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

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

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

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

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

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

Apple: The Alkaline Fruit

Continuing strong with our articles about specific alkaline foods, the fruit for today is Apple. After having discussed 2 veggies over the past 2 weeks, I find that a fruit is the necessary sweet required to maintain the balance.

Apples are amazing fruits, I like many things about them. Firstly  that they are sweet, secondly that they have almost no seeds (seeds are in the center and can be thrown away), thirdly, they make excellent additions to salads and are my favourite.

Here are 3 fantastic ways to use apples in your alkaline diet, again, keep in mind that these ideas are for daily usage, not to give you an exotic usage idea that you will never use, the objective is to eat alkaline.
1) Cut Slices
2) Snack
3) Salad Additive

Although some of the items may seem redundant, bear with me, they are awesome.

1) Cut Slices: At a pH of 8, apples are amazing for a dish when cut and served with some chat masala(ground spices powder). While an apple alone may not serve to be a meal, it certainly plays a role in making a good portion of the meal.

2) Snack: If you're familiar with my eating schedule, you'd know that I eat a small portion of salad for breakfast, a large portion for lunch and brown rice with curry for dinner. Having lunch at 1-2pm and having dinner at 9pm creates quite a large gap. I find myself getting very hungry during the 6-7pm time. To get over the feeling, I simply eat some almonds(5 max), or bite on an apple. Unlike watermelons, apples can be eaten any time without the need for a big cutting procedure. An apple serves as a snack very well.

3) Salad Additive: A salad without apples is incomplete for me, I rarely have salads without apples. Apples form a significant portion of my salads every single day. I like all alkaline foods, but the problem with cucumbers and neutral tasting foods is that they don't satisfy the taste buds at all, in that case, I add something like an apple or dates to make the salad taste better.

This post is a quick read, ask questions if you've got any.

Apples are alkaline, and are great to eat.

Your questions are welcome.

Stay Alkaline, Stay Healthy.

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.

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