balance...

Morning! I hope you are well on this lovely spring Sunday. I am quickly approaching week five of my "diet" (see last week's post on how I'm choosing to define this word), and I'm still loving every minute of it. I had my first "bad" day this past week. I contemplated throwing in the towel for a return to simpler, less narcissistic, more 'stuff your face with whatever is available' way of life, but I survived, and without any dietary damage... but more on that another time.

With the formalities out of the way, I thought today might be a good time to get down to the nitty gritty. What exactly is a macrobiotic diet and more importantly, what on earth am I eating?!

The foundations of the macrobiotic lifestyle date back thousands of years to the teachings of several eastern sages, but it was not until the late 19th century that it evolved into what it is today. Around the turn of the 19th century, a Japanese army doctor, named Sagen Ishizuka, devised a dietary regime which combined the teachings of these ancient sages with Western theories of biochemistry, biology, and physiology. His aim was to cure patients, including himself, of several "incurable" diseases and return their health to a more balanced state. Ishizuka believed that food is the absolute foundation of health and happiness and that for the body to properly heal itself, one's diet must be energetically and nutritionally balanced (between yin and yang). This remains the core of the macrobiotic diet.

While no foods are strictly prohibited on the macrobiotic diet, certain foods, such as sodium, potassium, white sugar, meats, and processed foods, are believed to be too antagonistic (either too much yin or too much yang) to the body and should thus be avoided. Put very simply, the dietary guidelines are as follows:

• Eat often (daily): grains (the absolute foundation of the macrobiotic diet), vegetables (except certain nightshade veggies and those that are not local or in season), sea vegetables, and beans.
• Eat occasionally (2-3 times per week): soy products (tofu, tempeh, etc), certain fish, fruit, seeds and nuts, and natural juices.
• Eat sparingly or just outright avoid: refined flour products, sugars, red meat, dairy, vegetables such as asparagus, eggplants, and tomatoes, tropical fruits (bananas and coconuts), caffeine, and anything processed.

Food should also be locally grown and eaten in season. The macrobiotic diet is conscious not only of what you eat but how you affect your environment in the process (eating bananas and grapes during the winter in Toronto is neither good for the environment or for our bodies).

So yes, it's fairly complex and there are a lot of rules (well, more guidelines), many of which I am intentionally breaking so that I can happily stick to the foundational principles without feeling deprived. My eating day consists of a lot of grains (wild and brown rice, barley, quinoa), greens (and I do make an effort to avoid the "bad" vegetables only because it's forcing me to learn about so many other wonderful vegetables like kale... yum!), beans and tofu, and natural desserts (I break the tropical fruit rule with the copious amounts of dates I eat, nuts, natural fruit spreads, dark dark dark unrefined chocolate), and lots of kukicha, bancha, and ginger teas. It sounds complicated but in all honesty, it's not. It just takes prep.

Next time: more on my daily eating plan and this illusive 'prep' I'm referring to.

Thanks for stopping in!

mxo

P.S. Check out this great website for more info: http://www.macrobiotics.co.uk