Today, we will discuss nutrition from a Chinese Medicine's perspective. They claim that health is not only the absence of a disease, it's a joyfulness that should be inside us all the time. It's a state of positive wellbeing. The way we eat and combine our food will affect us not only physically, but also emotionally.
The experience of TASTE is one of the most enjoyable experiences in life. Chinese medicine addresses that when a person gets over — or underweight, the person has stopped enjoying the food. If we enjoy food, we will not tend to have a weight problem.
Some techniques
Here are a few techniques that will give you eating awareness. This is how you can maximize your satiety level when eating:
- Whenever you eat sit down
- Don't do anything else
- Eat when the stomach is empty. It takes approximately four hours from you eat till your stomach is empty, but this can off course vary a little from person to person.
- Don't take a new bite before the previous bite has come to the stomach
- Eat 2/3 of what you feel you need. Studies show that people eating fewer calories than the average of the population tend to have better health and live longer. It will take you 10-15 minutes from you have stopped eating, till your brain will know if the stomach is full.
- Use sesame oil on the tongue to enhance the taste buds
The six tastes
Many people experience strong cravings for a certain type of food.
Traditionally food has six flavors to it. If the taste buds are not experiencing these six different tastes during the day, the imbalance will occur. This will give even stronger cravings. We do have all these certain taste buds for a reason.
THE SIX TASTES ARE THE FOLLOWING:
- Sweet taste: bread, rice, cream, milk honey (not concentrated sugar)
- Sour: lemon, yogurt, cheese
- Salt: seafood, salted things
- Bitter: green leafy vegetables, spinach, broccoli, endives, coffee
- Pungent: all kinds of spices, horseradish, mustard, black pepper, jalapeno
- Astringents: beans, lentils, peas (ex. Mexican food)
Cravings
If your body is exposed to all these tastes for one meal daily, spontaneously the cravings will disappear.
In our modern society, we tend to eat too much sweet, sour and salt, ex french fries and ketchup with diet coke (diet coke gives ten times more sweet taste than normal coke). We constantly expose ourselves to these three tastes, which give imbalance and more cravings.
My own experience of going on a beautiful cruise was exactly this! It was served all kinds of food on different buffers for twenty-four hours. Many people suffering from severe overweight, were eating mostly these three tastes all day and could not stop. On the other hand, it can be very joyful and easy to eat healthy on a cruise ship or on a typical all-inclusive resort. If one certainly knows how to pick all the good meat, chicken and fish altogether with lots of vegetables, good dressings and some fruits. Then it will be very healthy and satisfying. When you are in such nice places, don`t fill up your stomach with bread and pasta!
The hidden secret
Talking about this, let us mention "the hidden secret" about the French people; They traditionally eat a very small sweet breakfast, a high protein and high-fat lunch and dinner with lots of vegetables. The vegetables come in both raw and cooked forms. No processed foods. The white bread is always served on the side of the table, but especially the women have learned from their mothers and grandmothers to just look at it. They don`t eat it! The French people eat slowly and they enjoy!
Most traditionally diets, even if they originally come from Southern Europe, Northern Europe, Mexico, India, China or Japan, they all tend to have a right combination of the foods. They do not contend the processed foods, especially concentrated carbohydrates which gives a lot of hidden calories. This ensures that there are many different ways of eating and combining food that is healthy and keeping your weight normal.
However, there are quite a good number of studies showing different foods that are good for fertility, I will write about them in this blog!
Vibeke Fjeld
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