Simple Diet Tips to improve your health

13 Mar 2011 4 Comments

by Shiatsu Pete in Shiatsu

Hello, and welcome to the long awaited next health and wellbeing tip! The first in a series exploring what the Chinese refer to as the three free therapies – Diet, Exercise and Relaxation. This one looks at Diet and some simple ideas we can all use to improve our wellbeing.

Before I start though, I’d like to advertise the Yoga and Holistic show that is happening in Beeston on Saturday 26th March 2011, featuring over 15 yoga workshops, and holistic therapies and stalls. I will be there running a workshop, and also offering Shiatsu taster sessions, and I am very much looking forward to what promises to be a great day, and an exciting new venture for Nottingham.

Just to tease you I will have even more exciting news coming out in the next couple of weeks…

Diet and Health

It seems to me as though Western dietary advice tries to find a one-size-fits-all diet. But the simple fact is that we are all very different, we are born with different shape bodies, different constitutions, and we use our body in very different ways, so it makes sense that we each have unique dietary requirements. The Chinese recognised this and explored the effect of different tastes and foodstuffs, and how different foods could affect different health conditions.

To understand the foods that it would benefit you to eat more or less of, it is obviously necessary to have a full understanding of your health, which would mean a session with a knowledgeable Chinese health practitioner.

What follows however are a few general tips that can help most people to improve their eating habits and health. The focus of these tips is on helping the body to digest more efficiently, which means that we can get more nutritional value from our food, reduce any discomfort we may get from eating (eg bloating, indigestion) and reduce the amount of food that the body feels it needs to store in terms of fat. These are not weight-reducing tips, but help the body to find its natural healthy balance. By co-incidence I bumped into one of my previous clients the other day, who reported that she had lost 2 and a half stone by following these tips – no “dieting” necessary!

1. A diet you don’t enjoy is a bad diet

Eating healthily means enjoying your food. Digestion begins in the mouth and it is important to get the saliva going to begin the process of breaking down the food. If you aren’t enjoying your food, your mouth won’t be watering, so the food becomes harder for the body to process. Unfortunately this doesn’t mean eat nothing but cream cakes! Rather don’t eat bland tasteless food because it’s supposedly healthier.

2. Eating begins with the eyes

In Chinese medicine, the energy meridian relating to the stomach begins just underneath the eyes, which reflects the first stage of eating – seeing the food. This sense is part of getting the saliva flowing, so the appetizing the food looks and often the more colourful, the better the quality of the digestion.

3. Don’t work while eating

As well as distracting you from everything mentioned in points 1 & 2, it takes effort to digest food, so if you are working then you are directing your body’s energies elsewhere. Even watching TV takes your attention away from the look and taste of your food. If you can’t eat without something to distract you then some calming music is ideal.

4. The body likes routine

What the digestion really likes is to know when it will be getting food, so that it can get ready, rather than surprise attacks at a random time! As much as possible eat at the same time every day. Just this alone can make a surprising difference in terms of indigestion and weight loss. Skipping meals is especially bad, and can conversely contribute to weight-gain, as the body adopts a strategy to cope with a food shortage.

5. Eat warm foods

Our bodies need to heat up food before they can break it down, so we can make this process easier by eating warm foods. There is a lot of talk nowadays about raw food diets, and while this can be healthy in warm places such as California, we have a cold damp climate, so it is important that we eat plenty of warm food. The benefits of a raw food diet come predominately from not over-cooking, so keeping the nutrients intact. A good way to do this is to steam your vegetables. This is not to say don’t eat salads, for example, but it is better to eat salads alongside something warm. Try to avoid eating sandwiches everyday at lunchtime – many workplaces now have a microwave, so perhaps take some soup to warm up. Likewise foods like ice-cream, while it’s yummy-licious, can be very hard work for the digestion. I’m certainly not saying never eat it, but it’s better not to eat more than once (maybe twice) a week, and perhaps not the whole pot of Haagen Dazs in one sitting!

6. The importance of Breakfast

Everyone has heard the saying “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” and yet I a large proportion of my clients regularly skip breakfast, or eat a non-nutritional breakfast.

Between your evening meal and breakfast is the longest you go without taking any food in. Between lunch and tea (or dinner to some!) is only a few hours, and many of us are very hungry by the evening. So by the time it comes to breakfast, we are “running on empty”, and draining our bodies energy stores.

Often people say that if they eat breakfast, then they are “starving” by mid-morning – this is for two reasons – firstly that the digestion is actually awake, and doing what it should. If your body is telling you it’s hungry having eaten breakfast, think how hungry it really is if you haven’t. The second is that perhaps your choice of breakfast foods is not providing you with enough nutrition.

This is the most important time to refuel, to set us up for the day, and we really want to be taking on good quality, warm food by which I mean something with protein, such as eggs or perhaps salmon for those that enjoy their luxuries! There is nothing wrong with a fry up once or twice a week. Porridge is also a good choice as oats release energy throughout the morning. Likewise Muesli is not a bad choice although something warm is preferable.

If you are someone who doesn’t feel like eating in the morning, then I suggest you slowly build up. Begin by eating something light such as yoghurt, which is easy on the stomach, but will get your body used to receiving food. And then build up to something more substantial.

So there we have it, a whistle stop tour of quick tips to help bring your body back to balance. There is an awful lot more depth to Chinese Medicine’s understanding of diet, and how it relates to an individual’s health, but I hope you try out these simples tips, and get value from them.

I always welcome the feedback or questions I get from these tips, so please keep them coming. If you know someone who would be interested in receiving them, ask them to send an email to pete@authentichealth.co.uk, or sign-up to my facebook page. Pete Anderson – Health and Wellbeing

For more info on me, please visit my website www.authentichealth.co.uk

I’ll be back soon, with an overview of exercise, so until then happy eating

Pete

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