subject: Yoga and Weight Loss - Doing Your Down Dog and Eating Your Cake Too [print this page] There are a number of personal hygiene practices that can lead to an increased sense of purity, wellness and vitality as it relates to a yogic lifestyle. Since the modern diet, which is centered around convenience, speed and mass production does not always correlate to food that is clean and full of nourishment. Since we are grossly unprotected by our government to regulate cleanliness and nourishment for the food industry, we are left to our own devices to find food that gives us vitality and strength.
A vegetarian diet is usually more ideal since all the chemicals, hormones and anti-biotics that are in meat and dairy products can make us sick. Even in eating a vegetarian diet it is best to abstain from white flour, white pasta, white rice and white sugar as well since these products have been severely denourished in the modern production process.
The simplest advice we could give is when you read a package of in ingredients and you do not recognize the ingredients in them, then it probably means that they are synthetic chemicals that can only harm the body. The more unrecognizable ingredients, the worse it must be for you. As far as diet goes, eating raw is even more energizing and we endeavor to have a few meals a week this way. I find that when I cook for myself with whole ingredients, instead of buying pre-made and prepackaged foods is when I tend to feel the most nourished. I endeavor to purchase organic foods from local purveyors in order to respect and honor our earth as well.
The more I learn about the harmful practices and foods that the worldwide food industry practices, the more diligent I become about what I purchase in the supermarket. I have read dozens of books about food production, diet, wellness etc. Each book I read, I endeavor to incorporate a few key lessons into my diet. I recently read a book where I learned the distinction between different production methods of olive oil which make a tremendous difference in how one assimilates this very popular and often used ingredient. Now, I will only buy cold-pressed or expeller pressed, first press extra virgin olive oil. Self-reliance and a determination to discover the healthiest ways to feed oneself are critical in an age where we rely on others to grow, prepare and regulate our food.
We attach so much emotion to food since that is often how we first interpreted love is when our Mother stopped what she was doing and fed us from her own body. Some scientists attribute the popularity of the flavor, vanilla, to its similar scent and artificial color to milk. We are often rewarded with food, usually I the unhealthy form of candy and dessert as a child. We are often forced to eat healthier food such as vegetables which does not create a later motivation to eat them as adults. We are also often forced to eat everything on our plates, which can lead to a later habit of overeating.
Obesity could be handled better if people understood how toxic and fattening common foods like white bread, white sugar, white pasta, processed foods and and junk sodas can be. The FDA does not do it's job in protecting us from ingredients that cause cancer, heart disease and other health impediments. We need to monitor our own food consumption and lobby for an objective government agency that can produce unbiased independent food research. If you don't understand what an ingredient is in a food, then it's probably not nourishing for you. If you don't know what disodium inosinate is, then it's best to limit or avoid consumption.
Eating foods with unprocessed and wholesome ingredients is a smart start. After you eat something, do you feel full of vitality or do you feel sluggish and edgy? One you start to notice the effects food has, you have begun traveling on the path to making more nourishing food choices. Try eating only cookies and soda for two days straight and you will realize how devitilizing these foods are. Yoga helps us become aware of how we react and process stimuli in our environment and helps steer us on the path to vitality and peace, in our bellies and in our brains.
