Resetting the Body with Ayurveda

by Vatsala Sperling, Ph.D., author of The Ayurvedic Reset Diet

In the very early days of my wellness practice, a 27-year-old woman came in seeking help with her chronic constant fatigue. When she described her daily food intake, her diet raised a red flag. But I faced a dilemma – to speak the truth or not? The risk for me was that she might not be able to face the truth and, having heard it, she might drop out of my practice. I was a newbie, and in the early days of my practice, the thought of losing a client was traumatic to me. I overcame the urge to retain client and chose to give her a dose of truth. “Your diet is the maintaining cause for your symptoms. I can give you the best remedy, but for it to work, you need to clean up your diet.”

After I told her this, I thought I would never see her again, but to my utter surprise, she was back within a week. Then began the journey of tutoring her about the role of food in her health and wellbeing. Twelve years later, she still comes to my practice but she is now a new person and does not have any of the complaints that she initially came to see me for.

It turns out not only chronic fatigue but also obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, dental diseases, digestive issues (bloating, gas, indigestion, bad odor from mouth, loose stools, constipation), food sensitivities, acidity, stomach ulcers, gastritis, colitis, inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s, depression, and even eating disorders are in some form or another connected with quality and quantity of food we eat.

With such an avalanche of diet-related maladies, I see a place for Ayurveda among us, particularly, a regimen of fasting and moderate eating that helps the body regain its natural sense of wellness.

What is Ayurveda?

Ayurveda is an ancient health science that originated in India many thousands of years ago.

In India, it is believed that Ayurveda was revealed to the ancient wise men, rishis, by Dhanvantari, the celestial physician to the gods in the heaven. For many thousands of years, the rishis passed down the knowledge of Ayurveda to the subsequent generations of healers. Presently, this medical science is in Sanskrit text books and is taught in Ayurveda universities all over India.

My first experience of Ayurveda goes right back to my childhood. As a family, we celebrated all the major Hindu festivals. Take for example, Diwali, the festival of lights, and you guessed right, it happens to be an incredible opportunity to enjoy some extravagant sweet and savory treats. In our family, whenever we got sick from overeating during festivals, our parents would remind us of a Sanskrit shloka from Ayurveda, “Langhanam parama aushdham,” which translates roughly to “hunger is the best medicine” or “fasting is the best medicine.”

Mom also quoted Thiruvalluvar, a Tamil poet-saint, who had said, “One who eats once a day is a yogi, one who eats twice a day is a bhogi [one who lives for enjoying life], one who eats three times a day is a rogi [a sick person].”

Based on her ancestral knowledge of Ayurveda, my mom prepared a simplified eating schedule by eliminating problematic food, fasting on water only to flush out and cleanse the digestive system, and eating one extremely simple, light, and easy-to-digest food. With these three steps, we were able to give our digestive system the much-needed rest from heavy-duty festive foods. We soon got over upset stomachs without having to run to a doctor.  

My interest in Ayurveda led me to further explore the fasting techniques I learned as a child. It turns out fasting is a practice that was built into the lives of the ancient, native hunter-gatherer tribes who lived on every continent of the earth. One common practice among all hunter-gatherer people was hunting and gathering of locally available animals and seasonal plants. When they were successful in hunting and gathering, they ate to their heart’s content. In lean times, or in between hunting and gathering trips, they fasted. Fasting was built into their natural rhythm of life. It is the same with wild animals. They hunt. When successful, they eat a huge meal. Then they wait for the next hunt and, in the meantime, fast while digesting their kill.

All hunter-gatherers, such as the Aborigines of Australia and the Adivasis of India, knew how to live as one with nature, but how to do so has vanished from our collective knowledge. We, the modern people, live in high-rise apartment buildings in cities and, as a species, we have lost touch with our roots. Presently, machines do our farming, we have moved to cities, our connection to natural rhythms, seasons, a natural way of eating and exercising is gone. But what has remained with us is the habit of three meals a day and a few snacks in between.

Industrialization and colonization have also resulted in the phenomenon of homogenization and year-round availability of mass-produced industrial food across the entire world. We have no true, wholesome, deep connection to our food—or to each other. Because it is so removed from nature and her cycles and rhythms, our food has become unnatural, and our bodies and minds are paying a price for it. Constant consumption of unhealthy food leads to signs and symptoms of various illnesses that are directly connected with food, malnourishment, lifestyle, and stress. Our foods start a cascade of gene expression and biochemical reaction that creates an environment suitable for expression of diseases.

