There is a lot of information and (conflicting) thoughts on what foods you should eat to maintain a healthy diet. But how you eat your food is also important. When and how you eat can greatly increase your energy, and decrease your digestive troubles. Below are seven tips on how to eat healthy to improve your digestion and health.
Please note that every person has individual needs. Do not treat the tips as rules, but rather as strategies for improving your eating habits. Also, these tips can be beneficial short-term for correcting issues, but for some people may not be suitable on a permanent basis. As always, make sure you pay attention to the needs of your own body.
(1) Don’t drink anything with meals, including water.
Drinking with meals makes digestion more difficult because it dilutes the digestive juices in the stomach. This is one of the causes of heartburn. Additionally, it is much easier to overeat when drinking with meals. As a rule of thumb, stop drinking 30 minutes prior until 30 minutes after a meal.
(2) Don’t eat breakfast.
Most people have been taught (or at least have heard) that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. For those, it can be surprising to hear that breakfast isn’t even a necessary meal. Ironically, digesting food is one of the most energy-intensive processes of the body. So when you eat a morning meal, you start your day off with a full stomach, which has a tendency to slow you down. I find I have much more energy when I skip breakfast. But note: if I wake up in the morning and really feel that I need to eat something instead of waiting until later, I will.
If you haven’t tried skipping breakfasts yet, I would definitely recommend experimenting with it and see if you notice a difference. Note that often you may not feel a difference until you revert back to your old eating habits.
(3) Eat all food during an 8-hour window.
The more time you give your body to digest food, the easier it can be on your body. Most people don’t realize that when you are eating food and don’t give your body a healthy window for digestion, it can take 2-3 days for the food to pass through the digestive system. When you increase the non-eating window, you are allowing for more food to clear out of your system. Otherwise, your body is continually digesting new food, while older food is literally rotting in your digestive system. Think of it as an internal traffic jam. To clear out the “congestion”, give your body adequate intervals for digesting and clearing out food.
(4) Eat proper food combinations
One thing that few people realize is that the body has trouble digesting certain combinations of food. This is because some foods need an acidic environment to digest, while others need an alkaline environment to digest. Alkaline and acidic juices mixed together neutralize each other, so when improper combinations are mixed, the result is slower digestion, bloating, and loss of energy. The basic rules of food combining are the following:
- Eat fruit alone, and don’t eat fruit right after meals. Exception: combining fruit with raw, leafy greens are OK.
- Eat the following three groups separately from each other: (1) starches, (2) protein, and (3) nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. Wait 3-4 hours after eating one group and before eating another.
- Non-starch vegetables and healthy fats can be eaten with any of the 3 groups above.
OK, the rules are simple enough. The complication is that eating starch and protein together is an integral part of our food culture. For example, this rule eliminates hamburgers, hot dogs, steak with potatoes, lasagna, pizza, and almost every other traditional meal I can think of. On the other hand, if you often suffer from digestive discomfort, you may want to give proper food combinations a try. Additionally, I would encourage you to do some additional research to better familiarize yourself with the different food groups. See the links at the end of this article to get started.
(5) When you eat, eat
Don’t do anything else while you are eating. When you are distracted while eating, digestion suffers. Put away your phone, turn off the TV, and concentrate on your food. Before eating, take a deep breath and relax yourself. Be thankful for the food, and set an intention that it will nourish your body. While eating, pay attention to how the food tastes. Is it enjoyable? Does it taste strange? When you swallow each bite, remind yourself of the intention that you are nourishing your body. You should also send gratitude to your stomach and digestive organs for the work that they do in processing the food.
(6) Chew Your Food Well
Digestion starts in the mouth, not the stomach. Chew your food thoroughly to help with the digestive process. When you first practice this habit, you should exaggerate it. Chew eat bite 10-15 times. If your food is chewed properly, then your stool should float in the toilet. (It’s also possible that it won’t float it you are not eating enough nutritious food.)
(7) Fast regularly
Fasting (i.e. not eating food for a specific period of time) is a great way to clear out and cleanse the digestive system. It also is the primary way to “reset” the body so that learns when it actually needs food. Most people automatically assume they need to eat when they are hungry, but this is incorrect. One of the most common reasons we get hungry is from habit: if we always eat at the same time of day, our bodies will get hungry at those times whether food is actually needed or not.
If you have never fasted before, I would greatly encourage you to give it a try. But I would not recommend fasting without first lowering your intake of sugar as much as possible. The reason is because when you fast, the body continues to produce insulin based on “historical needs”. Excess insulin in the body can lead to headaches until the insulin levels stabilize. In the meantime, it is easy to falsely believe that these headaches are an indication that you “dying” from lack of food.
Some people will go on juice fasts for multiple days at a time to cleanse the body of toxins in the organs. Such fasts are done maybe once every few months. It is also a common practice to go on a water fast for 24-hours at regular intervals. For instance: every week, two weeks, or month. Regular fasting is known to be a very good habit for increasing overall health.
Sources
Yuri Elkaim. Food Combining Rules: The Complete Guide https://yurielkaim.com/food-combining-rules/
Megan Gilmore (Detoxinista). Food Combining Chart. https://detoxinista.com/food-combining/
Sushmita Sengupta (FoodNDTV). Why You Shouldn’t Drink Water Immediately After Meals. https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/why-you-shouldnt-drink-water-immediately-after-meals-1672124