Health or Friends?

I'm sharing a personal experience about how eating clean or rather your intention to eat clean could hurt other parts of your life. Being rigid about my meals doesn't help me.Why? Isn't it good to eat clean all the time? Isn't it healthy? I will create problems in my body if I don't eat clean. These maybe some thoughts that go through your head when you've chosen to go the alkaline way and someone asks you to eat a meal you shouldn't eat as part of the diet.

Friendship is all about experiences you share with a person, the more number of experiences you share with a person usually leads to friendship. If a friend is giving me something to eat, even if it's something that isn't good for you, but a single spoon isn't going to have any negative impact on your body. I'm talking about food, not alcohol or cigarettes. Those are a complete no.

What happens when you say no?  As a normal part of friendship bonding, you have to do several things to get closer to people. So if out of love and affection a friend is feeding you, and you say no, they'll feed someone else and they'll get closer to other people.

This is a challenge I faced in my life and I don't want any of you to ever have to face this ever. It doesn't feel good when you're losing your friends for your health and when you feel that you're losing friends for health. You'll stop caring about your health and choose friends.

We're human, we crave love more than we care about anything else in the world. That's why even though our loved ones are doing things that may damage their health and their lives, we continue to be with them and not lecture them about their health all the time because of our fear of losing them.

Eating at fancy restaurants, guys night out full of drinking, all these things have been promoted by the culture, people do that because it's what they seen in movies and on TV. Since people became health concious, super markets started an organic section, and now, there's an entire super market for organic foods called 'Whole Foods' in US. Multi national companies give the people what they want, people want burgers, they get burgers, they want pizza, they get pizza.

It's simple how these things work. But in my experience, you're friends probably won't support your endeavours, they'll probably say you're out of your mind. But facts and data don't lie, the same friend who doesn't care about health will probably have a heart attack at the age of 35 or 40. He'll be diagnosed with diabetes, and will live the rest of his days repenting his situation. If you're the person headed for those signs, heed this advice now and get healthy.

Change for your life, others will follow. Your true friends will support you nevertheless.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Emotions Are Acid?

Hey guys,

This post is not related to food at all, this is completely related to the emotional state of being and how it effects acid alkaline balance in our body.

Before you debate whether emotions actually play any role in the chemistry of the body, I'd like to clarify, our emotional states DO make a difference in the body.

Negative emotions are associated with acid, anger, frustration, hurt, guilt. All of these are pure acid, they create more acid in the body than the actual food you eat. If you're super stressed about eating right and not eating the wrong things and every single moment you feel like heavens will come crashing down if you eat something that contains a little fat, then you're creating more acid in the body than the actual food will create. This is especially true about the people who can't seem to lose the last few pounds and they're under constant stress and that is the acid that's holding onto the weight.

On the other hand, positive emotions create a stress free environment in the body that allows alkalinity to grow, it sounds like this may not be accurate but the truth of the matter is that the emotions in our body have a big role to play in our acid alkaline balance.

On a side note, while this matter isn't completely related to the topic, but I feel it's important to stress this matter that it is our emotions that often cause us to eat things that we aren't supposed to eat. This is probably the biggest factor because of which people never control their eating.

I'm not discussing solutions, but I'm making you aware of the problem. Look out for patterns of emotional eating and bursts of negative emotions in your life. We'll discuss how to deal with them in our next post.

Cheers,

Prithvi

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.

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

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

Balance

Simple Title, Balance. How simple is it? Well, in reality, most of us have some sort of balance in our life, it may not be good for us but we can't live in a frenzy stressful state all the time.For example, if you continue a negative behaviour like excessive eating for a certain period of time, eventually you'll forget that it is not in balance, you'll feel it's normal. Today, let's briefly delve into balance and how it affects you in the alkaline lifestyle.

Balance is defined as the mental steadiness and emotional stability. This is our objective if we wish to sustain anything for the longer term. Coming to the alkaline diet and how will function in balance, let's see.

Let's suppose that we don't eat alkaline most of the time, and we don't even know what we're eating. It's true that fast food is acidic in nearly all cases, but there are several subtler items that pass into our daily diets like milk and dairy products. In India especially, we are accustomed to having milk,butter milk,yogurt,ghee and butter so on and so forth. White Rice is a big criminal when it comes to alkalinity, so is bread.
I've eliminated many of these foods from my life, but occasionally I get in some of them.

Now comes in the concept of balance. It may not be possbile for us to let go of these foods entirely. But we have a solution, neutralize the food we eat. What to do? Simple, eat a small salad with every such meal. Does it completely take away all the acidic nature of the food? No, but it significantly reduces the acidic effect the food will have on your body.  

I eat a salad everyday for brunch, it's a habit, many times it's the same salad, but it feels good and refreshing to have that salad. It gives you an amazing feeling at the beginning of the day and makes you look forward to the day. This feels amazing, this keeps the acid alkaline balance. Yes, our goal is alkalinity, but is it better to have a balanced lifestyle than an acidic lifestyle? The answer is an overwhelming Yes!

Most people think of success as this giant thing, either you have it or you don't, either you eat alkaline or you don't, either you have a great body or you don't.But that isn't the case at all. If you look at people who go to the gym, even irregularly, they're in better shape that those who never goto the gym at all.Because their body is used to some sort of exercise on some day. Whichever day they give it to the body, the body takes it and in turn after a couple of years you look at them, and they look great even though they don't think they goto the gym regularly.

Focus on the small wins, they build the momentum to keep the train going and when the momentum is high, that is when you get the big wins.

Have a balance, only a balance is sustainable long term, any one sided behaviour never lasts long term.

Cheers & Regards,

Prithvi

Breathing & it's effect on Digestion

Hey guys,

Although breathing isn't exactly alkaline or acidic, it has a very important role to play in digestion and in the alkaline lifestyle. Let me take you through some facts about breathing and let's look at where most people stand in case of breathing.

Breathing is the process of taking in oxygen, well, it's more than that, but we want to consider only oxygen intake. Oxygen burns food that we eat and produces energy, so basically, more oxygen = more energy.
All this seems hunky dory, what's the problem? Well, most people don't breath properly. To get you to understand better, look at the diagram to the right.

What you need to do is breathe deep into your diaphragm where all  the blood vessels are, so as to ensure maximum absorption of the oxygen..However, most people breath only into the upper part of the lungs and the oxygen rarely if ever reaches the diaphragm. Thus, oxygen doesn't burn the food and this in turn doesn't provide the energy required.

My breathing was also shallow initially, I did the exact same thing I described above, breathed lightly into my lungs. This was totally useless for my digestion. After I learnt, what I was missing, I found it difficult to breathe deep. I started with Tony Robbins breathing technique of 1:4:2. Breathe in for 1 count, hold for 4 counts and let go for 2 counts. This means if you breathe in for 4 counts, then you hold it for 16 counts, and exhale for 8 counts. Please note that 1 count ≠ 1 second, 1 count is simply 1 count, you may equate it to 1 second or not depending on your choice.

I initially started with 4:16:8, and eventually moved on to 7:28:14. I do 7:28:14 till today. You must do this 10 times. In the beginning it will be very difficult, in that case, do it 3 times. Then when you're comfortable, do it 10 times.

This is probably the single most highest leverage thing you can do to aid your digestion, you will feel spot results and feel a boost of oxygen into your body. It's an amazing feeling.

Stop reading and do it now. It will feel phenomenal.

Regards,

Prithvi