Years ago, during my Yoga Teacher Training, several of us (students and instructors) had a conversation about right eating. My friend Mecki said something that’s stuck with me: that our bodies show us the right way to eat, we just ignore their signals.
It’s taken me years to get my head wrapped around this idea. On one hand, I work with binge eating disorder. I get all sorts of signals from my body that are downright unreasonable, never mind unhealthy.
On the other hand, I’m a student of healthy living. And there’s a mess of good advice out there from many people who I respect and trust. And I lost a great deal of weight a decade ago following some of it. But letting the head override the body in this way left me with some lingering issues, not the least of which was such severe constipation that I’ve been known to go 2 weeks without a bowel movement.
Clearly, my body’s been telling me something isn’t right.
A year and a half ago, my Teacher Trainer Kim Schwartz stayed with me for a few days while teaching a weekend workshop. He observed some of my patterns and eating habits and made a suggestion: that I learn about Ayurveda, and particularly how to use it to balance my aggravated Vata (air + ether) dosha.
We Vata imbalanced people tend to be dry from our skin to our digestive systems; anxious, with easily aggravated nervous systems; and cold (I type as I’m wearing sweats and a long sleeved shirt on an almost 100° day). We don’t sleep well and are sometimes spacey. Sometimes, a tendency toward binge eating arises in an instinctive attempt to get grounded.
Fast forward a great deal of study later, and I’ve come to understand that many of my standby meals—including my beloved “chicken on salad”—may be making things worse. And my perimenopausal body is steadily becoming less interested in eating meat at all.
This leads me to my summertime meal obsession: one bowl, high protein, high fiber vegetarian meals. Which just so happens to be in alignment with the dietary recommendations of the We Wise Well Body Program for perimenopausal women. And, when combined with thoughtfully keeping on top of my hydration, has my elimination working normally, my water retention reduced, and my food cravings substantially diminished.
I’ve found so many excellent recipes that I thought I’d share some of them here with you. All of these are tested by my teenagers, too. Happy cooking!