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

Habits, Food Habits

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regards,

Prithvi

Wheatgrass Drink

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Prithvi

Mango: The Alkaline Summer Fruit

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Tell me what you think. I wanna know.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Alkaline Bananas: A Superb Snack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Prithvi

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

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

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