Eating Under Stress

The emphasis in yoga regarding diet is that the student should eat as naturally as possible.
A sensible and balanced nutritional program frees the individual from worry about food.
Yoga not only deals with this freedom, but also with the freedom from desire of food which
causes sickness. Every individual, like every animal, knows what is good food and what is
not. However, it is only man who takes liberties with food that disagrees with his health,
because he has the science of healing with him. When this science fails, as it happens
frequently, the normal stressful situations get compounded as a result of low body efficiency
or ill health.

The yogic way helps to develop the intuition for dietary diagnosis in a spontaneous manner,
without becoming fanatical or fussy but choosing sensible food through the attitude of
detachment.

Food, the source of prana

In "Stress: how to handle it" in the International Yoga Guide, it is said that, "Prana is
harmonized, replenished and enhanced in various ways, one of the most powerful being that
of maintaining a pure and nourishing diet. On the basis of thousands of years of experience,
yogis are emphatic on the point that non-vegetarian foods cause increasing tension in the
body and mind. Rather, pure foods, such as fruits, milk and milk products, nuts, cereals,
vegetables, and others are more harmonious to the body and mind. An occasional fast is
also beneficial, or a fruit diet or a raw food diet. These have proven very helpful in relaxing
the body and recharging it with fresh pranic energy."

According to yoga, food can be either sattwic, rajasic or tamasic The effect of these foods
on our body and mind is similar to the manifestation of the particular guna in our nature. It
is well known that each of these three gunas is present in us, but in different proportions
and that the nature of our personality is determined by the predominant guna. In the same
way we can plan our diet, which can either be predominantly sattwic (with a lesser
proportion of rajasic and tamasic food components) or predominantly rajasic (with a lesser
proportion of sattwic and rajasic food components) or predominantly tamasic.

Most vegetarian food can be sattwic but the vegetarian food people eat nowadays is made
non-sattwic as they are fried or prepared in a combination of rich spices. To retain the
sattwic quality of vegetarian food, it needs to be prepared in simple ways: boiling,
steaming, baking or eating raw (those vegetables which can be eaten raw). A simple
vegetarian menu with smaller portions of rajasic and tamasic food (such as meat, fish, etc.)
should bring in the benefits of a sattwic diet, which is easy to digest and completely
assimilated through proper metabolic conversion.

Do not kill your appetite

A person under stress is normally rushed for time or tends to eat fast. His eating habits and
timings become haphazard. As the stressful situation builds up tension within, his eating
schedule gradually gets into a disarray, till it is completely thrown out of gear.
Therefore, eating under stress can create several complications, adding further to the
burden of stress the body-mind complex is already bracing against. A lackadaisical attitude
to eating may starve the body of essential nutrition. Killing hunger with coffee, tea,
cigarettes or other substitutes is not a solution to the problem, but may actually contribute
to it. Or, one may also develop a habit to overeat in the night to make up for the lack of
proper food during the day, putting a heavy strain on the digestive system-Regularity in
food timings is very important. Much digestive stress is caused by irregular timings and
wrong timings. The optimum time for the main meal of the day is between 11 a.m. and 1
p.m. After that, the digestive power wanes. In the evening, the digestive power is low as
the system is tired and ready for a rest.

It is also important to eat the same quantity of food regularly, because the stomach gets
used to secreting a certain amount of enzymes at a particular time. If the right items in the
right quantity are provided at the right timing, then the digestive process goes on well, as
nature intended it to be. It does not become stressed, overworked or breakdown.

How we eat is as important as what we eat

Most of the eating habits we were told to develop as children, contribute to good health.
Eating slowly, masticating the food well and obeying the stomach rather than the eye or the
taste buds, are as valid when we are grown up as when we were young. Moderation in diet
makes sense in the yogic way, which says: fill the stomach half full with food, one quarter
full with water, and leave a quarter of the stomach empty for all the gases that are
produced during digestion.

To drink water, or not to drink?

There are different ideas about drinking water with food. Some advise to drink water after
finishing eating, not in between. Others are of the opinion that it is best not to drink water
for one hour before or one hour after meals. The reason being, that drinking water with or
immediately after food, 'dilutes' the digestive juices. Therefore, a given quantity of food that
is mixed with water, would need a larger amount of digestive juices for digestion than if it
were unmixed or undiluted with water. Once you make a habit of drinking water one hour
before or after eating, you find that the heavy-in-the-stomach feeling after eating totally
disappears. With it, the after-food lethargy also disappears.

Developing a healthy respect for food

In the ashram, food is looked upon as prasad. So, whether there is enough to eat or less,
whether it Is tasty or not, food is eaten with the same bhavana (feeling) as a prasad from
the guru. In our homes, we can develop a healthy respect for food if, once in a while, we
pause and think; "The rice I'm eating, how has it reached my plate? How many different
paths did it have to travel, how many hands did it have to pass, before reaching me to
satisfy my hunger? That dal, or vegetable or those shiny red apples, how many man-hours
were required to grow them and make them available to me. Such introspection or line of
thought helps to develop a healthy, balanced attitude towards food.

Try visualization
While eating, try to follow the 'processes' the food undergoes till it reaches the stomach.
When you are chewing, visualize how the taste buds convey the different tastes, via the
taste ducts, to the brain. How, even before the food is served, your nose has already
conveyed the aroma of the food, and how your mouth begins to salivate at the mere hint of
the aroma. Visualize the chewing process, the mixing of the chewed food with your saliva,
the smooth movement down the throat after your tongue expertly pushes parts of the
mouthful inside. With a little knowledge of physiology you can make a wonderful 'odyssey'
down the stomach. It is only when we take such diverse perspectives in life that we are able
to be aware of the richness of life around us. We become aware that eating is not mere
polishing off of the plate, or that cooking mere adding salt and spices. "We also realize that
stress is partly due to our own inability to look at the world through a broader perspective.