Rejuvenate With A Better Diet

Food For Thought and Function

The food you eat is important to your physical, mental and spiritual health and a change in diet can be prescribed alongside the specialised movements of Traditional Daoist Medicine to improve many conditions.

Quite simply, our bodies are not able to deal with artificial additives and modern food preparation processes. With the ‘advances’ in science and food production, food today is soaked in a wide array of chemical additives.

We take on board too much alcohol, acids, wheat, sugars, dairy and not enough good quality water.

Naturally our health suffers.

As any system of the body deteriorates, internal compensations and adjustments progressively affect other processes in the body and the entire balance of your body’s ecosystem can be unbalanced. This can lead to what appear to be unconnected problems. If we continue to ignore this, it can lead to a build up of toxins, increasingly ineffective immune systems, more infections, poor digestion, headaches, back pain, skin problems and other, more serious issues.

You Are What You Eat

Your body is constantly repairing and renewing itself – in fact, recent studies show that 7 years is all it takes for every single cell in your body to have been replaced. That includes your skin, organs, brain and bones. You don’t have to be a biochemist to understand that the brick-and-mortar building blocks your body uses to replace your cells come from the food you eat. So you literally are what you eat.

Daoist Dietary Advice

The Daoist diet is really quite simple. The main idea behind it is that you should ‘only eat real food’. This means avoiding processed and artificial foods that your body can’t easily use.

That includes artificial additives, preservatives and drugs. In the modern world, many heavily processed or mutated foods such as wheat, sugar and dairy, whilst they may make you feel “full”, have negligible available nutritional value. Your body is not designed to eat these things and much of the independent research out there shows these ‘foods’ are unfit for human consumption.

The simple approach involves reducing or avoiding products which are difficult or impossible for your body to digest; like red meat and dairy and to only eat the food intended for you by nature. This will usually mean sticking to seasonal foods which are grown in your local area in preference to exotic foods from far away that call to you from the supermarket shelves. Genuine organically grown food is best, because it’s much less likely to contain contaminants like pesticides and chemical fertilisers which can affect your nervous system.

Stop Counting Calories

Engaging in simple, raw food diets like the well-known ‘paleo-diet’ means you can stop worrying about counting calories/taking supplements and instead focus on eating a varied diet with lots of whole grains, seeds, nuts and locally grown seasonal fruit and veg. Following this natural path means your body will get everything you need to promote a healthy body, healthy mind and healthy energy levels.

Our bodies are not separate from nature, we are part of it and we are best suited to eating the nutritious foods that grow in the area we are from. There really is no need to fall back on difficult-to-digest or nutritionally valueless man-made products, which only result in you developing diseases, illnesses and allergies in the long run. Eat natural, create a union with nature and begin live in harmony is the the Daoist approach.

Simple Recommendations for a Healthy Life

If you have current medical problems or are on any specialised diet, make sure you get advice from your Doctor, Nutritional Advisor or Daoist Medicine practitioner before changing the foods you are consuming. Start slowly and change your diet following the simple guidelines in the list below.

Writing down exactly what you eat, when you eat it and how you feel afterwards will also help you go a long way towards discovering any intolerances, allergies or problems you have associated with your diet. Be brutally honest with yourself in your journal if you want to find out the truth!

Each individual has a unique biological makeup, so there is no ‘definitive diet’. Only experimentation and observation of your body’s reactions to different kinds of foods will reveal the truth of what is best for you to eat. Get to it.

General Guidelines for a Healthy Diet

Increase Consumption of…

1. Organic, Seasonal Whole Grains and Products
2. Good Quality Herbal Teas
3. Good Quality Chinese Teas
4. Matcha Tea
5. Seeds and Nuts
6. Fresh Herbs
7. Local Organic Fruit
8. Freshly Made Organic Stews, Casseroles and Soups
9. Organic Seasonal Veg
10. High Quality Water

Decrease Consumption of…

1. Wheat and Anything With Wheat in it
2. Sugar and Anything With Sugar in it
3. Dairy and Dairy-Added Products Including Cow’s Cheese
4. Drugs, Including Pain Killers, Caffeine, and Alcohol
5. Chilli and Spicy Foods
6. Fried Foods
7. Artificial Additives
8. Soft Drinks
9. Red Meat
10. Chilled Drinks and Foods

if you have implemented any of these changes, please feel free to leave a comment below to share your results.