How Ayurvedic Medicine Can Help Weight Loss Efforts

Traditional ayurveda medicine originated in India and has been practiced for more than 5,000 years. It has gained popularity over the last decade, and many people believe that praciticing ayurveda can help you lose weight.

The Basic Tenets of Ayurveda

Ayurveda is a practice which puts emphasis on the prevention of disease, rejuvenation of the body, and the extension of life spans. Practitioners believe that with the application of natural therapies and lifestyle changes, many diseases and ailments can be treated or cured entirely. Ayurveda combines both mental and physical health together, believing that both are equally important to overall health.

In ayurveda, each person is considered to be completely unique, with individual properties that must all be considered before any healing can begin. The underlying principle of all ayurvedic medicine is balance. Devotees and practitioners alike believe that living a balanced life in harmony with the cycles of nature is the key to both health and longevity.

Ayurveda and Weight Loss

In ayurveda, being either overweight or underweight is taken as a sign of imbalance. It is not necessarily considered to be directly related to the amount of food you eat, but can be due to an imbalance in the metabolism.

Rather than focus on dieting, ayurveda takes an entirely different approach towards eating. Just as ayurveda concentrates on a balance with nature in all things, it is the same for food. Ayurveda experts recommend eating what foods are currently in season in order to remain balanced. For example, in the spring, leafy green vegetables, sprouts and berries are all in season thus they should make up the majority of calories consumed during this time of year.

Recommended Foods

There are certain foods that ayurvedic practitioners believe will help stimulate both the digestive system and the metabolism. These include ginger, papaya, mango, pineapple and dark bitter greens.

Other Ayurvedic Practices

There are several strategies highly recommended by ayurveda experts that will aid in losing weight. In addition to regular exercise, they recommend sipping hot water throughout the day, drinking ginger tea 2 to 3 times per day or chewing fresh ginger root before meals, and using bitter or astringent herbs such as cumin, ginger, cayenne or black pepper.

Ayurveda celebrates all that is unique with each individual. As such, ayurvedic practitioners believe that no one solution is right for everyone. By learning more about ayurveda and the individual condition, a practical plan can be developed that will aid in becoming more balanced. Once a person has become more balanced in the foods they eat, the exercises in which they participate, and are able to develop a lifestyle regimen rather than a diet, weight loss generally follows. In addition, then an overall sense of balance and well-being, both physical and emotional, is achieved. It is all part of the ayurvedic doctrine of balance in all things.