WEEK TWO
Cindy Maddera
Chris and I begin week two of the Yoga Body Diet today. To prepare for week two, we had to take a quiz to determine our dosha. As I mentioned before, there are three types of doshas and they reflect your mind/body type. The quiz is pretty straight forward. If you want, you can take one here. Describing the different doshas could be an entry all by itself, so I'll spare you the details and just say that after taking the quiz Chris turned out to be very much Vata with a little bit Kapha and a tiny bit Pitta. I was another story. I ended up scoring 18 points for Pitta, 17 for Pitta and 16 for Kapha. Pretty balanced. I have read about doshas before and have always thought I was Kapha. In fact, if you read the Kapha description, it sounds like me. But, when I read through the Pitta section, Chris and I both went "Oh". Yeah, I'm Pitta. The next step is to design meal plans based on your dosha type. The book contains a list of foods that are best suited to your dosha. The book also stresses the importance of eating three meals a day, no snacking in between meals. Breakfast looks like this: fruit, hot cereal, toast, and herbal tea. Lunch is meant to be your biggest meal of the day with soup or salad, vegetables, meat or tofu, dessert and herbal tea. Supper is the lightest with soup or salad, a sandwich, dessert and herbal tea.
As we started figuring out the grocery list, I started to freak out a little bit trying to figure out how to plan meals for the two of us with out breaking the bank. The Pitta in me wanted to be strict and really stick to the food list, but it seemed so daunting that the Kapha in me wanted to just chuck it all and forget it. I compromised with myself and decided to not get so hung up on the list. Super is just a lighter version of lunch. I designed meals that I could make extras of to bleed over into my lunch like quasadillas, tacos, grilled sandwiches. Things that we could put different fillings in and wouldn't be a big deal to make up separately.
One of the things that I really like about the book is how much it emphasizes how important it is to not stress. I had to remind myself that the no stress applies to the diet as well. We're keeping things simple. We've decided that making lunch the biggest meal of the day with a lighter super is more important than sticking to the list. The biggest problem will be getting Chris to not graze through the day. Vattas are known grazers.
Bring it on week two!