How to Eat For Your Dosha and the Health Benefits [Episode #792]

This week’s topic is: How to Eat For Your Dosha and the Health Benefits

If you have no idea what the word dosha means, don’t worry. It basically means how to eat for your particular body type, for your constitution. We’re all complex beings and a mix of different energies. Most of us are a mix of even the dominant doshas. And these doshas are based on the elements, air, space, fire, earth, and water and we have these elements all within us, however, some of us have a more predominant mix of various elements.

In today’s show I’ll share how understanding these differences can allow you to more intelligently modify your diet and your self-care practices. And this has tremendous benefits because as we know, it’s not a one size fits all for everyone.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question sent in by a Beauty just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Question Answered]

Dominique – FL

I have been trying to figure out the best way to eat for my body type to keep weight off and have a lot of energy and a friend told me I should eat according to my Dosha. How would I do that and what are the health benefits?

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Transcript:

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Kimberly: 00:00 Namaste loves and welcome back to our Thursday Q&A show where a topic today is How to Eat For Your Dosha and the Health Benefits. So if you have no idea what the word dosha means, don’t worry. It is not an English term. It may not be a familiar term. It’s an veic term. It’s a sri term, and it basically means how to eat for your particular body type, for your constitution. So we’re all complex beings. We all are a mix of different energies. We’re all unique. So most of us are a mix of even the dominant doshas. So these doshas are based on the elements, air, space, fire, earth, and water. So we have these elements all within us, but some of us have a more predominant mix of various elements. So for instance, if someone tends to be a bit more earthy and grounded in a little bit more, um, you know, thicker bones and has, you know, the tendency to perhaps gain weight a little bit more easily, this person might have more of a, of a kafa, an earth-based constitution, if you tend to be quite thin and <laugh>, uh, tend towards cold extremities like myself, you may be more of a VA constitution.

01:25 So we’ll get into, into the show today how understanding these differences can allow you to more, um, intelligently modify your diet, your self-care practices. And this has tremendous benefits because as we know, it’s not a one size fits all for everyone. So even within the beauty detox diet, even within these, you know, larger, um, categories we might say like being plant-based or being keto or, you know, whatever it is, there are individual modifications that we can make, which can benefit your energy tremendously and your wellbeing and your just in intuitive knowing of how to best care for your particular body. This is a huge conversation. Aveda is very, um, full of wisdom and knowledge, so we’re just gonna go into it, um, and give you some really top line reference points here. But of course, there’s a lot more to this. We will link in the show notes to my other podcasts with Dr.

02:36 Jay, my Ayurvedic, um, doctor that I’ve worked with also, Dr. Suhas, who is an amazing, um, other Ayurvedic doctor that I work with, who’s a colleague of mine through the Chopra Center. And he is a close colleague of Deepak Chopra’s as well. That’s how we met through that world. And Dr. Manisha, who happens to be Dr. Sue ha’s, who is an amazing Ayurvedic physician in her own right and author. So we’ll have lots of other resources for you to go into as well. As you know, some of these incredible books, Dr. Sue ha’s book is called, um, change Your Schedule, change Your Life, and Many Other Resources.

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Question around the topic of: How to Eat For Your Dosha and the Health Benefits: I have been trying to figure out the best way to eat for my body type to keep weight off and have a lot of energy and a friend told me I should eat according to my Dosha. How would I do that and what are the health benefits?

04:57 Okay, let’s get into our topic today, which is really around the veic science of eating for your particular body type. The word dosha means this mix of energy inside of you. So you may have a very different mix than other people in your family. For instance, I am predominantly Vata Air space. My husband is predominantly Pitta Fire <laugh>. So understanding that helps us to understand why different family members, different friends may feel ravenous in the morning and some people aren’t hungry till noon and why some people crave certain foods and will feel imbalanced if they eat other foods and so on and so forth.

