1 Simple Ayurvedic Change, 5 Impactful Benefits
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One of you wrote to me and said,
"Hey Monica B. What is one small change that I can make based on Ayurveda, that would achieve great results?"
And I was like, "That's a good question. I have like five, maybe eight things that she could do!" and then I was like, "Dang, she said one, I've got to think of one."
So I did it. I thought of one thing that is hugely impactful, and achieves great results and I'm excited to share it with you!
Something important to note, the one thing is not very exciting. In fact you might be like, "Meh, that's it?" but I want to understand the benefits you'll notice because that's where the goodness is!
My one recommendation for the small change to make is, to make lunch the biggest meal of the day.
And why do I say that? Because usually we're at work, or we're in the middle of our day, we're rushing here and there. We grab something chintzy to eat, right? We'll grab a to-go salad, or maybe you just have a bar in your desk drawer. You're like, "I don't want to eat, I got work to do! I want to leave work so I can go and go to the gym, or go be out in nature, go to my kids soccer game, do all these fun things."
Right? Because we're like, "I don't want to spend my time eating. I just want to keep moving throughout the day."
However, if we breeze through lunch, we are going to missing out on some highly impactful health benefits — like, stuff you would never think of. Check it out below.
Here are 5 benefits of this one simple change:
1) It optimizes our digestive fire to work properly, which is most of the challenge that Ayurveda tries to solve. Ayurveda always wants people to have a well working agni, or digestive fire. Malfunctioning agni is the reason why most of us get sick, so we want all fires in alignment: sun, pitta time, our agni.
2) Helps avoid afternoon energy slumps. If we don't eat a good lunch you're going to get those 2:00, 2:30 slumps. Anybody feel those? You get those in the middle of the day and you're just like, "Ugh I can't even wait until 5:00." You don't have the energy, because you didn't eat enough food at lunch. Then you'll likely reach for something, anything around the office which leads you to snack-snack-snack without even being aware that you're eating. Mindless eating, especially of lower quality foods, can cause weight gain, too.
3) May help you sleep better. When we skip lunch, we often coe home starving and eat a large dinner, which can actually hamper our sleep. If we have too much food at night we might get burp-ups, heartburn, or heavy sluggishness, which doesn't give us good quality sleep.
When we have a big lunch, we will enjoy a lighter dinner because we won't have heavy food sitting in our stomach. We sleep better when we feel lighter.
4) And then, we'll wake up with more energy because we are able to digest dinner properly. If we eat too much at night, we will likely wake up sluggish because we get weighed down from excess food. We don't have the lightness, the airiness, the fieriness to actually wake up with vigor and vitality because we have all this old food stuff sitting in there.
5) Avoid collection of ama (a sticky toxic-ish substance that can cause all kinds of sickness and health problems). If we don't eat a big lunch and instead have a big dinner, we will collect old food stuff that agni can't get through. It could take an additional day or days (depending how long this has been going on!) to make it's way through the overload of food. And yes, this too can lead to weight gain.
Here's your challenge.
This week, start making this a practice. Maybe you plan ahead, you're going to have to bring your lunch, or plan ahead on where you can find some food that's freshly prepared and dosha-balancing. Make lunch the biggest meal of the day!
That is your challenge. I want to hear all your stories after you tried it. Comment below! I would love to hear from you.
Keep bringing Ayurveda to life!
XO!
Monica B.