An Easy Introduction To An Ayurvedic Diet - Constitutional Nutrition

Constitutional nutrition optimizes health using simple, practical biocharacteristics curated from Greek and Ayurvedic medicine. It helps you understand your body, improve metabolic performance, and prevent or minimize disease.

Through biocharacteristics you will experience the medicine of food, its metabolic effects on your body, and naturally crave and choose the foods that are right for you. We've organized this constitutional approach to food for your convenience. The practice of biocharacteristics medicine was ubiquitous throughout the ancient and medieval world until the 1650s.

What are Biocharacteristics?

Where modern medicine focuses on the biochemistry of disease, constitutional nutrition emphasizes the nature of disease (i.e. its heat, cold, wetness, dryness, fluid thickness, thinness, etc.) and your experience. Ayurveda classifies the nature of food using 20 biocharacteristics (called gunas in Ayurveda).

This classification gives clinicians a whole body perspective on imbalance that is user friendly, enabling clients to better manage their health at home.

Biocharacteristics are experiential - they are used to classify your experiences of 1) disease & dysfunction, 2) environment, food & herbs, 3) mental state. Biocharacteristics classify your most basic experiences of being alive. The best way to get started in Ayurveda is by knowing these biocharacteristics.

The first 8 are heavy and light, sharp and dull, hot and cold, oily and dry. For example bread makes you feel heavy but salads feel light. Black pepper is sharp on your tongue but cheese is dull. Chilies heat up your body but cucumbers cool your body down. Butter is oily but popcorn is drying. On Joyful Belly we've selected only those gunas that are most useful in cooking. The study of Ayurvedic Pharmacology details all the ways Ayurveda classifies food, herbs, and diseases.

The Three Body Types (Doshas)

Ayurveda groups people into three general body types called Dosha. The three doshas are Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. The doshas are three basic metabolic patterns. Vata tends towards movement (scattered, erratic metabolism and dryness). Pitta tends towards heat (high metabolic rate). Kapha tends to store energy (low metabolism). Constitution predicts the symptoms and diseases you are most vulnerable to, and gives you a means to restore balance. Vata tends to suffer from deficiency. Pitta from heat disorders. And Kapha tends to suffer from stagnancy and conditions of excess.

The Six Tastes

In Ayurveda, nutrition is based on the six tastes (western nutrition identifies only four tastes). Each taste affects your metabolic nature in a unique way that can make you feel better, or worse, depending upon the person. Bitter is light and drying. Astringent is tightening and drying. Pungent is sharp and dry. Salty taste is liquefying and hot. Sour is hot, liquefying, and heavy. Sweet taste is heavy, gooey, and cold. Every season has a different taste and diet.

Digestion

Good circulation, good digestion and well nourished tissue are three cornerstones of good health. By the process of digestion, when you eat an apple it becomes a part of your living body. Whether the food you eat is heating or cooling, acidic or basic, sugary or bitter, your body has to transform these metabolic effects to make them suitable to your individual nature. This processing takes work. That's why digestion is often used to measure the resilience of a person in Ayurveda. Some signs of indigestion include gas, burping, acid reflux, diarrhea and constipation.

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