Kimberly: 05:57 So our question comes today from Dominic, who lives in Miami, Florida. Hi, Dominique, sending you lots of love down there to Florida State that I love very much. I was there recently for the Hay House conference a few weeks ago. Love the humidity. I know not everybody does, but that actually works very well with my body constitution and you right, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to eat for my body type to keep weight off and have a lot of energy. And a friend told me I should eat according to my dosha. How would I do that? And what are the health benefits? So let’s go. Thank you so much, my love for your question, and thank you for bringing this up so we can bring this other layer into our conversation around food. So in our western culture, food has been deduced down largely to a pile of numbers, including how many calories does something have and how much protein does it have, and how many carbs does it have?

07:02 And even with all these trackers, you know, what is the effect on my glucose reading and things like that. So I’m not saying that this information isn’t useful and helpful because it certainly can be as a tur as a type of guidance, but there’s a deeper layer to food, which is that it has an energetic quality to it. And we are energy. And if we start to look at this in a much broader context, which is where Aveda comes from, which is the science of life, everything is energy interacting with energy, and we’re all this matrix of energy, which is something that the great yoga guru, Paramahansa yoga Nanda talked about. And there is a lot of parallel, even though we think that oh, yoga is a spiritual discipline. There is so much science now intersecting with consciousness and yoga, particularly in the quantum realm, particularly around quantum mechanics and quantum physics and all this, you know, the theoretical physicians, the Lin Mc, McTaggarts of the world, and so on and so forth.

08:13 So there is this greater science to it, and Ayurveda is actually the sister science to yoga, and it’s actually the oldest medical discipline in the world. It’s older than traditional Chinese medicine. It’s been around for thousands of years, arguably at least 5,000, um, is commonly or widely accepted. And some say even older 7,000 and perhaps even older than that, the Vedas are the oldest texts and they’re, um, there’s some, uh, discussion about the particular year and age. Anyways, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is there is incredible knowledge that we can extract from the auric approach to eating, which is based on energy. So it’s understanding that we are energetic beings and this energy that we work with inside of us in turn can affect the tus. It affects the structural aspects of us, including our fat and our bones and our skin and the connective tissue and the, the fluids, the plasma and the lymphatic system and our digestive system.

09:22 So it’s understanding that this energy that we work with at the root has a visceral and physical effect on our actual structure and on our health and our vitality and how we feel day to day. So I’m gonna talk a little bit about the doshas in a top line way, but there are quizzes that you can take online around your dosha. There are different studies. Um, there’s some amazing books out there, um, including from David Fr Dr. David Fraley, that’s f r a w l e y that you can pick up if you’re interested in going deeper into Aveda, which will give you an idea around, hmm, which dosha am I, uh, we’ll get into that a little bit top line in a moment. But if you’re really interested, um, it can just by taking the quiz, it will become quite clear. <laugh>, if you read a book on our eve, it will be quite clear.

How to Eat For Your Dosha and the Health Benefits: Vata Dosha

10:25 So there’s even research now. Um, there’s a study published in the National Library of Medicine that found that individuals with a predominant vata dosha with an air and space, um, constant more the elements had a higher BMI compared to those with a predominant Pitta or kafa dosha. So they’ve been able to pin this, you know, energetic dosha language and the characteristics to modern terms like your body mass index, which I think is really interesting. So there was another study, um, published in the Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine from 2013 that examined the effects of an veic diet on metabolic markers in healthy individuals. And they found that when we were able to look at this more dosha based eating, there were improvements over 45 days on cholesterol levels, body weight, fasting blood clue goes following this Ayurvedic way of eating. So I love that they’re starting to really study this from a western medical perspective, you know, these double lined white papers peer reviewed, because we see that in many contexts, right?

11:42 We see that now there’s so much acceptance around acupuncture. There’s so much, and there’s so many supplements now around curcumin, which is the, you know, the active compound within turmeric, which has been used in Ayurveda for thousands of years. We’re seeing that now with the rise of Ashwaganda and many other Ayurvedic herbs and practices, because there’s the science now. So the way the Western mind tends to work is that sometimes we don’t really believe something or we don’t believe it as deeply unless there’s western science. It doesn’t mean that it never worked, it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t valid. But there’s something in our culture, of course, that welcomes this form of, you know, this, this, our belief system tends to, tends to think that when there’s science to it, it’s more valid. So whatever. I just wanna point out that there’s a lot of studies now, and you can look at them on our show notes over@myluna.com if that is of interest to you.

