Ever wonder what purpose fasting serves? Even those popular cleanses? Can mindfully changing your eating habits change your health? Marcus Samuelsson, New York restaurateur and world renown chef, writes about his belief in the concept in this week's Huffington Post. Do you believe in fasting and cleanses?
What does it mean to eat spiritually? Marcus writes about this subject with a broad brush, touching on religious fasting as well as paying attention to eating to "break from the unhealthy, fast-paced, and sometimes mindless eating that it is easy to engage in."
While changing our eating habits can take a variety of forms, Marcus stresses that one of the issues with our increasingly unhealthy eating habits in the US is the fact that so much of our eating is done without thought. Choosing the fastest, most convenient, and cheapest food options means we can forget what we're eating and why. He stresses that with small changes such as avoiding dairy for a week or cooking only with leftovers engages the mind and the spirit.
Do you practice mindfully eating?
• Eating With a Spiritual Compass by Marcus Samuelsson at The Huffington Post
Related: Monday Morning Detox: What Do You Eat or Drink After a Gluttonous Weekend?
(Images: Flickr user nataliemaynor licensed for use under Creative Commons)
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I don't do cleanses or detoxification. I do practice mindfulness, including cooking and eating. I find I eat slower, enjoy my food more and am much more creative in my recipes. My diet becomes much more varied and healthier when I am aware of what I am eating and where it comes from.
Yes and it's made a huge difference for me, in both inner and outer temperament, I feel more balanced and less subject to external influence (I used to be hypersensitized to others moodiness - especially family and office). My version of mindful eating means growing some of my own food, consciously choosing what I buy based on where it's produced, many more homemade meals, pleasurable dining in a beautiful environment (even if it means my little picnic kit from my handbag), and transitioning away from animal-derived foods. I now sleep better, have less congestion, virtually no digestive trouble, and far fewer aches and pains.
Yes, I do. It's amazing the difference it makes in my overall happiness. While it wasn't an overnight change, I'm so happy that I've finally gotten to the place where I no longer feel sick after eating, and I have so much energy! The more "good" things I choose, the more my body craves those things.
Now, if I take a couple bites of a cupcake, for instance, I can almost immediately feel the negative effects it's having on me. That sickly feeling is enough to make me want to stay away! My go-to sweet treat is a piece of dark chocolate or a big bowl of seasonal fruit which now tastes even sweeter than it used to!
What's amazing to me is how much "tummy trouble" and how many "sicknesses" could be completely averted if more people would stop "dieting" and realize that their DIET is so important to their physical well-being. You have to retrain you brain and your body to crave the good stuff!
The book "Clean" by Alex Junger is my favorite detox book because it explains everything really well as opposed to just telling you what to drink/eat. I personally wouldn't do a water fast or even that lemon juice/maple syrup fast. An easy start is to allow a full 12 hours for food to digest from night to am (so your last meal by 7pm and then bfast at 7am, for example).
I did a life-changing "detox" or cleanse in 2006- I followed the three-week detox phase of Dr. Joshi's Holistic Detox for three months. It was the best three months of my life. Yeah, I lost a ton of weight but that wasn't my intent at all. I started sleeping normally, having energy throughout the day, my every-single-day-for-the-past-twenty-years stomach aches disappeared permanently (they never came back even after I went back to a regular eating plan), my skin glowed, my nails got strong and healthy (permanent too!), my mood was dramatically improved (my friends actually called me "less bitchy"!)... the transformation was amazing. I did gain back some weight when I stopped following the detox plan, but it's been what- five years?- and I still reap the benefits today. I cannot extol the virtues of the book enough. If you stick with it, your life will change too!