7 Tips to healthy eating

I am going to stick to the tips that I have found extremely helpful for myself and are relatively simpler to follow. So here goes:

1. Respect your food which means pay attention to it, while choosing the raw material, cooking, selecting at a restaurant and last but most importantly, while eating it.

2. Yes, everyone's spoken about chewing well, I wonder how many people pay attention to it! How about trying to notice and savour the flavours of your food. You'll be amazed at how you will automatically slow down when you're savouring the different flavours that are part of your food. (Of course that will lead to more saliva mixing with your food and helping you with the first step of digestion!)

3. Pray before you start. Alternatively, just thank God/the restaurant owner/grocery supplier or anyone else that you would like to thank for the great food on your table.

4. Choose simple food with fewer combinations. Lemon with milk products is a bad combo that everyone knows about. In general stick with fewer different categories of food at one time. And avoid too much water or other fluids with your food.

5. Try to balance the colours and tastes. Does your daily diet have some of all these tastes- Astringent, sweet, sour, pungent, bitter and salty? Sometimes, when I feel like I have ended up taking a lot of sweet tasting food during the day, I take a pinch of need powder. I also try to have different colours on my plate, like Broccoli with Tomato Chutney or Tomato Rice with Spinach Curry. It makes the food look more appetizing and somehow feels like a balance.

6. Moderate! Eat in moderation, anything and everything that you intake. Which brings us to an important part- use your body intelligence to tell you what works and what doesn't work for you. This will take practice and might be different for each of us. I started to notice my own inner wisdom guiding me about what I need to take and what I should avoid at a certain meal. Sometimes I realized as soon as I was done that I had taken something which was probably not good for me. Well I am still working on being aware before the damage is done!

7. Emotional Eating is a big no no: Eating to feel better is an insult to yourself. You don't need a sensory experience to make you feel a certain way or to escape. Take control of your emotions, feelings and state of mind and say no to eating cos you're bored, tired, cos you ate less at the last meal, you are tempted at the sight of food or any other such excuse. Really...one of our modern day issues is that we have too much to eat and not that we don't have enough! Fasting with just water or a liquid diet or a fruit diet may be a good way to find that balance and reduce your emotional dependence on food.