12:45 So let’s go into some guidance here. And so the first thing I want you to remember is that these elements, we reduce everything down from an energetic, or not all the way down, but into these categories of the five elements of our Veda, air, space, water, earth, and fire. You’ll find that these elements reside in our bodies and they reside in the greater collective in nature. So this is known as the pancha mahata theory in Aveda, which is this congruence. The five elements inside in the micro are the five elements in the macro. So when we learn that, when we start to learn, which, oh, so we all have the five elements within us, no matter what your particular body type are, and these dominate in certain processes in the body. So for instance, no matter what your body process, process or your body constitution is, there’s agony, there’s fire involved in your metabolism, in your digestion. So around the gut and around your GI tract, there’s gonna be fire, air, and space. Um, is is part of the, the movement, it’s in the colon as well. Um, so if there’s a predominance of Vata energy of air and space, you, you can in excess, you can actually have a disorder of constipation because it builds up in your colon. And that’s something I personally experienced, and I am a predominantly, uh, Vata individual.

14:25 So the earthiness, this, um, density of the kafa is also found in the denser parts of our body. That’s why, um, there may be more density to someone who is a, a kafa, a thicker sort of constitution, an [inaudible] and the bone, right? So, um, it pre it just, it goes through in very complex ways. We don’t need to understand all the different complexities, but just having a top line knowledge is going to benefit you tremendously. So let’s start with Vata. Vata is, um, or I wanna I wanna bring up one more term, which is your property, right? So it’s this combination of doshas, which will determine your constitution, your property. So we all have the elements, but some will predominate in you. So as we run through these now, you can start to think of what, or feel into what resonates with me. Hmm, which, which speaks to me, which sounds familiar to my body and to my overall energy, because this isn’t just about your body, it’s also about your mental state.

15:37 So Vata, for instance, has a lot of, um, a predominance of air and space. So in, from a body perspective, if you’re more dominant in Vata, you tend to be a bit more thin, a bit more slender. You may have a very fast metabolism, and you may have some dryness in your skin. And so from a mental perspective, this air and space tends to manifest in a lot of movement, a lot of creativity, but in excess cause there’s always the balance, there’s always the, the benefits and the positives, but there’s the imbalance. So I imagine this air space isn’t grounded if it comes into excess. What this can manifest in is spaciness anxiety, fogginess. And as I mentioned this, air and space in your body can tend to over accumulate if it’s not moving through in a more aligned way. It can manifest in constipation, it can manifest in bloating and other issues inside of your body.

16:47 Also, um, excess coldness, dampness. I experience this sometimes myself as, um, just not having, um, you know, uh, warmth <laugh> and, you know, in many, under many other contexts, the feelings in the mind, the digestive issues. So it’s really from an auric perspective, it’s important to focus on warm cooked grounding foods, soups and stews and root vegetables grown in the earth to bring in more of that kafa energy, the carrots and the, um, the sweet potatoes, the tubers, the yams, the beets. This is traditionally what is promoted in Ayurveda. Too much cold food, which is considered raw food, can aggravate vodka, um, and aggravate the energy. Now, I will say that these are very broad recommendations, sort of like when you read your horoscope, if you read any western astrology, they’re recommending, you know, for Aquarius across the board, but that doesn’t mean your actual date and time of birth where there was a very specific mix of, um, the planet’s, placements of the planets and the sky and the, you know, the astrol and the influence of the moon and you’re rising and, right.

ging in warming spices to stimulate digestion to say, Hey, you don’t have to eat all cooked food. Or even largely cooked food in his perspective, but still this respect of are you v Ayurvedic eating and understanding of really nurturing agoni and digestion, but that, you know, for some they do really well with raw food. I do. I’m a very high Vata body type, and I do very well with a high percentage of raw and fruit in the warmer months. And so I’ll still eat some cooked food and I’ll add, uh, spices like cumin into my soups and stews, which I’ll eat at dinner, sometimes still in the summer. But I just wanna say that it’s not a one size fits all.

