The Art of Eating Right While you Work From Home
This new normal has disrupted the lifestyle of many who have been given the opportunity to remotely operate for one’s organizations. The question that stands here is are we doing it right? Corporate Wellness Initiatives should be equally emphasized on when it comes to optimally functioning in the Work from Home Hours. This blog highlights the intake of nutritious meal as well as the knowledge to chose a healthy option with the 4 Secrets of Healthy Eating.
In the previous blog “Discover a Healthy Mind with Healthy Body” we learned about the root cause of most health problems faced by most of the working population i.e. “Accumulation of waste inside our body”. This blog will focus on our body’s constitution and the requirements to lead a disease-free lifestyle. The Art of Eating Right is the need of the hour for every employee working from home.
The Great 5 Elements
Our body is a complex creation of the 5 great elements (PanchaMaha-Bhoota) which also form the basis of all cosmic creations.
- Earth / Prithvi
- Sky / Akasha
- Fire / Agni
- Water / Jal
- Air / Vayu
We fall sick due to the imbalances of these elements in our life. Let’s understand the importance of each element and how can we utilize them to cure ourselves. Earth provides us food, so we get the earth element from the food we eat. Our bodies are meant for fresh fruits, vegetables, and plants straight from Mother Nature but we accidentally feed it too many grains, oils, packaged, and processed foods. This makes us deficient in the earth element and our bodies easily contract diseases.
Top 4 Secrets to a Healthy Eating
1. Living
If you bury a lentil seed in the soil and water it for a few days, it will grow into a sapling, but will the same happen with noodles or pizza? No, because unlike the lentil these foods don’t contain any life (Prana) and therefore cannot produce more life, it’s dead food. There’s a universal law of nature ‘Jivo Jivasya Jivanam’ meaning only a living entity can provide a life for another living entity. So how can something that is dead or doesn’t have any prana, brings life to your body? On the other hand, fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds, and sprouts, are all living foods. When they enter your body, they bring you life, extend your age, cure diseases, and flush out the toxins inside your body.
Nowadays we store cooked food like sabzi, and paratha in the fridge to eat a little every day and store it back. We are eating stale food. If something is cooked on the fire, we must consume it within 3 hours. Our grandparents followed the same as they ate everything fresh; directly from the stove onto the plate. What about bottled, canned, packaged, frozen, and processed food? How long ago were these cooked or manufactured? Most of them were cooked maybe six months to a year in advance and have been lathered with synthetic chemicals so that they don’t appear stale or smell bad. These chemicals might increase the shelf life of these products, but they decrease the shelf life of our bodies. They have no life energy inside them. Eat living foods straight from Mother Nature and avoid eating bottled, canned, packaged, frozen, processed food, or anything that’s man-made in a factory.
2. Wholesome
Eat wholesome food. All foods that come directly from plants, trees, or the earth are wholesome. They have not been extracted from anything. Mother Nature knows the best and has done a lot of planning before making every food. She has given each food item a specific ratio of protein, vitamins, fats, nutrition, etc. so we can easily digest and eliminate them. If we fragment it by consuming only a part of it or by stripping away its outer layer or by squeezing out only the fats from it, we change it from nature’s original design. Therefore, eat dates or jaggery instead of sugar because they are wholesome while sugar is fragmented.
3. Water Rich
About 70% of Earth is covered in water and 30% consists of land. The same goes for our bodies as well, 70% of our body is water and 30% is solid i.e. bones, muscles, and mass. So naturally, 70% of our diet should consist of water-rich foods and 30% should consist of water-poor food. Most of the fruits and vegetables are water-rich. Fruits like watermelon, orange, grapes, plum, papaya, etc and vegetables like cucumber, tomato, leafy greens, bottle gourd, etc are water-rich foods. While water-poor foods include grains, rice, wheat, chapati, daal, nuts, seeds, and starchy vegetables like potatoes. Most of us eat in the exact opposite ratio i.e. 70% water-poor and 30% water-rich. By eating grains thrice a day, we are drying up. If you put anything in a juicer and a lot of juice comes out of it then you know that it’s water-rich. If you put rice or chapati in a juicer, will juice come out of it? No, there’s no juice in it. It’s water-poor food.
4. Plant-Based
Eat food that comes from plants; no meat, fish, or eggs. Nature has not designed our bodies to consume meat. Plant-based food reduces the risk and helps improve symptoms of chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, asthma, and certain cancers. We’ve been conditioned to believe that we need lots of animal protein to build muscles and strength, and that protein only comes from poultry. What most people don’t realize is that the animals they are eating are just middlemen, since the majority of these animals get their protein from plants, where it originates. In short, animals are secondary sources of protein while plants are primary.
What about milk and dairy? All the animals in this world are innately aware as to who’s milk they should drink and until what age they should drink it. But sadly, humans failed to understand this. Another reason to avoid milk is that the milk we’re getting today is contaminated to such an extent that it’s not even milk. Now even if you get the purest form of cow milk straight from your farm, it’s still difficult to digest it because of the corporate lifestyle we have today. We spend eight hours in front of our computer so we cannot digest milk as it’s very heavy by nature. The best substitute for milk is coconut milk, which one can easily make at home. There’s a reason it’s called Shree Phal in Sanskrit. It’s one of the best foods on earth and provides you with ample nutrients, protein, and calcium; that your body can easily digest and absorb.
Epilogue
The notions explained in this blog, cover the importance of one of the primary five great elements i.e. Earth element. It covers nature’s intended way of consumption. The other four elements will be explained in the upcoming blogs. Reconnect to Mother Nature so that no disease can touch you. Experience the joys of an optimally functioning human body. With Work & Life usually blurring boundaries, one needs to set a demarcation to self-care. Healthy Eating & being cognizant about the Food for Thought is the growing need of the hour. Employee Experience is boosted by making the workforce immune & healthy during tragic times.
