The breakfast is supposed to be the king of meals, and it is said these days that we should go all out to break our fast sumptuously.
I follow an ayurvedic regimen for the most part, adapting and modifying it to suit current contexts and routines. The ayurvedic principles advise us to have light breakfasts and dinners and a heavier mid-day meal. According to the ancients, a light breakfast or none at all if you please! I have found through trial and error and experimenting that this does seem to work better for the overall state of health and well-being.
Imagine you are just recuperating from a fever: you would have been having very light meals so as to ease and facilitate the digestion process when the body is weak. At this point when you are recuperating, you wouldn't immediately load the body with rich and nutritious foods; rather you would up the scale of nutrition and fats gradually and according to how your body's strength picks up. Breaking one's fast is something similar. After many hours of sleep and rest, the stomach is empty, all food digested and the body is ready to eliminate what was not required / not digested by it (hopefully!). Your body and its metabolism is waking up, and is yet not at its peak. You ingest gradually as and how your body wakes up to its full metabolic activity. If we have a heavy breakfast, I figure we would be overloading the system.
If we were to go by the daily doshas cycle, that is, kapha, pitta and vata - our breakfast and dinner time both plonk right in the middle of the kapha times of the day (6 to 10 am, and 6 to 10 pm) (aliens and otherworldly souls who dine at 11 pm, wake up at 10 am and so on are not included in this category, their rhythms are different and need independent attending to). Eating heavily during the kapha time would actually build up more kapha in the body (and this also depends on what one is eating). However, as Captain Jack Sparrow would have said, these are to be taken as guidelines - a generic guideline would be to eat light during the kapha-building time, and eat well during the pitta time, when the body's digesting capacity is at its peak (10 am to 2 pm). The other pitta dominating time is also 10 pm to 2 am, however, I am sure this is not a time to be eating at all, leave alone eating heavily. This is the time for the pitta to be working from the inside to clean everything and get the body ready for the next day.
There were times when I used to have a full-stomached, loaded breakfast and I couldn't go without it. I couldn't bear the thought of going even a little hungry. But then, following a consistent and regular yoga practice, the body's native intelligence took over. I naturally started eating lesser and lesser during breakfast without being completely aware of it initially. Later I tried various combinations and portions and arrived at my optimum. Of course, this is a dynamic optimum and changes a little according to how much exercise and sleep I have had and the kind of activity I have been doing. In any case, solid, grand breakfasting is a NO if one wants to feel fresh, active and light through the day.
I follow an ayurvedic regimen for the most part, adapting and modifying it to suit current contexts and routines. The ayurvedic principles advise us to have light breakfasts and dinners and a heavier mid-day meal. According to the ancients, a light breakfast or none at all if you please! I have found through trial and error and experimenting that this does seem to work better for the overall state of health and well-being.
Imagine you are just recuperating from a fever: you would have been having very light meals so as to ease and facilitate the digestion process when the body is weak. At this point when you are recuperating, you wouldn't immediately load the body with rich and nutritious foods; rather you would up the scale of nutrition and fats gradually and according to how your body's strength picks up. Breaking one's fast is something similar. After many hours of sleep and rest, the stomach is empty, all food digested and the body is ready to eliminate what was not required / not digested by it (hopefully!). Your body and its metabolism is waking up, and is yet not at its peak. You ingest gradually as and how your body wakes up to its full metabolic activity. If we have a heavy breakfast, I figure we would be overloading the system.
If we were to go by the daily doshas cycle, that is, kapha, pitta and vata - our breakfast and dinner time both plonk right in the middle of the kapha times of the day (6 to 10 am, and 6 to 10 pm) (aliens and otherworldly souls who dine at 11 pm, wake up at 10 am and so on are not included in this category, their rhythms are different and need independent attending to). Eating heavily during the kapha time would actually build up more kapha in the body (and this also depends on what one is eating). However, as Captain Jack Sparrow would have said, these are to be taken as guidelines - a generic guideline would be to eat light during the kapha-building time, and eat well during the pitta time, when the body's digesting capacity is at its peak (10 am to 2 pm). The other pitta dominating time is also 10 pm to 2 am, however, I am sure this is not a time to be eating at all, leave alone eating heavily. This is the time for the pitta to be working from the inside to clean everything and get the body ready for the next day.
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| Image from eatfeelfresh.com |
There were times when I used to have a full-stomached, loaded breakfast and I couldn't go without it. I couldn't bear the thought of going even a little hungry. But then, following a consistent and regular yoga practice, the body's native intelligence took over. I naturally started eating lesser and lesser during breakfast without being completely aware of it initially. Later I tried various combinations and portions and arrived at my optimum. Of course, this is a dynamic optimum and changes a little according to how much exercise and sleep I have had and the kind of activity I have been doing. In any case, solid, grand breakfasting is a NO if one wants to feel fresh, active and light through the day.
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