices play an important role in the alkaline diet, essentially since we believe in a 70% water rich diet. Please note that water rich foods ≠ water, overall foods that have more water content in them qualify. Tomatoes fit the bill, tomato juice, with any additives of any sort, has excellent benefits, the best of the benefits is serving as a replacement to other beverages. Tea/Coffee/Soft Drinks/Alcohol/Milk Shakes, none of them are alkaline, there are alkaline alternatives which we will discuss in another post, but for now, remember that tomato juice is one of them.

3) Tomato Chutney: The 2nd most common chutney after coconut chutney is tomato chutney. It is similar to a curry but it is used with breakfast items like idly, dosas, wadas. While a chutney is just a side dish and doesn't classify as a main dish, our objective is to ensure that most of our diet is alkaline, small changes like chutney, beverage etc go a long way in improving the quality of our diets.

There are several ways of using tomatoes in our alkaline diets, start using these 3 and we'll add more later.
I'd love to hear about your recipes and experiments with the alkaline diet. Post your thoughts below in the comments.

Regards,

Prithvi

Forced Cheating

The title maybe surprising, perhaps even curious, but I was forced to eat some foods that I shouldn't be eating during the last 2 weeks. I had my wisdom teeth extracted, I thought it was a simple procedure, but it involved a general surgeon, and him pulling out my teeth and the consequences, well, eat cold ice cream or curd rice for the remainder of the day. It was painful, painful with a capital P. No gym for 2 days. These were the instructions, but life isn't all that good in practice as it is in theory is it?

I had pain, pain and pain for the whole last week. I ate ice cream and oats for the whole week. Basically, I couldn't chew, I had to gulp down anything I ate. The second week(i.e. this week), was much better with respect to the pain, but I still couldn't eat salads, my sutures were not removed till yesterday and my chewing muscles weren't ready for salads.

Now that we have the background out of the way, how does this relate to alkaline eating? Well, it made me focus on my productivity, my health and the way my body is reacting to external circumstances, in other words it was worth it. Allow me to clarify how all these things played out.

Firstly, let me discuss eating junk, I eat junk, this in turn effects the way I feel inside, either makes me energetic, drowsy or neutral. Junk always causes drowsiness, it is a rule, because of the ingredients. Simple rule to keep in mind. That in turn effects my workouts, when you eat junk, your workout somehow feels harder to do (I can attest to this). This in turn causes us to throw in the towel on our workouts and avoid working out altogether. This vicious circle will never end, unless we make a change to the food by using our will power. Food is the easiest to change, working harder in the gym after a heavy meal is hard, well, this is my opinion.

Secondly, eating junk changes the way the body reacts to the environment, I travel to the same places, same way, but I feel the heat much more. I sit at home with the temperature just as before but I'm somehow not feeling cool, it feels like the temperature has changed, but it hasn't. My body is creating different things to counter the foods I eat, this is making me feel different, and not so good. I had to bath multiple times a day to keep cool. This is a clear indication that the healthy foods I ate, used to keep the body feeling good, the unhealthy junk I ate, does more bad than good to my body.

All of this has been very useful. I need some small stints of feeling 'not so good', to remind me to eat healthy. These 2 weeks have tormented my body, There was pain in addition to bad food that is a very bad mix, since it effected my teeth, I couldn't eat what I should have. But this has brought in renewed spirits to go to forward and a strong reason to go forward.

This post is just to let you know that there will be times like this in your life, but each time you face something like this, learn from it, look out for changes you feel, it will make you grow stronger from the experience.

Impact of An Alkaline Diet on Daily Life

A thought dawned on me the other day, I asked myself 'Why eat Alkaline?', I found that this is a very important question that most of us have. A question that you must have answered in some way which led to starting or continuing the diet. Let's look at why we eat alkaline and why we should continue to eat alkaline.

I'll describe 3 areas of my life where the AD has personally helped me.

Firstly, I find a huge, and I must emphasize on huge, impact on exercise. During my previous years when I used to eat any and everything, I tried to exercise, but the exercise used to be such a painful thing to do, you get tired easily, which in turn makes you give up on the exercise program entirely. After I changed my diet, exercising is a breeze, it's so simple to do, it's like a ship with an anchor, when you eat junk, you feel like you're dragging the anchor, when you eat healthy, it feels like you've let go of the anchor. It feels heavenly.

Secondly, there is a amazing difference in the quality of sleep I get. When I used to eat junk, I used to wake up tired, tired and tired. I learnt later that the body is trying to digest all the junk we put into it while we sleep and the body's resources aren't enough to cope with junk and as a result we feel dull and drowsy after waking up from a complete night's sleep. Eating alkaline makes waking up much easier, you feel fresh when you wake up in the morning, you have less resistance to getting up. It feels amazing, words can't describe how good it feels.

