We Canadians

Diet fads come and go. Over the years,  North Americans have experimented with scores of diets and yet they remain unhealthy and obese. People switch from one diet to another and stay exactly the same.

However, there is one diet that has stood the test of time - the Yoga Diet. It has been around for thousands of years and it really works. Those who followed it have lived long, productive lives and it is not a passing fad. It is based on well-established rules that Yogis have followed since time immemorial.

RULE 1: Eat according to the season.

Don’t eat the same food in summer and winter. In summer, eat more fruits and vegetables that grow naturally around this time of the year. According to Yoga, a fruit and vegetable diet has a cooling effect on the body. In winter, switch to more proteins that generate natural body heat.In India, traditionally, the rainy season is the time to eat more fried foods.

 Western diets completely ignore the basic rule of eating according to the season.  It makes sense - we cannot eat exactly the same food in all seasons. An off-shoot of this rule is: eat local whenever possible, so that you eat what grows naturally at that time of the year.

RULE 2: Eat food that is  tasty, moist and nutritive. These are the three essential attributes of  good food.

If it is not tasty, you won”t eat it for too long and that is why some diets fail. But the taste should be intrinsic - not the result of too many added flavours.

Yoga emphasizes food that is moist  because it mixes more easily with saliva where much of the digestion actually happens. Using this simple criterion, one should not eat burgers and fries,  at least not too many of them. Soups are good and so are foods cooked in plenty of gravy. Curries are good unless they are overspiced or too rich. Stir fried vegetables retain much of the natural moisture and can form an important part of the Yoga diet.

And of course, food has to be nutritive otherwise why bother to eat it? Combine it with taste and you have a winning combination. Raw fruits meet all of these criteria - they are moist, tasty and nutritive.

RULE3: Eat three meals a day. Yoga does not advocate eating five or six times a day -unless, of course, there are special health reasons to do so. Just eat breakfast, lunch & dinner preferably at the same time every day. Relax a little during and after the meals to allow the food to digest.

Do not snack all the time; this does not promote good digestion as the stomach will keep on forming digestive acids.

RULE4: Eat a little less than a full stomach. In fact, the Yoga texts advice filling half the stomach with food, one quarter with water and leaving the rest empty. The yogic way to do this is to drink water  before a meal and perhaps,a little during the meal. However, one should never take water, or other liquids, after a meal as this dilutes the gastric juices.

RULE5: Do not eat leftover food, or food that is stale or reheated. This simple rule excludes much of the food eaten in North America which is neither fresh nor wholesome. This type of food is called “tamasic” in Yoga and induces lethargy.

RULE6: Avoid processed foods. They cannot be completely eliminated from our diets but atleast their use can be minimized. A perfect example of bad processed food is enriched white bread. First, the nutrients are taken out  of wheat, then the white is processed some more and finally a few nutrients are added back in, to meet nutritional standards. It is no longer food - it is just a chemical  mix.

RULE7: Do’nt  count the calories -they do not count in the Yoga diet. The food we eat should not be reduced to a chemical formula of x amount of calories and y grams of fat. Do not reduce food to a chemical formula;it is much more than that. It is the source of all our energy.

Most important - listen to the body’s intelligence. When you practise Yoga regularly the Yoga diet becomes natural and the body will tell you how much to eat and when to stop.

Try it - the Yoga diet really works, or at least, it has for the last few thousand years or so. Once you try it, there is no going back - you will feel mentally, physically and spiritually uplifted for the rest of your life.