Now that you’ve learned about the dieting fads and why they don’t work, I’ll let you in on the secret:  These diet concepts do work, just not long term.  The body actually needs to cycle through them, which doesn’t allow for the gorging brought on by deprivation.

These days, we are constantly inundated with news of all the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that we need to eat.  I used to get anxiety when I thought about how I could provide my body with everything it needs in a day, until I learned to view my nutritional intake a year-long process.   Now my goal is to consume all the different types of nutrients I need within a full year.  If you think about it, this makes total sense.  All we need is provided by the earth, however almost all edible items have seasons – which is when we are meant to eat them.

The Year Long Diet

Late Winter/Spring: Low Calorie/Low Fat Diet

In the spring, there are more fluids in the earth and the body.  This fluid combined with lower calorie/fat foods and the additional exercise that nicer weather brings, allows the body to metabolize the extra fat and flush the toxins it accumulated over the winter. This is not an overnight change, but gradual shift in how you eat:

• Begin tapering off the use of oils, red meat, and nuts
• Avoid dairy, but if you simply can’t at least drink it warm and add turmeric or powdered ginger to make it easier to digest.
• Start eating what is in season in the spring – bitter and astringent greens, peas, and root vegetables, broccoli, asparagus, garlic, onions, etc (note almost all these are green foods)
• All beans are fine as well as lighter grains – barley, buckwheat, corn, rye and millet.  Avoid wheat and rice.
• Reduce the amount of sugar you consume and only eat fruit as it comes into season, including kumquats, lemons, limes and grapefruits.  As spring progresses all the berries including cherries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are the perfect transition into summer.

Summer: High Carbohydrate/Low Fat Diet

I didn’t cover the high-carb diet in the last post because I’ve never heard it used as a way to lose weight, just for getting ready to run a marathon or triathlon.  Similar to the low-fat diet, it promotes eating 70% fiber and complex carbs, which burn energy more slowly and decrease the risk of heart disease.  However, followed long -term, it causes cholesterol and insulin levels to increase.  Also, the body begins to crave good fats/essential fatty acids found in nuts, avocados and fish.

With summer comes longer days and much more activity, demanding more energy.  If you’ve eaten well during the spring, fat will continue to be your baseline energy source during summer, plus it will keep you balanced as you eat the high-carb/high-sugar fruits and vegetables that are in season during the summer.

• Shift to foods that are cooling and have sweet, bitter, or astringent properties; minimize foods that are spicy and create heat
• You can pick back up your dairy items, and even have a little ice cream on hot summer afternoons
• Use light oils including olive, sunflower and coconut
• Increase your fruit and vegetable consumption – there are so many in season:  melons, mangoes, papaya, peaches and pineapples; tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, okra, leafy vegetables, green and purple beans, zucchini and summer squash.
• Eat lighter meats including fresh water fish(sole and trout), chicken and turkey
• Shift to grains that are cooler – wheat, barely, white rice and oats (oatmeal is actually cooling to your system even though it is eaten warm)

Fall/Early Winter: High-Protein Diet

In the fall, the wind dries out the land, then winter makes it cold.  As summer shifts to fall, you want to cool off your body first – the combination of heat and dryness can be devastating; think agitation both physically to our digestive tract and emotionally (I always get frustrated much more quickly in the fall).

The earth provides us cooling fruit in the form of apples and pears to help us transition.  These fruits are full of fiber, which cleans out the intestinal tract getting rid of any residual heat in the body, so that it doesn’t rise to the head triggering mucous production and colds.  As the fall/winter progresses and bring cooler temps, protein, fats, hearty soups, grains, nuts help to keep us warm.

• Favor foods that are warm, heavy and oily; reduce foods that are cold, dry and light
• Eat foods that are sweet, sour and salty; minimize foods that are spicy bitter and astringent
• Good news for the holidays – eat more food, though not more than you can easily digest.  Extra food provides the body with more heat

Now that you know what is best for you in each season, you can begin eating healthier today.  No more “I’m starting my diet tomorrow.”  Instead just begin making small shifts today.  If you tune into your body’s signals, you will start to notice it already asking for these subtle shifts.

