Learn About Ayurvedic Diet For Beginners

Are you one amongst many who confuse Ayurvedic diet with the other ongoing experiments aiming towards eliminating various food groups to attain short-term goals for weight loss? Do you think it's just another fad?

Before you arrive at a conclusion, you should know that Ayurveda is an ancient philosophy of holistic healing that strives on reaching an equilibrium between the health of our body and mind. It restores your natural wellness and guides you to be more mindful about choosing the foods specific to your body type.

This Quick Cheat sheet guide will uncover some important aspects of Ayurvedic diet and open up a number of food options based on your unique  Ayurvedic body type.

What is an Ayurvedic Diet?

Ayurveda is a comprehensive medicinal study that believes that the three different doshas, or life energies: Vata (space and air), Pitta (fire and water) and Kapha (earth and water) are a combination of five elements: vayu (air), jala (water), akash (space), teja (fire) and prithvi (earth) and each of these 3 doshas are responsible for a specific physiological function.

Ayurvedic diet emphasizes on the fact that inorder to regain good health we should be in tune with all these 3 doshas.

What to Eat, How to Eat and When to Eat?

These 3 doshas exist in each one of us but are imbalanced with one being more prominent than the other. In order to achieve optimal health we should choose our food based on the dominant energy force.

Find your dosha and the food options based on the below characteristics:

Kapha :

• Quiet, nurturing, and loyal
• Sound sleepers with a sturdier frame facing issues like obesity, asthma, lethargy or depression due to imbalance in doshas
• Eat legumes, fruits, veggies, easy-to-digest whole foods that are light, dry, warming, and well-spiced
• Do regular exercise
• Should avoid heavy fried food like seeds, nuts and oil

Vata:

• Artistic, enthusiastic, and high-spirited
• Light sleepers with thin frames struggling with restlessness and weakness when out of balance
• Eat fresh fruits, dairy products, hydrating foods with a soft and smooth texture and grounding foods like radish, turnip, beetroot.
• Should eat 3 meals a day
• Do meditation to get a stressless regular sleep pattern
• Should avoid dried nuts, raw vegetables, herbs and meat like lamb and pork

Pitta:

• Intuitive, hard-working, and conclusive
• Deep sleepers over a short span of time with a medium physical build. Being out of balance leads to conditions like heartburn, high blood pressure, rashes or indigestion
• Eat energy giving foods like oatmeal, yogurt, lentils and sweet and fully ripe fruits, dry, and high in carbohydrates..
• Eat at regular intervals without skipping any meal.
• Avoid sour fruits, spices,nuts and oily food

Understanding the Six Tastes

In Ayurveda, there are six tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. Each of these tastes has a unique action in the body, and can be either balancing or aggravating to the doshas. This means that you can use taste to help ensure your meals are balancing for your Ayurvedic body type.

The Ayurvedic diet is based on observation and response. Once you start listening to your body and change your eating habits as per your digestive system, your body and mind will start working more efficiently. It will help you reduce stress by positively affecting mindfulness. So enjoy your meal while nourishing your soul, heart and body with Ayurvedic diet.

Stay tuned for a series on a special 6-part series - The Basics of Ayurveda.