Diet and Lifestyle Guidelines

GOINDIS NATUROPATHY TRUST(INDIA)
Charity Registration No.845/4 dated 03.09.2003

DIET AND LIFESTYLE GUIDELINES
FOR A HEALTHY &
DISEASE-FREE LIFE

SANTOKH SINGH PARMAR

FOUNDER TRUSTEES:
Satyendra Singh Goindi, MSc, LLB, ND
Gurkirpal Kaur Goindi, BA, BEd, DPE, ND
Santokh Singh Parmar, B Arch, Dip TP, Dip LA, MRTPI, AITP, AIIA
Devinder Singh Saroya, PCS
Gurmukh Singh Girn, MSc, MCRP, AITP

There is no “best” or “ideal” diet and no “good or “bad” foods so long as you stick to natural sources and adopt an active and healthy lifestyle. Moderation, variety and balance are the keys to healthy eating. Also, food is more than the nutrition it provides – it is also a part of the way we enjoy and celebrate life. The following Guidelines have been prepared accordingly:-

DIET GUIDELINES

(i) Cultivate Healthy Eating with Natural Foods – Discard unhealthy eating habits. Fortify your immune system by consuming Natural Foods and by doing regular physical exercise.

(ii) You are What You Eat – Don’t live to eat but eat to live a disease-free life as ordained by NATURE. Let food be thy medicine as ordained 3000 years ago by Hippocrates, father of modern medicine.

(iii) Look after Your Digestive System – Eat less in moderation and more often i.e. have 7-8 small nutritious meals and snacks (say every 2-2½ hours) instead of 2-3 large heavy meals a day. Don’t ever overeat and chew the food to a creamy state with digestive saliva containing enzymes before swallowing.

(iv) Eat More Fruits and Vegetables – Include a liberal quantity of fresh seasonal and regional fruits, raw or steamed vegetables and salads in your daily diet to fulfill 50-60% of your daily energy requirements.

(v) Eat More Sprouts and Fibre – Eat wholegrain cereals and pulses, preferably sprouted, for optimum fibre and nutrition as minerals and vitamins are attached to the bran and they increase manifold on sprouting.

(vi) Eat Nuts and Seeds – Consume a handful of nuts like almonds, wallnuts and seeds like pumpkin, flax and sesame regularly 5-6 times a week.

(vii) Eat Carminative and Digestive Herbs and Spices – Include ginger, garlic, onions, green chillies, cumin seeds (jeera), fennel (saunf), aesphotida (hing), black pepper, caraway seeds (ajwain), turmeric (haldi), cardamom (elaichi), basil (tulsi), mint (pudina), curry leaves (curhi patta) in your diet and cooking.

(viii) Cook Vegetables Conservatively – Do not cook vegetables in lots of oil. Freshly cut and prepared vegetables should be steamed, lightly sauted or slowly stewed or stir-fried or baked but not deep-fried and overcooked at all to preserve minerals, vitamins and enzymes. Vegetables should be washed before cutting into pieces. Washing cut vegetables will leach most of the water-soluble vitamins (B group and C) into water.

(i) Never skip Breakfast – Eat a fruit instead of tea or coffee within 15-20 minutes of waking followed by a nutritious breakfast and green tea (preferably without milk and sugar) later.

(ii) Eat Light Dinner – Have your light meal or snack 2-2½ hours before hitting the bed.

(iii) Don’t get dehydrated – Drink at least 2-2½ litres (more if you exercise, are overweight and in hot weather) of water at regular intervals. If just too boring, add lemon wedges or mint leaves for flavour in the jug of water.

(iv) Avoid Drinking Water with Meals – Drink water about an hour before or after meals to avoid diluting the digestive juices.

(v) Don’t follow Fad Diets – These diets don’t include all the food groups and nutrients and these never work in the longterm. Mantra is to simply eat healthy.

(vi) Avoid the Three White Poisons – Excessive intake of Sugar, Salt and Starch (Maida) and their products should be avoided as far as possible.

(vii) Totally eliminate Junk Food from Your Diet – Avoid fat-rich, refined, processed and fried junk foods like burgers, noodles, pizzas and beverages like colas and fizzy drinks laden with harmful chemical additives and preservatives.

(viii) Detox Yourself – Go on a detoxification diet only of fruits and vegetables and their juices to get rid of toxins after every two weeks.

LIFESTYLE GUIDELINES

(xvii) Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity – WHO.

(xviii) Every human being is the Author of his own health or disease – Gautam Buddha.

(xix) To ensure Good Health; eat light, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness and maintain an interest in life – William Londen.

(xx) Modify Your Lifestyle – If you are not willing to sit down and change the way you live each day to include exercise, healthy eating and time to enjoy and nurture yourself with some fun, laughter, relaxation and adequate sleep, then it is very difficult to stay healthy and fight lifestyle diseases like cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and raised cholesterol levels.