I don’t think I’ve ever been on a “diet.”  Guess I should drop a “thanks mom for teaching me about proper eating while I was growing up” here.  Yes, I struggled with wanting to be thinner due to societal pressure during my teens, however I always knew that cleaning up my eating patterns (not snacking, not eating sweets or fried foods) was the way to go – not turning to a Slim Fast drink full of chemicals yet not fulfilling at all.

The reasons most diets don’t work is that we make too big of a change in our eating patterns.  We might lose some weight, but that way of eating (or lack thereof) is not sustainable and most people end up gaining back even more weight once the harsh restrictions are no longer followed.  It is MUCH better to lose a pound or two a week than 10 in two weeks.  Slow transitions equal lifestyle changes.

Overview on Diets

I don’t keep track of all the new-fangled diet fads, but here is an overview of the three most popular types of diets:

Low Calorie Diet – calories are units of heat based on the energy-producing quality of food; if the amount of calories consumed is more than the body can metabolize or burn off, then the excess calories are stored as fat.

• PROs for this diet:  it is simple math – burn more than you consume.
• CONs:  when you reduce calories, you reduce the fuel your body needs to sufficiently operate throughout the day.  The body responds by going into survival mode – storing fat for the long haul and burning emergency fuel in the form of sugar, causing the body to crave more sugar.  The body’s feeling of emptiness eventually leads to gorging and weight gain; thus the yo-yo diet.

Low Fat Diet – when the low-calorie diets popular in the 50’s & 60’s didn’t work, people turned to a low-fat diet;  since fatty foods and high sugar foods tend to have higher calorie content, the low-fat diet focuses on eliminating just those foods.  Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are both based on this diet principle.

• CONs: the low-fat diet is what prompted the food industry to shift to fake fat (margarine) and sugars (saccharin, NutraSweet, and more recently Stevia).  Pass The Butter speaks to the horrors of margarine and trans fat.  Sugar-free products are just as bad.  The fake sugars created are mostly used in beverages and have little or no calories, meaning they also provide no real energy.  Manufacturers add caffeine which delivers a rush, but without the sugar provides no follow-up energy so that as the buzz wears off, you feel strung out causing the body to crave real food.  Also, fake sugars have been linked to the rise of ADD, ADHD, as well as hypoglycemia.
• PROs:  eating low-fat is a good general goal, but only if you are eating mostly natural, whole foods, which tend to be lower in fat anyway.

High-Protien/Fat Diet – Dr. Robert Atkins introduced his diet in the 1970’s, based on lowering sugar intake by increasing the intake of proteins so that dieters don’t feel hungry.

• PROs:  excess protein is rarely stored as fat, so it forces the body to tap into the fat stores for energy.
• CONs: protein does not provide the energy that carbohydrates do, so it leaves you feeling dull and listless, and eventually your body longs for more energy rich foods (bread, pasta and fruits).  Carbs hold water in the body, so much of the weight you lose is water and as soon as you eat carbs again, the weight (water) comes right back on.

The body craves what it needs to survive, however after continually following bad patterns, the mind quits understanding the body’s signals.  As you can see, and maybe as you’ve experienced, the rebound after a diet actually puts you in a worse place than were your started.  However, there is hope: you can create sustainable change in your eating patterns and never diet again!  Stay tuned as my next post will cover how to create a year-long change in your diet.

All the info above and the next post is covered further in The 3-Season Diet: Eat the Way Nature Intended by John Douillard

This time of year in So Cal is just heaven, especially as the jasmine starts to bloom.  You can hardly walk anywhere without your nose picking up its heavenly scent.  When walking my dog, I purposefully walk certain paths that have long rows of jasmine vine/bushes and just inhale as deeply as possible.

The scent of jasmine is deeply relaxing and sensual, and the flower symbolizes modesty, grace and elegance.  In China, jasmine is a symbol of feminine sweetness and beauty, as well as deep affection and happiness, which is why it is used as the flower tossed at weddings. Aromatherapists use jasmine essential oil to calm and lift the spirit, and clear congestion.

