THE ASIAN DIET ( part I )

1. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a merchant, and dinner like a pauper.
2. Walk 1000 steps after each meal.
3. Rub your stomach along the direction of the colon for five minutes after eating.
4. Fill your stomach half full with food, a quarter full with fluids (including soup) and leave the last quarter empty for processing.
5. Chew your food well.
6. Do not go hungry.
7. Exercise in the morning.
8. Eat small red beans (adzuki beans).
9. Eat more bitter food or herbs.

• The best way to get into balance is to live a little more in balance today than yesterday, and not to grossly overcompensate for yesterday’s mistake.

• Simple foods are better than those that are man made and engineered.Tositos are made with corn, corn oil and salt, but to add the ‘touch of Lime’, a dozen ingredients have to be used. Las potato chips have sliced potatoes, oil and salt. Baked Lays potato chips again require the addition of about a dozen more manufactured ingredients. Therefore, AVOID FAST FOOD, which is so processed, and unhealthy. So it is best to avoid it completely.

• Brown rice is white rice with a thick coating around it (germ layer- which contains fibre and vitamins). However, these fibre is indigestible. Moreover, brown rice and white rice have about the same amount of calories, but brown rice has more fat. Our bodies will spend a lot of the time trying to digest the germ layer (largely unsuccessfully), resulting the lost of energy and slows down our metabolism.

• The more processed the food is, the more difficult it is for us to un-process i.e. Rice/Wheat is grounded, mixed, heated, kneaded, leavened and baked to make bread. Therefore, if you are trying to lose weight, it is better to avoid bread and pasta as well.

• We should be served with a large portion of vegetables, a small protein and a small starch. In fact, there are proteins and starch in vegetables as well.

• Cooked vegetables are better than raw. There are people who argue that ‘Cooking a vegetable destroys all its nutrition’. However, this is not true if the vegetables are cooked correctly. Light steaming or sautéing a vegetable does destroys 10% of the nutrition but the remaining 90% is unlocked and available.

• Everything cold and raw that you put into your stomach has to be heated and cooked internally by you. This takes your body time and energy, and slows down your metabolism.

• There are people who eats big salad everyday and yet, not lose weight. Our salad can be bad for us especially with all the bacon, dressings, cheese, eggs, etc.. and even if the salad consists of just raw vegetables without dressings, it is also too difficult for us to digest. The cell walls of plants are thick and are well defended, so cooing is a form of pre-digestion, which unlocks the nutrients.

• Another way to pre-digest food is with fermentation. Pickles are good to add to your diet but not all the time. Pickling preserves food by creating an acidic environment in which harmful bacteria cannot grow but helpful microbes can. These microbes break down food, creating natural pro-biotic, which also aids digestion.

• Excessive meat intake can cause all sorts of health problems ranging from obesity to hypertention, heart diseases, leukemia, Alzhemer’s disease, etc..

• Meat increases hormone levels, resulting in early puberty, higher risk of breast cancer, prostrate, and colorectal cancer, and sets the stage for worse experience at menopause.

• Long term vegetarian tend to develop a condition called blood deficiency and they tend to become pale, emaciated, sickly, have thinner hair and brittle nails, and can be prone to anxiety and insomnia; they are also less resistant to diseases. Without sufficient blood, the menses can be affected and fertility impaired.

• An animal must be killed the humane way- for if an animal is scared, it will release fear hormones and those hormones will be present in the meat which results in more fear hormone in our body.

• Eating excessive amount of fish can give us too much mercury, which can cause neurological problems among other health issues.

• Sushi in Japan is severed with warm rice, miso soup and hot tea and these additions help to warm up the raw fish in the stomach. The pickled ginger and wasabi are served with sushi because they are both antimicrobial and antibacterial, and not just added for taste.

• Egg whites are not better than egg yolk. Neither egg yolks nor egg whites are good for us, so they should be taken in moderation and only eaten maybe once or twice per week.

• Nuts are good but nut butters are not.

• Beans are fabulous so you can have as many as you want, but don’t always eat the same ones.

• Ideal rule for eating a balanced meal is that your stomach should be half full of food and a quarter full of fluids. Fluids include soups, but not cream based soup unless you are trying to gain weight.

• Soups are a good way to lose weight as it fills up your stomach with easy to digest fluid.

• Green leafy vegetables are best source of calcium.

• Your first and most important fluid intake should be water and the next most important should be green tea. Coffee is a fine occasional drink.

• Green tea is the best beverage in the world. It prevents heart disease, vascular disease, cancer, cavities, increase metabolism, decrease appetite, regulates blood sugar and blood pressure, lowers cholesterol, reduces pain, improves mood and may even prevent chromosomal damage in the eggs and sperm. The worst green tea s still better than the best coffee.

• Candy is bad. Artificial sweeteners are much worse for us than sugar. Aspartame is what goes into Diet Coke® , Diet Pepsi® and just everything else that is sweet and diet. It is 180 times as sweet as sugar. The fact is that Aspartame has no calories just means that our body cannot break it down. Another sweetener, Equal®, also contains aspartame, plus additional ingredients distinguishing it from Nutrisweet®. This ingredient is phenylalanine, which can cause seizures at high doses.