Whether you agree or not, Christmas is a time for celebration and eating galore! And this obviously means being a first class participant in foods that we don’t ordinarily have. Boy did they taste amazingly good!! Those are the same foods that are NOT so great for our bodies (or waistline). Don’t think I’m a Christmas scrooge – to the contrary – I am all out for the celebration. It’s just that our health pays the price. But don’t panic. Together, let’s support each other in our recovering efforts to get back on the “Feel Good Highway.”
Here are a few guidelines to help nourish us back to health.
1. For the next seven days or so, let’s indulge in a hot bowl of soup. We’ll call it our “recovery soup” ... (and no, not a soup with that ham bone).
2. Get rid of all the trespassers in your gut – those harmful bacteria – by increasing the population of the good bacteria. You see, all that cashew and black cake, sweet potato pone, pineapple upside down cake and ham you splurged on were actually nourishments for harmful bacteria and yeasts. So get a hold of some good probiotics and let’s pamper our gut.
3. Keep an alkaline balance. In health, the cells of our body are alkaline. So, obviously, the more acid the cells become, the sicker we feel. And since our bodies do not manufacture alkaline, we must supply this balance from our foods to prevent us from becoming completely acidic and dying. Note to ourselves: We can remain fairly healthy by consuming a diet that is 80% alkaline and 20% acidic. And we don’t need chemistry or physics to distinguish the two families... the family of alkaline foods contain most kinds of fruits and vegetables, whether raw, juiced, dried or steamed. Did you know that even the “acid fruits” like oranges, grapefruit and pineapples are part of the Alkaline Family. If you didn’t know; well, now you know. You see, these are only classified as acid fruits botanically. The moment they hit our stomach, they become alkaline, as long as they are eaten by themselves.. I’ll explain that to you later.
The typical holiday meals that we ate were made up of every type of food known to man. Now did you know that different kinds of food require different kinds of digestive juices and enzymes? If you didn’t know; well, now you know. Eating a variety of foods together during a single meal throws the digestive system into chaos. Such actions result in a mass of putrefying, fermenting stuff stuck in our stomach that the entire body is working “overtime” to get rid of. While we may have really gone overboard for the holiday, this improper combining of our food is an age old habit.
The whole point of food combining is to eat foods that are digested in the same way in the same meal. Here’s a simple food combination that is sure to work:
• Eat fruit by itself. Fruit is a very important kind of food that must never follow something else in a meal. With the exception of bananas, dates and dried fruit which stay in the stomach a little longer, all other fruits move right through the stomach into the intestines. So, therefore, if fruit is eaten immediately after another kind of food, it will ferment itself and everything else in the stomach.
• Eat vegetables and proteins together.
• Eat vegetables and starches together.
Christmas was wonderful... and there was no reason to not have enjoyed ourselves. Let us now do what we need to do to help our body recover, and it will be thanking us many times over throughout 2016.
Disclaimer: WE DO NOT OFFER MEDICAL ADVICE or prescribe any treatments. My advice should never replace the advice of your healthcare professional.