Last but not the least, energy level throughout the day, I must say that there is zero energy drain. When you eat junk, and you're continuously eating junk, you forget how good it feels or rather how light it feels when you eat healthy, probably because you forget what eating healthy is.  After a couple of days of eating alkaline, you'll immediately feel the difference. I felt lighter, light like a feather. Light is a relative term and you must know how pathetic it feels after eating junk to know how 'light' feels like. Eating junk brings with it drowsiness, you eat Chicken Biryani (flavoured & steamed chicken with rice), you immediately feel like sleeping, especially with today's lifestyles' of AC restaurants, AC offices, AC homes, comfy chairs, AC cars. It makes it all the more likely to feel drowsy after such a meal.

The biggest impact that an alkaline diet has on your life is the long lasting energy, I eat salads for breakfast and lunch. I eat my breakfast at about 8am and lunch at around 1pm. Often, it so happens, I can completely forget about lunch till about 3pm. I have a very small portion serving of salad for breakfast and this should make me very very hungry, but this doesn't happen, this doesn't mean I don't eat till dinner, I must eat at the right times so I feel normal and feel satiated most of the time so as to avoid any cheat meals. When I refer to energy, it isn't the shot of sugar that instantly fuels the body when you eat some junk, I'm referring to a higher quality of energy, energy that stems from health not from food.

This is a very important post, for me as well as for anyone who's practicing the AD, it keeps us on track as to why we're on this diet in the first place, this can be easy to forget in today's culture of fast food.
Let me know what you think, any questions you may have, any experiences you've got regarding the AD.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Cheat Meals & Solutions

Hey guys,

I know that the main interest for anyone is to figure out how to eat clean and most of all, how to resist the urge to eat junk. This post is all about, why, how and what to do now.

Why?

Before we get into the details of how, let's first figure out the why, why would anyone not want to live healthy, feel light? Logically, it makes no sense whatsoever, however when we dig deeper into this, we'll realize that the urge is a combination of emotional, psychological and scientific.

Emotionally: Eating food provides blood to the stomach and makes you feel good, this is one of the major reasons for over eating, whenever you feel bad, you'd grab something to eat (I'm no exception, this was a chronic problem that I had). This doesn't add to the quality of your life in any way, it only lowers it and makes you fat.

Psychologically or mentally: We feel disconnected from the rest of the society, everyone is partying, having drinks, eating kebabs (kind of grilled meat) and what not, people will eat anything under the sun, but this can't go on forever, all and I must emphasize ALL diseases come from creating a poisonous environment for our blood to proliferate in. Infectious bugs can do nothing to our body if our immune system is strong, because we pollute our bodies by consuming all sorts of 'socially acceptable' food, we are tearing down our immune systems and allowing bugs to infect us. (By the way, these are not my thoughts, they are thoughts of the best professors at Harvard who also happen to be Nobel Laureates).

Alkaline Salad, my lunch today.

Scientifically: There is a specific reason why we continue to crave sugary foods, please keep in mind that when I say sugar, it includes carbohydrates. E.g Rice is sugar, after it is consumed it gets converted to sugar. This isn't the regular sweet sugar we have at home, just so you know. Consuming of sugar creates Candida yeast in our bodies, this yeast's craving for sugar makes you go and eat sugar. You know that feeling after eating junk, after a couple of hours you want to eat junk again. This is because of Candida, it creates the craving.

This is typically low in Indians because of the home environment wherein we are 'forced' to eat at home most of the time, but has changed drastically over the past couple of years due to the cropping up of fast food restaurants in every nook and corner and the changing lifestyles.

Now you know why you feel like eating junk. Let's move on to the How.

How?

Restricting the categories of foods you allow yourself to eat, makes a phenomenal difference in the quality of life we have. Before we discuss more on this, let's look into what are the Hows of unhealthy eating.

1) Eating Packaged foods: There are a couple of things to note about packaged foods, firstly, that almost no packaged food is alkaline, let me know if you find any. Secondly, they have so many ingredients that it crosses the line into acidic and maybe even into very acidic. As we know that alkaline foods are those that usually have a good amount of water content(the more the better) in them, do packaged foods have any water content at all?

2) Eating Junk: All food that we eat at restaurants is usually acidic, since almost everything has some percentage of oil in it.  But compared to packaged foods, this is slightly better (this doesn't make it alkaline), as it is freshly prepared, the alive component of the food is more than in the case of packaged foods which have been packed months ago. In case of fast food chains like KFC or McDonald's, they have everything prepared in some part of the country and shipped everywhere else where only the last phase i.e. frying in oil or heating is done. This means, it is NOT good for the body.

