Ayurvedic Treatment For Weight Loss

The holistic medical practice from India, Ayurveda, strives to create balance in the body and mind through diet, meditative practices and herbal medicines. The Sanskrit word "Ayurveda" translates as the "knowledge of life" or "science of life." This ancient healing science, Ayurvedic medicine, offers a number of practices that can help with weight loss.

Ayurveda

The basis of Ayurvedic medicine says that each person has three energy patterns, or doshas: vata, pitta and kapha. If these basic energy types are out of balance, disease, emotional problems or mental illness can result. A poor diet, tension and stress, and even your environment can affect the balance of the doshas. Ayurvedic treatment aims to bring the energies of your body back into balance while promoting lifestyle changes to help keep them in a healthy balance. In order to remedy any imbalance, an ayurvedic practitioner might prescribe breathing exercises; an herbal oil rub used to draw out toxins, called abhyanga; yoga and meditation; cleansing and purging; and herbal medicines.
Ayurvedic practitioners consider pathya, or planning of the diet, when prescribing treatments. The food you eat can either help create balance in the body or increase toxins and imbalance in the system. Pathya seeks to incorporate the "six tastes" at each meal---sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent. Bitter foods, such as bitter greens and turmeric root, aid digestion and have antioxidant effects. American rarely eat bitter foods.

Eating for Your Dosha

Along with the six tastes, Ayurvedic healers insist on the importance of eating to balance your particular dosha type. In addition to ritual cleansing, yoga, meditation and other Ayurvedic practices, the healer will prescribe a food plan to keep the patient in balance. For example, the volatile, mercurial vata personality often finds himself eating meals irregularly. The Ayurvedic practitioner will remind the vata patient to eat regular, balanced meals, including breakfast, and to emphasize sweet and salty foods that balance his dosha type.

Eating in Season

Ayurvedic practitioner Dr. John Douillard, author of "The 3-Season Diet" and owner of the Ayurvedic Life Spa in Boulder, recommends eating a diet that strictly follows the seasons. In winter, the body naturally turns to a higher fat diet; spring brings the time to cleanse the body of fat and proteins and prepare the body for the increased activity of summer. Grains, nuts, meats and oils may form the basis of a winter diet; the spring diet adds more fruits, spring vegetables, poultry and small amounts of dairy foods. A lower-fat, lower-calorie diet in spring follows the seasons and the natural needs of your body, Douillard says.

Managing Stress

For many overweight people, stress is the underlying problem, according to Douillard. Unmanaged stress brings weight gain, along with other emotional problems, including depression, anxiety and anger. Douillard calls food cravings an "emergency flare" in response to extreme stress, a warning that the body is in fighting mode and releasing stress hormones that will only continue the craving cycle. "As long as your body thinks life is an emergency," Douillard says, "you will crave emergency fuel in the form of carbohydrates." Douillard recommends that obese and overweight individuals learn how to stay calm and reduce stress, through meditation and breathing, if they are to achieve lifelong weight loss.

Conclusion

While research has not confirmed the weight loss benefits of the Ayurvedic diet, some of its principles fit those of trendy diet plans---eating raw foods in season, incorporating spices into our meals, the "slow food" movement. Ayurvedic practitioners tell us that we must learn to slow down, enjoy our meals and reduce stress in our lives. On the Ayurvedic path, weight loss comes as a natural result of moving closer to balance and harmony in the mind and in the body.