First let me tell you, as I am reading the book, I am not finding much that's not simple common sense. I am finding not much new. But that's just me, and many people do need to be told what she's telling. Just writing some quotes down, the ones I do find new. If I were to review the book, I would give it a 3 out of 5.
Dont lose your mind, lose weight.
If you must eat chakli or chips make them at home and fry them.... -Page 35
A few years ago, it was discovered that fructose (the sugar we get from fruits) gets converted to triglycerides (especially when eaten on a full stomach), a type of fat which circulates in our blood stream. High levels of triglycerides are responsible for heart diseases, insulin insensitivity and of course lead to bigger fat cells. And our body is truly secular: it treats all fructose equally. It doesn't matter which fruit you eat, it will surely give you fructose. So eat your fruit, but don't think it's safer than eating a dessert. Its nutrients only work for us if we eat it as a meal by itself: as a morning meal or after exercise, and not as a desert after dinner. -p37
Don't make Angels or Demons out of different foods: they're all just as good or bad for you. -p43
Though I do think for the same amount, some foods are wayyy better for you than others. I see what point she is making, and she is talking about moderation. Point taken. Wording, not so much. But yeah, the reader would get the right message.
The entire first couple of pages of the chapter 'Know Thy Stomach'.
Okay, now that I am reading more and more of it, I am kinda loving it. In the beginning, her being Captain Obvious kinda pissed me off, as if, Am I that I stupid that I won't know that? But really, she talks well! (I say talk cause that's how she has written her book, like she's talking) She doesn't sound sciency or scholarly, which kinda is a good thing, it makes me digest the book more willingly. If it were more scientific, I would have respected it more, and read it less :P
According to ayurveda, overeating is the cause of all diseases. Overeating can be defined as eating more than the body's ability to digest at that point of time. It doesn't simply mean eating the wrong foods, ,or eating too much. If the stomach lacks the fire or the power to digest at a particular time, then even a slice of an apple will amount to overeating. So overeating doesn't just meant eating a large quantity of good, it means eating that food at the wrong time. - p51
The overeating threshold is a very very thin line. That gap between eating the right amount and overeating is crossed by just one mouthful, bite or spoonful. It's crucial to be very aware of this threoshold because once you cross this laxman rekha, then you can go on and on. Your senses go numbd and you can eat up to 5 or 6 times your stomach's capacity. -51
Okay, now I am beginning to realize that it's tiring to type quotes verbatim from the book. So I will just post here what I am taking from them, and maybe page numbers, so I can go back to the exact place if I want to look it up again.
Staying on the topic of over-eating, she says that the stomach is the size of two palms, and that's as much as we should eat at one time. If we have ever seen monks cupping their hands together for alms, that's as much food we should have in one sitting.
What about parties etc. where we don't control the amount of food on our plates? The eating is an important (and eloborate) internalization process, i.e. we internalize the food. And use the sense of taste during it. Shouldn't the other senses sight, sound, touch etc be used to enrich the process? Instead we used these other senses to distract us from eating. Lessening the quality of the process. We should eat mindfully, slowly, and we won't eat past our overeating-threshold. We even use the sense of taste to distract us from food, tasting only the salty, sweet, fatty or any other strong tastes in the food, nothing else.
Consumption of food should result in a sweet feeling. A light, refreshing feeling. And it will if we employ all our senses in eating and eat mindfully. And overtime this will become second nature. I (Saad) have personally seen who eat every morsel mindfully, thankfully that this food was provided to them by Allah.
- Serve half as much as you normally eat
- Drink a glass of water while eating
- Don't pick up another morsel till you've swallowed the one in your mouth
- After eating, stay where you are for a few minutes
and some other guidelines she gives
As a side note, she makes an excellent point about leaving food on the plate. She says people might consider it an insult to food, or to millions who go hungry, to leave food on the plate. She says 'cleaning' your plate has never helped the hungry and poor, and never will. Leaving the food, and not overeating will make you fit, and then you can invest your time to bring about a change, if you care about it. Not overeating.
Eat fruits whole. Not cut into pieces. Cutting exposes surface area, and the nutrients are lost by interaction with the air. (Really? Well, she's the world renowned author here!)
Stay true to your genes and eat food that you've been eating all your life. Some races have learned to digest some foods better than others, eating other foods may cause indigestion with higher likelihood.
Eat according to seasons, location, humidity. Lots of things she talks about. Man she makes me wish I was a nutritionist!
A calm state of mind actually helps us absorb all the nutrients from the good we eat. A calm state of mind actually prevents conversion of food to fat! When your state of mind is calm and composed, you secrete the right amount of digestive juices. Which means you're now ready to take in your food, break it down, digest and assimilate it. This is when the food reaches inside you, to all the cells and tissues which need energy.
When you're sad, stressed, angry and you eat, you don't secrete digestive juices, and the food doesn't get absorbed. Then the body thinks it's under threat, most of the food gets stored as fat, which is the natural mechanism of the body in cases when it feels it's under threat. Furthermore, stress etc causes cortisol to get released, which among other things, lowers the metabolic rate, causing the food to get stored as fat. Body does this because threat usually meant floods, famines etc (cases where storing food as fat for later was better than using it for energy now) but these days we get stressed for deadlines, loans etc, triggering this natural response of the body, which in reality harms us than help us.
But we can keep cortisol release under check by leading disciplines lives. Waking up close to sunrise, exercising daily, finding means of self expression, and by focusing all our senses on one thing at a time.
Interesting thing: When an occasion is coming up where we Must eat, and eat loads, and eat unhealthy, what do we do? We simply tell our friends that we will be eating a lot that time. This way we're informing our bodies beforehand that lots of food will be coming. So not only does the body readies itself (increases metabolic rate etc) it also isn't given the shock and fatigue which would be given, if you kept telling you will eat less/none and then ate. Because then you would have prepared your body for hunger/famine, and given it abundant food! Causing it to store it away.
When it comes to food, think nutrients, not calories. Don't go for low calorie stuff, go for high nutrition stuff.
Carbs are good. Eat carbs. There're fast carbs (High GI) and slow carbs (low GI). Glycemic Load of a serving is the GI of its content multiplied by carb content of that food divided by zero. So, even if you're eating a low GI carb, but eating too much of it, it will be converted to fat. So keep Glycemic Index low, and also keep Glycemic Load low too.
There is something about how Stress Induced Type II Diabetes is cause. The basic idea is that a sharp increase in blood glucose, by consuming unhealthy sweets etc causes this to happen. Physical inactivity makes it worse. Does that mean we can never have those sweets? No we can. But at Most once per week, and Never with meals. So if I am having a gulab jamun (high GI) right after a meal, the GI and GL are both too high. But if I wanna have it, I must have it just one, and between the meals. This way, though the GI would be high, the total glycemic load won't be as much. Where the glycemic index is very high, reduce the load. And the best time to eat high GI food is post-exercise.
We should eat fruits when we are in a fasting state, or when our liver store is empty: first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, or immediately after exercise. This way the fructose from the fruits doesn't get converted to triglycerides.
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