3) Eating Excess: Eating in excess any food, let me re-emphasize, any food, be it acidic or alkaline (except salads), is not good. Just because they are alkaline, doesn't mean you can eat hundreds of almonds, they have their limits. The advantage of eating alkaline is, firstly that it keeps you feeling light all the time, in addition to the fact that it is good for you. Secondly, that the food you eat doesn't create Candida and create the craving for food.

Now that we have the How part covered, let's look at What Now.

What Now?

If you're feeling drowsy and feel drained of energy, and you need a cup of coffee to stimulate you, the diet intake you have is probably acidic. The impact its got on your body today is toxic enough, if you continue to eat the way you do, the future doesn't look too good.

What's probably happening is that the body's alkaline reserves are being depleted, but there is no replenishment, so if that is the case, the body needs to get the alkalinity from somewhere to balance out the acidity, so it takes it from the bones. This is why people shrink when they grow old.

I don't want to do an entire health workshop here, but the way your body feels and responds to the foods you eat are the best guide to you eating journey.

Solution

Obviously every one of us is human and I just mentioned above that there are alkaline reserves in the body. There is a cheat day allowed if you eat alkaline throughout the week. This basically boils down to the 80:20 eating habits, eat alkaline 80% of the time and you can eat acid 20% of the time.

Just keep these tips in mind, make sure that you eat the cheat meals at good restaurants where the meals are freshly prepared. Don't eat packaged foods, they are absolute junk.

Zig Zag principle, if it's not your cheat day and you still feel like having something, you may just go and have like 2 spoonfuls of ice cream.

WARNING: If you are weak with foods like me, don't try this, you will most likely fail and binge eat.

I have a solution to the warning, if you want to accompany a couple of friends out, eat a big bowl of salad or something at home and then go out, you'll already be full, so the tendency to eat anything greatly reduces.

I'll sign off here. Please post any comments you may have. I'm always open to questions.

Regards,

Prithvi

Where Does It Go?

Often times, I get this thought "I don't have proper info on this." when I think about the alkaline diet. So I decided to make a post out of this so all the people having the same question will find some solutions and a place to talk about it.

Looking at history, anything that is new to this world has it's way of making it into the world. The order is somewhat like this.
1) Little or no info
2) More and more info
3) It's hip and everyone's doing it.

If you think about it, everything started like this, Copernicus said the Earth revolved around the Sun and people came to burn his house down, but he was right. Edison was dyslexic, but his inventions revolutionized the world.

Similarly, the alkaline diet is picking up and I find much more info on it than just 6 months ago. I created this website so I could bring all the people in India (& the world), could find resources on the alkaline diet. Since there virtually zero info out there, and my blog lists in the top 10 in a google search for alkaline diet, it's gained some popularity.

In essence, the point I'm making is that an alkaline diet makes you feel phenomenal, leaves you with lasting energy, keeps you light, dare I say more? If we get all these benefits, why don't most people follow it? The answer I think is below.

There are challenges with it, firstly, there is no authority on the alkaline diet, there are a few people here and there but no one who's dedicated his entire life to it and supports it.
Secondly, major health organisations don't mention anything about it. Just think about it, on one hand there are drug companies that have more than $1 trillion in business, on the other hand we have guys who want to eat healthy and stay healthy with no unity whatsoever. Therefore, clearly, the institutes of health make no mention of diets like AD.

Another challenge I face on a consistent basis is the lack of proper information, contradicting food charts, controversial doctors, are all that I find about it whenever I search it. But I follow it, because it works in my opinion.

Some photos of my consistently eating alkaline.

My Breakfast & Lunch

Notice that all the things in it are not alkaline, but overall, it makes great alkaline food and I feel phenomenally light for hours after eating. 

My dinner Brown rice with Oats soup.

This is my dinner, not everyday, but one of the dinners I eat. The rice is brown, but the Ulava charu (I don't know its literal translation,Oats Soup/ Oats Syrup, whatever you want to call it, tastes great.) Does the job of keeping the meal alkaline. 

Alkaline options are around us all the time, we just overlook them. If you put your mind to work, it will come up with things that you never knew existed. Simply put, whatever you focus on you will manifest in your life.

I went to a restaurant yesterday, I looked for alkaline options, I found cucumber salad, tomato curry and Tandoori Roti(flour item prepared in a hot charcoal oven) tomatoes are alkaline, cucumbers are alkaline, roti is made from unprocessesd flour and has no oil hence making it a great item to eat with something alkaline.

We can make alkaline choices, we needn't always eat alkaline, an 80/20 principle would serve us well. Eat alkaline 80% of the time, anything else 20% of the time. Just make sure this is interspersed, i.e. don't go on acid eating sprees and/or alkaline eating sprees.Remember, alkalinity can only save you if it is practiced regularly.

As always, I'm open to any questions you may have, whatever they may be. 

Cheers,

Prithvi