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

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

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

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

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.

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