19:23 And there’s other ways to balance vodka, not just from eating, but grounding yourself with warm oil, massage, keeping your body warm with lots of layers and blankets and meditating on the earth and grounding and walking a lot barefoot on the earth. These are the ways I ground my body, not just through food. I also have a lot of hot tea, um, throughout the day. Some raw foodists won’t do that. I’m not a raw foodist completely, but I’m just saying that this energy that we’re talking about, your energetic type will benefit from knowing this, but it will benefit from knowing that, okay, I have more air and space. So just a more, um, life holistic lifestyle approach will also really benefit you. I find as a predominant Vata person as well, that I choose carefully who I’m around and I need a lot of space to myself, to ground myself.

20:27 If there’s a lot of energies, just a lot of crowds, I tend to feel, um, more in grounded. And of course, this is an individual thing as well. So I’m va I’m also quite introverted, so I’m around people quite a bit, <laugh> and I try to be present, but I also try to carve quite a bit of time out for myself when possible. Healthy fats are also really important for the VA body type. So avocados and seeds and nuts and cold pressed oils, like the Udo’s oils, which you can get at health food stores, I love very much. And I add that into my salads a lot. And just having, you know, you can grind up sesame seeds. I love tahini. I love pumpkin seeds. Healthy fats helped ground the VA energy. So if you feel, oh, I am quite thin and I do get quite cold, and sometimes I do feel quite spacey, you might be a VA body type, and so these practices will be extra helpful for you versus someone that’s trying to eat oil free all the time or low fat, that wouldn’t be great for our body type.

How to Eat For Your Dosha and the Health Benefits: Pitta Dosha

21:38 The next is Pitta. So Pitta is associated, uh, largely with fire and also some water. Um, people with dominant pitta doshas tend to have a medium build. They tend to be more muscular, more fit. They may like to work out a lot. They may be drawn a lot to fitness, particularly energetic types of fitness like CrossFit lifting. Um, you know, these, uh, high intensity workouts, they tend to be quite warm across their body. They have great digestion, good digestion. We can say in excess. The Pitta tends more towards diarrhea or looser stools, um, but not really constipation. So cooling and hydrating foods are really great for the Pitta constitution, like fresh fruit, vegetables, salads, amazing, lots of greens, which are very yin. The glowing green smoothie is amazing for all body types. Pet, particularly the pittas I will say. Um, and also foods that are a bit bitter, like arugula, um, a little sweet can be really good.

22:50 Sweet potatoes as well can be really good to balance the constitution of Pitta. What we definitely wanna avoid are onions, garlic, hot sauce, spicy foods, oily foods. This can con, this can create a lot of internal heat. The funny thing is [inaudible] love these foods. My husband, who’s very Pitta loves hot sauce <laugh>. He puts it on a lot of food. So I gently try to move him into some more yin foods like ginger sesame dressing, for instance, or just, um, he loves tahini. So I’ll bring that out more on tahini based dressings, trying to get him away from all the chilis. Um, um, because sometimes what we like is not the best thing for us. So for instance, the VAs, we like a lot of crunchy crackers,

Kimberly: 23:45 Dry foods, but it would be more nourishing to have, again, the, the more oilier fatty, um, you know, uh, foods not even really crackers, but just, you know, like, let’s say a bunch of tahini over veggies. Um, the, the, you know, the rice and the curries and things like that are really well do really well for VAs. So with pizzas, again, if we create this overheating, we can create more inflammation. There’s, um, readiness, redness, um, that can come in the skin, this burnout that comes in the hair. So pits tend to have more hair loss, uh, both for men and women because there’s just so much heat going off. So it’s really important to cool this heat, this, um, that can burn through tissues. It creates accelerated aging. So the food practices I mentioned, as well as not excessive sauna use or hot tub or excessively hot bathing and hot showers, anything that’s gonna be a bit more cooling, like cool, uh, baths, ice plunges are great.

