Ayurveda body type diet

An Ayurvedic Prescription for Reaching Your Ideal Weight

If you are one of the millions of people who has a made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight and start eating a more nurturing diet, the healing science of Ayurveda offers a balanced, practical approach. For the ancient Vedic physicians who developed Ayurveda, the act of eating and the choice of what to eat were profoundly important. The principles they arrived at have been refined through the centuries and are notable both for their good common sense and their congruence with current research on nutrition, weight management, and eating disorders. Quite simply, they work.

The following information and techniques can help you transform your relationship with your body, emotions, and food as you let go of compulsive eating habits and food cravings. As you put these Ayurvedic tools into practice in your daily lifestyle, the single most important suggestion we can offer is to be patient with yourself. It’s extremely damaging to criticize yourself each time you perceive that you’ve eaten in an unhealthy or non-nurturing way. If you find yourself overeating, remember that your action arose from a desire to make yourself feel better. Since eating generates endorphins and fosters a temporary sense of wellbeing or comfort, many people often cover up their emotional pain with food. They then berate themselves for not being “disciplined” enough to control their eating, which leads to further emotional pain and more overeating . . . and so the cycle continues until they are able to bring awareness to what is happening. So be gentle with yourself, and as your awareness expands, you will find that any non-nurturing eating patterns that you have will naturally drop away as you become fulfilled in body, mind, and spirit.