This is a guest post by Vedic Wellness University
Revive the lost Vedic principles!
YOGIC DIET & NUTRITION
Yoga always brings to your mind a set of poses that flexes the body. Flexibility and the idea of nutrition mostly throw you into the picture of a plate of tasteless food. However, that’s not the case in reality! The practice of yoga promotes healing, balance, and inner peace and so does the adoption of a yogic diet that provides you with the essential nutrients. The benefits of coupling yoga and nutrition are several. Yoga, when practiced alongside an efficiently researched and charted nutritious diet, will make your lives healthy and happy.
YOGIC DIET
The yogic diet places a strong emphasis on eating organic, whole foods that support physical, mental, and spiritual well-being and are consistent with yogic philosophy. Yoga and nutrition go hand-in-hand when it comes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The three yogic precepts of ahimsa, sattva, and saucha form the foundation of this system. These precepts in themselves reflect the purpose behind adopting a yogic diet in your life. Ahimsa calls for non-violence and harmony in nature, prompting one to switch to a vegan or a vegetarian diet, exempting themselves from the consumption of meat and dairy products.
Purity and cleanliness govern the idea of saucha. Including more organic food, free from impurities like chemicals and pesticides is an effective way to establish saucha in your diet. Foods that are considered pure and life-giving fall under the sattva category. Consumption of foods that are easy to digest and savoring every bit of it by slow eating and chewing well is what sattva is all about.
Making a switch to a yogic diet can be uneasy to sustain even though the benefits of taking care of yoga and nutrition are tempting. It is always advisable to start with small additions or changes and gradually move on to a full-fledged diet plan rooted in a yogic diet and nutrition.
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN ON A YOGIC DIET
CONSUMPTION OF ORGANIC, SEASONAL SUPPLEMENTS
Home-grown, organic, fresh produce always does the magic! Consumption of food supplements free from toxins is imperative for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The market is filled with vegetables sprayed with harmful preservatives such as sulfur dioxide, benzoic acid or benzoates, and sorbic acid or sorbates. Ingestion of these can prove fatal to the proper functioning of human bodily mechanisms. Having a kitchen garden of your own no longer seems like a bad idea, right? Try to home-grow vegetables and fruits adequate for your consumption. Or you can always shop at a farmers market or buy fresh produce directly from farmers you know locally. Steer clear of processed food items no matter whether they have a clean label or not!
CHEMICALS AND STIMULANTS- THE NEW RED FLAGS
The world outside is polluted with smoke coming out of factories and vehicles and wastes dumped into the water bodies. The best we could do is try not to pollute the inside of our body with more toxins and chemicals. Purity of body and mind is an important facet of a yogic diet and to achieve this, consumption of locally produced, organic food supplements is advised. Adopt a healthier lifestyle and foster purity in the body and mind by avoiding processed foods, artificial sweeteners, caffeine, alcohol, and smoking.
VEGETABLE BIRYANI IS A THING AND SO IS BECOMING A VEGETARIAN
A growing trend has been spotted among millennials and Gen-Zs in the past few years, to go vegan or vegetarian. A diet, based completely on plant-based, whole-food is essential for a yogi. Earlier, shifting to a vegan diet or vegetarian diet was not that easy given the peer pressure and frowning upon the very idea of it by other people. However, with pop culture posing a shift in its approach with more vegans and vegetarians in the front row of society, making such a switch is more welcomed and cheered upon. Legumes. Leafy vegetables, nuts, cereals, and dairy products will provide you with all the essential nutrients required by your body whilst maintaining its purity and wellness.
HAVE TIMED MEALS THAT TOO WITH A POSITIVE ATTITUDE
Having an all-balanced diet scheduled with proper workouts is not enough for having a healthy lifestyle. It is equally important to plan when you eat along with what you eat! Providing your meal timings with adequate intervals brings in a balance much needed by your body. It also increases metabolism. Food ingested requires a minimum time gap of 3-4 hours for getting properly digested. Hence an ideal interval of 4 hours is prescribed between your breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Make your lunch your biggest meal and always try to have cooked food for dinner. Have you ever wondered why you were scolded for skipping your breakfast more than for skipping any other meal in the day? Metabolism rate is at its peak during the day and hence a lavish breakfast is important for sustaining that rate. Metabolism drops as the day goes and hence it’s advised to have your dinner at the earliest possible. Also having your food at regular intervals affect the detoxification process carried out by the liver inside our bodies. To top all this, have your food with a mindful attitude.
INCLUDE MORE HEALING HERBS & SPICES
There are a lot of food groups that have healing capacities attached to them. A yogic diet includes the intake of foods that contain these kinds of herbs and spices. The medicinal properties of foods like turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger—along with other herbs such as black pepper and cilantro—are prized and valued in a yoga diet.
These spices provide numerous health advantages for your body, including assisting with digestion, balancing blood pH levels, boosting mood, lowering anxiety, and encouraging purification and healing.
Try fasting once in a while as it could detoxify your body.
The idea of fasting is relevant only to the yogic concept and is not advisable for people with digestion issues and poor appetite. Fasting involves abstaining oneself from food for a particular period of time as a means to cleanse your body and spirit and seek a spiritual goal.
Choosing whole grains such as quinoa, brown rice, oats, rye, millet, etc, and having whole fruits instead of fruit juices adds more to your nutritious diet. Include more raw fruits and vegetables in your diet and try to steer clear of carbonated drinks and processed junk foods.
Lack of awareness about such simple ideas that have been in existence all this while around us is a major reason for the derailing physical and mental health of many individuals in our society.
Ensuring oneself that they are well knowledgeable in matters of such kind is important not just in the academic sense, but also in a sense of living a normal healthy life. Educational programs such as the Master’s program in Yoga & Holistic Nutrition intend to educate people on these basic life principles and further equip them with enough knowledge to pass on to others in need.
Vedic Wellness University is an initiative that focuses on unearthing the forgotten principles of spirituality, health & wellness.
At Vedic Wellness University, we want to revive the lost Vedic principles that emphasize changing a person’s internal structure to lead a better and happier life. Our functional professionals deliver courses in Yoga, Ayurveda, Nutrition, Cultural Music and DanceVastu Shastra, Naturopathy, Vedic Astrology, , Visual arts, and Vedic Math in a setting that fosters freedom and finesse by combining technology with a spiritual predisposition. If the disciplines of yoga and nutrition interest you, you can avail of quality education on the same at both diploma and master’s levels at Vedic Wellness University. Courses offered at VWU on yoga and nutrition are:
Interested!? You can visit the website, https://vedicwellnessuniversity.com/, to know more about the course.
On the whole, have fun with your food and love what you eat. Educate yourself on the importance of nutrition in yoga and the benefits of coupling these two disciplines together in life.