(xxi) Maintain Healthy Weight – To combat lifestyle diseases, it is absolutely essential to maintain healthy weight through healthy diet, regular physical exercise and rest/relaxation.

(xxii) Say Goodbye to Sedentary Lifestyle – Lead an active life, keep fidgeting, do regular exercise and participate in social work to help others.

Have Regular Health Checkups – Maintain normal cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure levels through Naturo-Food Therapy and not by medication

(xvii) Look after Your Digestive System – According to Ayurveda, mere nutrition without proper digestion is meaningless.

(xviii) Reduce Stress – Though occasionally stress is not bad for health but excessive stress over long periods needs to be kept manageable through regular physical, yogic and deep breathing exercises and other relaxation techniques like meditation.

(xix) Get Quality Sleep – Sleep is prescribed by Nature. Good sleep improves your defence mechanism. Make sure adults get 7-8 hours of good quality sleep to rejuvenate the body in totally dark room. Melatonin, the hormone that stimulates sleep and suppresses abnormal cancer cell development is secreted by the pineal gland in the darkness at night.

(xx) Quit Smoking – Tobacco smoke is a very potent toxin (poison) responsible for lung and other cancers and many other diseases and disorders.

(xxi) Love Yourself – You are the only one of your kind in the world. You must feel good about yourself. Love, adore, cherrish and celebrate your own body. Good health begins with loving yourself.

(xxii) Banish Negative Emotions – Learn to let go of negative emotions such as anger, guilt, anxiety, fear, unforgiveness, hostility, bitterness and insecurity connected with longstanding issues that can’t be resolved.

(xxiii) Bury the Past – Realise your dreams, goals, loves and being. Be the person you always wanted to be with happy memories devoid of resentment and sadness for past events hurting the most.

(xxiv) Live the Present – You can’t change the Past (it has gone and will never come back), but you can ruin a perfect Present by unnecessarily worrying about the Future which is unknowable. So enjoy and savour the Present.

(xxv) Don’t despair and don’t feel Hopeless – A bout of depression can wreak havoc with the immune system. By remaining cheerful you can boost it. Despair and hopelessness raise the risk of heart attacks and cancer, thereby shortening life. Joy and fulfillment keep us healthy and extend life.

(xxvi) Be Positive and Optimistic – Above all, patients and even healthy persons should make every effort to develop a positive, optimistic and cheerful attitude in their thinking and have faith in themselves that they can achieve a healthy body and mind.

SKINCARE

(xxvii) Good health and physical fitness are imperative for radiant skin – In addition to the effects of the ageing process, you have a cocktail of other causative factors for premature ageing of the facial and body skin. These include excessive exposure to sunlight, unhealthy wrong diet, lack of physical exercise, harmful effects of beauty products, dehydration, sedentary lifestyle and inadequate relaxation and sleep.

(xxviii) Avoid Excessive Sun Exposure – The harmful ultraviolet rays (UVA & UVB) which cause wrinkling are strongest between 1000 and 1600 hours. Use an umbrella but avoid sun creams.

(xvii) Avoid Cosmetic Creams, Lotions, Peels and Anti-Wrinkle Jabs – There is no concrete scientific evidence to suggest that the expensive cosmetics work but they sometimes can cause irreversible damage to the skin.l

(xviii) Avoid Hot Baths and Showers – Instead have warm bath or shower followed by thorough rinsing by cold water to tighten the facial and body muscles.

(xix) Exfoliate the Skin – Rub your skin with a long soft brush to remove dead cells and grime before bath or shower to open up the pores for the skin to breathe.

BENEFICIAL ANTI-DISEASE FOODS

Cruciferous Vegetables (Brassicas) – Including organic broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, kale, mustard greens, collard greens, watercress, turnips, radishes, kohlrabi (gath gobhi).

Dark Green Leafy Vegetables – Including organic spinach, fenugreek (methi), amarnath (chulai), bathu, turnip/beet/radish leaves, romaine lettuce, watercress, kale, parsley.

Other Vegetables – Including organic carrots, tomatoes (cooked to get more lycopene), beetroot, squash, cucumber, asparagus, potatoes and sweet potatoes with skin, pumpkins, certain mushrooms like shitake, maitake, enoki, crimini, portabello, oyster mushrooms, thistle oyster mushrooms and trametes (coriolus). Barley and wheatgrass juice. Brightly coloured vegetables, seaweeds.

