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Ayurveda approach
Ayurveda views obesity as a kapha disorder and the
main condition is due to eating too much, doing too little and
being inactive too much. The gastric fire in such an individual
is strong while the cellular fire in the tissue is low. Excess
food and calories consumed by the person are not burned, but they
turn into adipose tissue. This makes the person overweight and
obese.
According to Ayurveda, some of the causes are:
· Hereditary factors of the endocrine system
like excess produce of growth hormone
· Pregnant women eating too much and unable to shed the
excess weight
· Stress and depression may induce emotional eating or
drinking
· Regular snacking between meals
· Side effects from certain drugs like insulin, oral contraceptive
and steroids can alter metabolism and produce weight increase
· Excessive smoking and alcohol intake
· Eating too much with lack of exercise or physical activity
· Regular consumption of soda, fried food, dairy products
like ice cream and cheese, or food rich in carbohydrates and sugar
like cakes and pastries
First thing to do in treating obesity is to identify
your eating habits and lifestyle.
Eat The biggest Meal during
the Day
The best time to take a gig meal is either in the early in the
day (breakfast) or at noon. Make lunch light and dinner, the lightest.
Don’t munch between meals and if you can, skip supper.
Healthy Snack
If you feel hungry between meals, munch on:
· raisins which is a mild laxative.
· Celery and carrot sticks
Avoid snacks like corn chips, potato crisps which
have salt and fatty content which can be addictive. Also do not
eat popcorn.
Hot Honey Drink
Whenever you feel hungry in between meals, have a hot cup of water
with 1 teaspoon honey and 10 drops of lime, or lemon to taste.
Apparently, this is a good source of melting the fat in the body
and a great substitute for snacking.
Spice Up Your Food
The kaphar-pacifying diet uses many spices. Spices such as ginger,
cumin, corriander, fennel, garam masala, cardamom and even cinnamon
are good for kindling the gastric fire. Use them in your cooking,
desserts and even as condiments to flavour your food.
You are what you eat
Watch what you eat. Follow the kapha-pacifying diet and avoid
sodas and drinks, as well as fried foods. Moderate your intake
of diary products and go easy on creamy dressings in your salads.
Include beans in your salads and reduce intake of meat. Avoid
beef, pork and lamb, instead have chicken or fish once a month.
Drink warm water instead of cold drinks. Take it plain or in herbal
drinks like ginger tea, mint tea and even cinnamon. Or have a
cup of honey drink.
Herbal Drinks
· Herbal formula drink
These herbal drinks can help you lose weight:
3 parts kutki
3 parts chitrak
2 parts shilajit
5 parts punarnava
Take ½ teaspoon of this herbal mixture with
1 teaspoon of honey twice a day before meals.
· Triphala drink
You can also drink triphala every night, 1 hour before dinner.
Add ½ to 1 teaspoon of triphala to a cup of boiling water
and let it stand for about 10 minutes.
Herbal Tablets
You can also take a tablet of each of these: Triphala guggulu,
Chitrak-adhivati and Punarnava guggulu, together with some warm
water 3 times a day after meals.
Eat With Company
Try to eat with a company, especially thin people and people with
good eating habits. Some thin people may have eat more than but
being in their company encourages you to be active but do not
compare them with your weight. This may help you lose weight,
if not motivate you to control weight loss.
Enjoy and Savour Your Food, Listening
to Music
Learn how to eat slowly. Gobbling or rushing to finish your meal
encourages you to eat more than you chew. Put on some music while
you eat. Listen to the soft music, and you will chew your food
more, taking in less. Savour your food and this moderate eating
will gradually be cultivated.
Get Some Exercise
Adequate exercise is important in a losing weight program. Do
some light exercise like walking, aerobics and gentle jogging.
Brisk walking with 2.5 pound hand-held weights is also encouraged.
Alternatively you can also so some dancing exercises or swimming.
Weight lifting also helps lose weight. Start with
a 5 pound weight to help burn up the adipose tissue. Muscle tissues
tend to burn up calories faster than fat.
When exercising, bare in mind that, to lose weight,
you have to burn off more calories than you take. Reduce your
calorie intake and increase your exercise output to even out the
imbalance. Keep a kapha-reducing diet and gradually increase the
amount of exercise in your regime every day.
After Exercise Take WARM Drinks
Kaphar individuals may feel hungry and thirsty after exercise.
Do not eat immediately and do not take cold drinks as this will
upset and slow down the metabolism, defeating gain from the exercise.
Drink warm water or hot herbal tea instead.
Fat Breathing Exercise
Right Nostril breathing (surya bhedi) can increase the rate at
which your body burns off fat. Another helpful breathing exercise
is Breath of Fire (Bhastrika pranayama).
Yoga Posture for Losing Weight
Try gentle yoga asanas like the Palm Tree pose and the Triangle
pose. When you sit on the floor, bend forward as far as you can
reach comfortably, trying to touch your knees with your head.
Other helpful postures include The Fish, The Camel,
Cobra, and Cow. It’s alright if you can’t do them
perfectly in the beginning but progress with practice.
