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

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.

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