This year I’m enjoying jasmine in multiple ways.  I just bought the most amazing jasmine body oil from Idyll Horse Farms at the Main St. Farmer’s Market. I bought their water based room spray last year and really enjoyed it, but I’m loving the body oil even more.  After my Spa Week visit to Exhale Spa in Santa Monica, where they finished off my facial with pomegranate oil, I thought the jasmine oil might be quite exquisite as a part of my nightly ritual.

One morning after using the oil, my husband came up behind me at my computer to give me a hug and just kept lingering, sniffing all around my neck.  Having forgotten I used the oil, I asked “what are you doing?” His response was “you smell so good; I can’t stop smelling.”  Since I’ve only ever heard my girlfriends comment on the heavenly smell of jasmine, I assumed that it was more appealing to girls, but apparently not!

Sadly, Idyll Horse Farms doesn’t have a website, but you can order the body oil by calling 805-705-0919.  The naturalist in me would say make your own until I read that it takes 4 million flowers to produce about one pound of oil.  If you can’t find a good source for the oil, you could just get some jasmine essential oil at your local health food store and add it to some sesame or jojoba oil.

The other way I’ve been enjoying jasmine is in my tea.  I found some Tulsi Tea (holy basil tea) that is jasmine flavored and I’m addicted.  Only this addiction is really good for me!  Holy Basil originates in India and contains hundreds of compounds known as phyto-chemicals that work together to create strong anti-oxidant, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and immune-enhancing properties. So basically, it’s building up my body’s natural defense system against germs, stress and disease. It doesn’t taste as heavenly as the flower smells, but it’s a very soft and relaxing tea.

Lastly, when researching jasmine, I learned that the French make a jasmine syrup.  I’ve never seen or heard of this before, but now that it’s on my radar I’m all over it. I’m thinking a jasmine cocktail of some sort sounds pretty good right now!

I’ve made it to my last kitcheri meal of my cleanse and I feel amazing.  I had forgotten how even-keeled I become at the end of the cleanse, which just goes to show you that we truly are what we eat.  When I eat lots of sugar, my body and my emotions go on a rollercoaster ride. But after a week of eating simple foods I find I’m able to keep my cool even through the craziest situations, including my new puppy howling for 30+ minutes last night when we tried to get her to sleep in her crate again.

I’ve known that yoga affects my mental mood, and we’ve all experienced how our mood drives our food cravings, but it just now clicked that the food/mood connection works both ways.

Yoga classifies the mindsets that we all experience throughout each day into three qualities or gunas:

• Rajas – movement, change, creativity, excitement
• Tamas – slow, heavy, lethargic
• Sattva – pure, good, calm, steady

The idea that a sattvic mind is the ultimate goal is taught in many yoga classes, but actually the mind needs to move through these mindsets throughout the day.  It needs to be tamastic for sleep, but if the mind is too tamas at other times it causes lethargy and depression.  The mind also needs to be rajastic for us to analyze, create and learn, but if it is too rajas it can’t focus and has ADD.  If the mind is sattivc all the time there would be no great inventions, no social change, and no thrills in life.  So the goal is actually to have a sattvic mind during all the other times in your life: while interacting with friends and family, driving, eating, and especially during any difficult situations.

My main goal for cleansing this year was to purify my thought patterns.  This last winter, I got down on myself and on life more than I think I ever have.  It wasn’t depression; I would be positive few days, then negative for a few days.  I needed to create a change inside in order to get out of the cycle, to find a more positive, hopeful and trusting state.

In a yoga class this week, it just came to me that hopelessness and faith cannot be present at the same time.  Either I have faith that all things will work out as they should or I feel hopeless.  So I made a vow to notice anytime my mind turns on the hopeless thought flow, and to immediately stop and change my thoughts to something positive – how much I love my husband, what wonderful family and friends I have, how lucky I am too live in a beautiful place, to have found a my calling in teaching yoga (even if I’m only doing it part time for now) and of course my sweet little pup!

However, the sattvic mind that my cleanse created doesn’t have much interest in turning on the “hopeless” reel, so my real challenge is to keep paying attention and doing a 180 degree thought change as I shift back into eating normal food.  But at least I’m equipped with is the knowledge that what and how I eat definitely impacts my mental state.