Reduce Alcohol & Smoking
Reduce and ultimately quit drinking alcohol and smoking. Drinking
and smoking habits inordinately stimulate gastric fire (jatar
agni) and makes you feel like eating.
Avoid Daytime Siesta
No napping in the day if you can help it. Afternoon naps slow
down the metabolism and increases kapha dosha. Try to go for walks
or do something active and avoid long sitting down sessions like
watching television.
Love Yourself
Obese people have a tendency not to love themselves. When people
miss love in a relationship, there is comfort eating and food
will become a substitute for love. This deep relationship with
love and food is significant in emotional eating, common in obese
people.
Many overweight people dislike looking at themselves
in the mirror because they do not like what they see. When they
hate their body, they get anxious and worried and ultimately find
comfort in eating, become hungry and want to eat. Hence, this
is not real hunger but emotional hunger which can lead to *overeating
and an eating disorder.
Get used to your body. Remove all clothings and
wear just a pair of shorts. Watch yourself in a full length mirror.
Observe every inch of your face and body, look at your eyes, nose,
mouth, ears, hair and even your hands and feet. Make notes of
what you like about them.
Next exercise, gradually look at them from the outside
and you will learn to like what you see and find acceptance, starting
to feel more love for yourself. And when you do, you will stop
judging, comparing, and criticizing yourself – and this
is the initial step to self-love. Go through these exercises daily
will help you learn to love yourself.
Kapha people are determined to make steady progress. So be persistent
but don’t try to lose weight all at once. Give yourself
time by following these tips on weight loss and over time, you
will not only take control of your weight problem but also lose
weight.
*Overeating
Overeating can occur sometimes when a person has experience strenuous
labour or hard work, and need to replenish the body. However,
most overeating happens because of emotional attributes.
When you are happy or feel loved, love nourishes
the soul and it’s a higher food than any sausage roll or
fried chicken wing can nourish the body! However, when a person
is unhappy, because he or she is unloved, has a feeling of rejection,
loneliness, even grief and depression, food easily become the
replacement for love. Eating comfort food to suppress feelings
of sadness, pain, or even anxiety is the emotional cause of overeating.
With such psychological effects, it is critical
to first deal with the emotional factors and stress. From the
Ayurveda perspective, prana vata stimulates the gastric fire (jatharagni)
and this activates the stomach. This stimulation is mistaken for
hunger and that is wny people eat more food.
With care, this problem can be controlled. Here
are some ways you can deal with overeating:
Express yourself
If you feel unhappy or lonely, even unloved, try not to suppress
them but let go of your feelings. Release the tension or energy
blocked in the solar plexus by talking about it, confide in someone
and have a good cry. The more you get it out in the open, the
emotional hunger will begin to fade.
Eat Light
Take something light if you must eat. Try light crackers, some
cereal or have some juice. Follow a low fat diet so if you need
to eat, you don’t have to deny yourself and the light dood
you take will not make you put on weight or fat.
Walk Off the Cravings
When you have an emotional craving for food, take a quick walk
for 20 minutes in the fresh air. This will help reduce the urge
to eat.
The Hunger Test
Feeling hungry? Test to see if it’s a biological one or
just an emotional hunger by drinking some herbal tea. Take mint
tea, chamomile tea or even licorice tea. If the hunger goes away,
the warm calming effect has sooth the emotional hunger away. If
you are really hungry, the tea has no effect and you need to eat!
Banana Treat
Here’s a great recipe to pacify any emotional, obsessive
eating habit. You need 1 ripe banana. Chop it up with 1 teaspoon
ghee and a dash of cinnamon. Take it every time your cravings
go bananas!
Brahmi Milk
Whenever you feel hungry, take 1 cup of warm milk with ½
teaspoon of brahmi, boiled. This will help you curb your overeating
habits.
Yoga Exercise
The Moon Salutation, Camel pose, Cobra pose and Spinal Twist can
help you overcome overeating if it is due to emotional factors.
Hyperthyroidism
Overeating due to hyperthyroidism is a metabolic disorder. Ayurveda
offers using kaishore guggulu, a herbal compound useful in pacifying
overactive thyroid and regulating metabolism.
Meditation and Breathing exercises
Got a emotional hunger? Sit quietly and listen to your breathing.
You can also do 10 to 15 minutes of So-Hum meditation.
Making the Shitali pranayama (making a tube with
your tongue and breathing through it into your belly) can also
be helpful.
Next time you get an emotional hunger, take 12 deep
breaths and drink a cup of warm water. It dispels the hunger before
you can even think about it.
Eaten Too Much
If you have eaten too much, try these recipes to aid indegestion:
· Coriander and Fennel
Roast 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds and 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
on a nonstick pan without any oil. Stir to avoid them from being
burnt. Add a pinch of salt and let it cool before eating the seeds.
· Lemon Juice and Baking soda
Drink a cup of water mixed with half a cup of lemon juice. Before
drinking, add a pinch of baking soda, stir briskly and drink at
once.
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