Carminative and Digestive Herbs and Spices – Including turmeric, cinnamon, black pepper, garlic, ginger, onions, shallots, lemons/limes, Indian gooseberry (amla), triphla powder, olives, aloevera, fennel (saunf), green chillies in moderation, mint, basil (tulsi), karhi patta, liquorice (mulathi), leeks, chives, parsley, celery, rosemary, oregano, marjoran, thyme, alfalfa, honey. Notes: (i) To be assimilated in the body, turmeric must be mixed with freshly ground black pepper. Ideally it must also be dissolved in olive or canola oil. (ii) Peeled, chopped or crushed garlic should be left for 10 minutes before eating to release the healthy compounds.

Berries – Blueberries, blackberries, blackcurrents, strawberries, cranberries, raspberries, cherries. Note : Berries can be frozen as they retain the nutrients.

Citrus Fruits – Including oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, lemons, sweet limes (mausamies), pineapples.

Other Fruits – Including apples, apricots, pears, avocados, guava, plums, kiwi, figs, grapes especially red, fresh dates, peaches, jamun, mulberry (shahtoot), papaya, watermelon, bananas, pomegranate.

Nuts and Seeds – Including almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, flaxseeds, (alsi), fenugreek seeds (methi), mustard seeds.

Wholegrain Sprouts – Wheat, corn, millets, pulses especially moong, beans especially soya, peas, oats, barley, brown rice. Make chapaties with sourdough (fermented) whole wheat flour.

Oil/Fats – Saturated animal fats such as purified butter (ghee); monounsaturated fats such as olive and canola oils; and polyunsaturated fats such as rice bran and groundnut oils should be consumed in moderation only in the ratio of 1:1:1. Olive oil and canola oil containing more of beneficial Omega-3 essentially fattty acids (EFAs) should be preferred over polyunsaturated oils (like sunflower and corn oils) which have more of inflammation promoting Omega-6 EFAs.

Probiotics – Yoghurt, cheese, whey, butter milk, soya yoghurt and other fermented foods like idli, dhokla, chapaties made from fermented dough, vadas and uttpam.

Seafood – Oily, preferably, fresh water fish, salmon, shellfish, mackerels, sardines including tinned sardines in olive oil, cod liver oil.

Animal Food – Lean meat, skimmed milk and whey from animals fed on organic grass, free-range eggs and poultry. All in moderation only.

Water – Consume 2-2½ litres of water (more if you are overweight, do exercise and in hot weather) inbetween (not with) meals.

Fibre/Bran – Consume fruits, vegetables and wholegrains with skin as far as possible as minerals and vitamins are attached to the bran (skin).

Raw Food – Consume more of raw vegetables and salads as enzymes are destroyed with overcooking. Vegetables may be lightly sauted, steamed or stir-fried if desirable. Use only home-made dressing made with crushed garlic, fruit vinegar (not synthetic), fresh lemon juice, olive oil and a bit of sea salt.

Other Foods – Green tea with antioxidant properties in moderation, red wine in moderation, dark chocolate containing more than 70% cocoa in moderation.

HARMFUL JUNK FOODS TO AVOID

Fat/oil-rich, fried, refined and processed junk foods; foods made with hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils (transfats); margarine which is made from harmful Omega-6-rich oils like sunflower; sugar, salt and starch (maida) – the so called “Three White Poisons”; polished rice; alcohol; coffee; smoking; all tinned and ready packed foods, beverages and fruit juices with harmful chemical additives. Avoid meat and other products from animals which are reared on inorganic farms using insecticides, pesticides and fed hormones and other chemical substances. Notes : (i) Avoid frying, roasting, grilling, microwaving and barbequing; (ii) Meat cooked at high temperatures produces chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HCA) that induce carcinogens. Remember to trim the burnt parts of meat and other foods and avoid smoked fish; (iii) Avoid using deodorants, antiperspirants, cosmetics, shampoos, hair dyes, nail polish, sunscreens, perfumes; household chemical cleaners; (iv) Air out dry cleaned clothes in fresh air for several hours before wearing; (v) Don’t use plastic containers for grain and food storage, use glass or ceramic ware; (vi) Don’t use teflon coated pans, instead use stainless steel or cast iron pans for cooking. Cast iron pans will greatly enhance absorption of iron from food.

ACIDIC AND ALKALINE FOODS

The acid/alkaline balance of food is extremely important for our well-being. Human blood of a healthy person is basically alkaline with PH value of about 7.5 or put simply, the blood is about 80% alkaline and about 20% acidic. So to remain healthy and free of all kinds of ailments, we should aim to consume 80% alkaline foods and no more than 20% of acidic foods.

Santokh Singh Parmar

Naturo-Food Therapist & Lifestyle Consultant

Mobile: +91(0) 9815922330

Websites: www.naturofoodtherapy.org & www.foodtherapy.org

July 2011

Note:  The above information and advice is not a substitute for the advice, your doctor or Naturo-Food Therapist may give you based on his/her knowledge of yourself.