Three simple eating principles to increase your energy.

Three simple eating principles to increase your energy.

From: Raw for 30 Years, by Katharine Clark

Combining my nursing training and experience with my raw and living foods training and experience, I’ve come up with 3 simple tips that will help you, help yourself function more optimally.

• Before you start eating at all, a meal, or snack… pause to stop everything else going on, and acknowledge that you will eat. Notice what you will eat, focus on your food. If you feel like it, give thanks that you have food when so many do not have enough to eat. Imagine that food will digest easily and satisfy you completely. Notice that you begin to salivate just reading this! YES, in order to digest your food properly , you need to get your digestive juices going before you eat.   Many times we eat while driving, walking, talking, reading or even fighting with someone or ourselves. Obviously this is not idea for digestion, yet we are all guilty of doing it. All this tip takes is a few seconds of your time. Take a deep breath, let it out and notice that you are about to eat. Notice your mouth starts to water.
• Intentionally chew your food until there are no lumps, clumps or chunks left in your mouth, then swallow. You might be amazed to find how much better everything works when you chew your food adequately. Four or five chews are not enough. Mishio Kushi, the founder of Macrobiotics recommended chewing 100 times. I say, experiment for yourself. Count and be aware of chewing! Food should be chewed until is it liquefied. Digestion begins in the mouth. Notice how the food changes. Then develop of practice of consciously chewing.   Break yourself of swallowing chunks of food.

Your digestive tube is about 35 – 45 feet long. It is winding back and forth between your other organs from your mouth to your anus. Most of it is around your belly. Your GI tract is not like a donut or drinking straw, with a large hole through the middle. It is more like a soft long balloon that the magician hasn’t blown up yet. Using your own imagination, do you think that unchewed chunks of food might be hung up somewhere in the yards of intestines “down there?” YES, so chewing your food will allow the saliva in your mouth to mix with it. Saliva contains enzymes that begin the digestion of starches. Chewing well, will liquefy your food so you are not swallowing chunks that can stay inside of you and ferment, putrefy, or become the home to bad bacteria and parasites. Chewing your food might help you stop eating when you are full, rather than eating so fast, you eat past your full spot!

• Stay Hydrated. According to Dr Batmangali, 80% of hunger is really thirst. Every cell in your body has to be hydrated to function. When we are born we are 80% water content and as we age we frequently dry out. This leaves us vulnerable not only to looking old and dried out, but to feeling tired, headachy, and worse. Often headache is cured completely by drinking a large glass of water or two. Often constipation is relieved by drinking a large glass of water or two upon arising in the morning. Often, aches, pains and/or stiffness are always relieved by staying hydrated.   Coffee, tea, soda and carbonated or alcoholic beverages are dehydrating. Pure water or pure water with a spritz of fresh lemon or lime to taste is the best hydrating you can get! Drink at least 1 ounce of water for every pound of body weight. If you weigh 100 pounds, please drink at least 50 ounces of pure water daily, between meals not with meals. Drinking a ½ of water with a meal is OK. Drinking more than ½ cup of water with a meal can be counterproductive to your digestion.