For these very reasons, it is crucial that we find ways to minimize the food-related problems that we are currently facing.

This is where the Ayurvedic Reset Diet is useful and applicable.

The Ayurvedic Reset Diet is not a diet plan for a specific disease condition, weight loss, losing belly fat, trimming thighs and removing wrinkles, or turning you into a size-zero fashion model. 

The Ayurvedic Reset Diet is a technique of fasting and simplified eating that helps reset and reboot your digestive health, your immune system, and your relationship with food while minimizing the effect of viruddha ahara (antagonistic food) on your health. The Ayurvedic Reset Diet is about supporting, nourishing, sustaining, and energizing the five koshas that make us who we are: Annamaya (food), Pranamaya (life force), Manomaya (mind), Vijnanmaya (intellect), and Anadamaya (blissful state). These koshas are like layers in the body, and the annamaya kosha is the outermost, gross, material, physical body that is created, maintained, and destroyed by food.

Eat to Live, Not Live to Eat

If food is taken as a medicine, wisely, judiciously, mindfully, and with an attitude of “eat to live,” it can create and maintain a healthy body. However, if unhealthy food, viruddha ahara, is taken with greed, lust, and a self-indulgent “live to eat” attitude without awareness, knowledge, and refinement, then it destroys the body instead of nurturing and maintaining it.

The Ayurvedic Reset Diet uses three simple techniques, used on successive days according to a set schedule, to undo the effects of faulty food intake:

1. Fasting on water only, or water and herb teas only, to help flush out old remnants, impacted fecal matter, and germs that are harmful and also to rebalance the bacteria in our gut.
2. Isolating food by eating only one type of food at a time to simplify digestion and allow the body to fully absorb all the nutrients in a particular food (also known as a mono-diet).
3. Mixing foods from various food groups in a sensible way and avoiding viruddha ahara.

Why fast on water?

It is the ultimate and most natural zero-calorie drink. Up to 60% of the human adult body is water. Intake of fresh water during fasting initiates a flushing action and our body gets a cleanse from the inside out.

Why isolate foods?

Ayurveda recognizes Satwik, Rajasic, and Tamasic foods.

Satwik – simple, plain foods – promote life, enhance harmony and balance, and create vitality, joy, cheerfulness, lightness, and wellbeing. Rajasik – excessively spiced and extravagantly seasoned foods that are very sweet, salty, sour, bitter, oily, pungent – promote harshness, burning, irritation, heaviness, and excessive peristalsis (vomiting, loose stools). Tamasic – spoiled, tasteless, old, putrid, reheated, frozen, unclean foods – promote grief, morbidity, sadness, depression, lethargy, lack of interest and enthusiasm, anger, guilt, regret, sense of loss, inner sense of darkness and pain, and hindered peristalsis (constipation).

Rajasic and Tamasic foods are very good at upsetting the balance of the tridosha – vata, pitta, and kapha – the three fundamental energies or principles that govern the function of our bodies on the physical and emotional level. Any one of these can go out of sync and produce a range of disease symptoms. When a heavy rajasic or tamasic meal is eaten – day after day, three times a day – the body begins to revolt and get sick.

When the body is unwell, then, as per the tenets of Ayurveda, proteins should not be combined with starches or carbohydrates, and these should be eaten at a different meal. Consuming these food groups together results in indigestion and the malabsorption of both groups, which prevents the body from extracting nutrients from either one.

After the body has been reset by fasting and avoidance of viruddha ahara by way of isolating food groups, we begin to combine food that are compatible with each other. This is step 3 of the Ayurvedic Reset Diet. At this step, the body has been revived and rested internally so it is better able to digest food and absorb nutrients. We have given our gastrointestinal tract the much-needed free time to repair itself.

The mindful eating pattern established in the Ayurvedic Reset Diet facilitates reversal of gut dysbiosis, flushing of harmful bacterial colonies, and re-establishment of useful gut bacteria in the microbiome. With regular availability of healthy food in moderate quantities, your mind does not fantasize about the next meal. It is at ease as your relationship with food improves. Your general disposition, mood, energy level, and enthusiasm for life improves too because you are doing something creative, constructive, and solid for your own well-being and good health.

Remember even the biggest locks tend to have a key that is much smaller than them. Illness is a lock. Fortunately, we have the key to unlock it by using the Ayurvedic Reset Diet whenever we see problematic food intake at the source of our ill health.