25:01 Uh, recommendation for Dr. SOAs is putting a little bit of, um, castor oil, rubbing it on the bottom of the feet at night to help pull the heat down. Meditation, of course, all of this is really important to cool the fire. Cool the fire. So, mm, you know, <laugh>, it’s so funny, I just laugh. I think about my own experience. My husband loves, you know, boxing and watching fights on TV and things like that. So as a family, you know, we like to do picnics outside at night. I try to, you know, we do a lot of long board games, just things that are more cooling practices are really great for the Pitta. As couples, you know, um, talking in the evening, we do a lot of, um, stretching. Stretching is really great for all the body types, of course, but particularly for Pittas. Okay, so now we go to the Kaas.

25:56 KAA is this grounded, beautiful energy that’s, um, just, it feels grounding to be around. I have a lot of KAA people on my team, Caitlin, who’s been with me for years. Our general manager, our vice president of operations, you know, people that are detail oriented that help to execute projects, a lot of earth energy and also water. They tend to, they tend to be more grounded in their bodies. Medium build or even a heavier build, oily skin, slower metabolism. Just this calmer energy and in excess can mean, you know, sleeping in a bit of slothfulness. Um, you know, whereas Vata contend towards anxiety, cough content, more towards depression. So we need more stimulation in the kafa diet. Spices are great here. Raw food works really great for CFAs. Um, if anyone was going to eat the onions and the garlic, it would be the CFAs also, um, to cut through some of this heaviness that can build a bit.

27:00 Sometimes this stagnation bitterness, ast, stringent foods are really wonderful. We wanna avoid dairy. We wanna avoid excessive sugar, which can create that stickiness inside heavy food, fried food, gluten, anything that’s heavy. Heavy, right? So this lightness will help to, um, activate the energy. Again, glowing greened smoothie. Fantastic Dharma’s Kale Salad. Incredible, right? So a lot of the recipes we have on our sa Luna site, which are, um, tossed together. There was a, um, even like the bean salad that I published a few weeks ago, uh, with chickpeas, but lots of raw carrots and cucumber is incredible here. Um, in order to just boost the metabolism, boost the weight management, um, it’s gonna be great for respiratory health cuz sometimes this stagnation can sink into the lungs a bit. Also to enhance mental focus and awareness. So a lot of the elixirs that we talk about, the goji berry tea and the just sipping ginger tea, this, you know, a little bit of activation.

28:13 Um, also with the ashwaganda, with the tulsi, these are wonderful for kafa body types. We definitely wanna avoid the heaviest, the heaviness. Like pizza would be terrible for <laugh>, for CFAs. But the coconut yogurt, the lightness, you know, the lightness throughout the day is gonna be wonderful. Steamed veggies, right? And add some cumin, some of the coriander. Um, by the way, the fennel and the coriander are great to cool, um, pittas as well. So we just wanna be intelligent about using spices here. Freshly ground black peppers, also wonderful turmeric and it’s really in important with kaas to go to bed at a decent time. But to get up, I mean maybe kaas would be the body type to set alarm. I get up way earlier than I need to a lot. I’m up, I’m active, I’m meditating, I’m awake. Kaas, if you sleep a little bit in it can make you feel more slothful. So it’s really important to, um, get up. Kaas would benefit from a morning walk or some morning exercise just to get the energy going, to get circulation flowing in their bodies. So all of this is really, really helpful for [inaudible] as well as, you know, these stimulating foods and warm food works well as well. So again, this is just some top line

Kimberly: 29:40 Information, some lifestyle tips, some food tips from a lifestyle perspective. I definitely encourage you to check out the other podcasts with these incredible veic physicians, which we will list at our honor show notes at mysolluna.com, as well as some veic inspired recipes and our meditations and our lifestyle practices. If you have not yet gotten on our email list and downloaded our starting four Cornerstone, our free lifestyle, uh, pdf, please do so because this sturdiness of living our four cornerstone lifestyle is this unique perspective, which will give you a holistic, uh, this whole energy, this love connection, true health, this intuition that has so many practical benefits in your life. So please check it out all over at mysolluna.com. I’ll be back here, Thur. Um, this is Thursday. I’ll be back here Monday for our next interview podcast. Till then, have an amazing weekend. I’m here to support. I’m also on social media at underscore Kimberly Snyder, sending you so much love from my heart and I look forward to connecting with you more. [inaudible].