Mind your food, mend your health!!

The word ” Diet ” is much popular with our generation for various reasons. It is perceived by each one of us in a different sense. Some are extremely enthusiastic about it and some run away from it, thinking it to be unpleasant and taste spoiler. However, keeping aside the facts and myths tagged with it, I feel the importance of ” what you eat” in simply understated.

The way all the content of our mind is what we have gathered from outside since we were born, similarly, our body is also what we have gathered over time. What you gather can be “yours”, but cannot be “you”.

Our body is simply a piled up collection of what we have chosen to eat. If we are really wise in collecting these elements, we built ourselves healthy. So what makes one wise? Why is this overindulgence in food? Why we have such compulsive eating habits?

Though it is difficult to find the exact cause, but somewhere I realized through my own experience, it is the deep connection of mind with taste. We live on memories, and so does our mind, which, on repeated conditioning, develops a “feel good” memory of food we like. This relationship of food – feelings keeps building over time as we repeatedly give our minds the gratification of satisfying our taste buds. In this process, we don’t even realize when, this duo, cross the limit of infatuation and we get trapped in our own habits. We start identifying ourselves with the food we eat and loose the tender balance of how much we eat versus how much is needed. It is only when we identify “ourselves” with something that “we are not”, let it be our thoughts, our emotions or simply our eating habits, that we loose the balance of health and happiness.

Food is not just something about our liking, our interest or our survival. Its not even about the outcome in terms of size and shape, but it is primarily about the efficiency of this design called” human body”.

We should eat, not just what we like, but what this design requires utmost, for effecient working.

If you think, to eat what you like is freedom, then that’s the biggest bondage you have. The real freedom lies in one’s ability to simply do what is needed, to be joyful , to be healthy, without any bondage or indulgence in a particular food habit. If we want this design to last longer, we need to fuel it with the best and most refined food habits rather than refined food.

In the yogic culture, there are three categories of food: Satva, tamas and rajva ie. Positive pranic food (Satva) , negative pranic food (Tamas) and neutral ( Rajva). What we eat, decides how our energy levels are, how our activity level is, how much our sleep requirement is. If you eat positive pranic food, energy reverberates in a positive way, if you eat negative pranic food, it brings down your energy and if you eat neutral pranic food, it makes you feel lethargic.

One may think, how positive and negative food can affect our energy?

Let me cite you an example. To top the negative pranic food is what we all love, ie. garlic. Garlic has immense proven medicinal qualities. However, just general daily consumption of a nervous stimulant / medicinal substance like garlic, will hold you for sometime, however the fluctuation caused can then subsequently dampen your energy.

Subtle food modifications, corrections can help to unleash the potential of this uniquely designed human mind and body.

So can’t we make simple choices in our daily routines for experiencing a better mileage by this body? Are we so enslaved to our senses that we give the reigns of our health in the hands of our mindless and senseless taste buds entirely? Should a cup of coffee determine the quality of our life? Should we allow a cup of liquid to decide if our day is well past or unpleasant and lethargic? We can have a better day even without a cup of coffee. By that I don’t mean that we quit drinking coffee. But drink it by choice, not as an addiction. You ll realize, if we do it by choice, its a conscious decision and we shall enjoy the cup of coffee even more.

Lets not make food our religion, we already have many. Choice of what we eat, should be according to the needs of this body. This body needs you to make a healthy choice, be conscious of what you eat and create a distance from your mind and your addictive temptations.