Guest Post: Adjust Summer Diet To Meet Your Body’s Needs

Adjust Summer Diet

To Meet Your Body’s Needs

Topic Summary

The weather’s not the only thing that heats up in summer. So do our bodies, which makes this time of year a great time to transition to a healthier diet. If we aren’t careful, foods we eat during the summer can affect our bodies and digestion through Thanksgiving and beyond, says Dr. John Douillard, a leader in the natural health field and author of Eat Wheat.

Douillard recommends we adopt a summer diet consisting of foods that are sweet, bitter, cold and oily – such as salads, steamed vegetables, fruits and coconut oil.

He also recommends that we not shy away from foods that contain Gluten, such as wheat. According to a pair of recent Harvard studies, going gluten-free increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

“To attain optimal health, it’s critical to eat the right foods during summer so that we don’t experience problems like constipation in November, sleep concerns in December, depression in January, a cold or flu in February,” says Douillard.

Douillard offers some tips on what to avoid and what foods to eat in the summer months:

• Incorporate wheat into your diet. Fiber and carbohydrates in grains like wheat, feed healthy immunity boosting microbes in the gut. Douillard recommends eating wheat in the summer because it can decrease the risk of chronic diseases. But he also recommends doing so in moderation because fall-harvested wheat is in-season and much easier to digest.   

• Save the warm soups, stews and heavy foods for winter. It might be tough to resist a hearty stew, but the microbes in our bodies in winter are geared toward keeping us warm. As we move into warm weather months, the body has transitioned to microbes that facilitate fat burning, weight loss and renewed energy. In the summer go for lighter fare such as fruits, leafy greens, beans and cucumbers.

• Hot, spicy foods don’t mix with summer. If you like spicy foods better get them on the table during the spring when the body is transitioning from the winter. Once summer rolls around it’s best to avoid hot and spicy foods; which include coffee, red meat and eggs – all of which can put undue stress on organs such as the prostate, liver, stomach and small intestines.

• Eat the chicken, not the egg. While eggs are considered a warm food that should be avoided during summer months, chicken is considered a cool food. A 2016 study found that men who ate chicken four times a week had a 17 percent less chance of getting prostate cancer, compared to men who ate poultry less than twice a month.

• Drink water before meals. Staying hydrated is one of the most important things you can do for your body, especially during the summer. Water is the best way to stay hydrated, but it’s best to drink water 15-30 minutes before a meal. Drinking it during a meal will drown out stomach acid, which breaks down hard to digest proteins.

“If you are curious about the food you should be eating, go ahead and give it a little taste,” says Douillard. “If it has two of the three summer tastes – sweet, bitter or astringent – it is balancing and should be prepared in a way that is cool, heavy or oily.”

About Dr. John Douillard

Dr. John Douillard, DC, CAP, author of Eat Wheat, is a globally recognized leader in the fields of natural heath, Ayurveda and sports medicine, and is author of six previous health books. He is the creator of LifeSpa.com, the leading Ayurveda health and wellness resource on the internet. Douillard also is the former Director of Player Development and nutrition counselor for the New Jersey Nets NBA team. He has been a repeat guest on the Dr. Oz show, and has been featured in Woman’s World magazine, Huffington Post, Yoga Journal and dozens of other national publications.

 

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Article: A Pro-Wheat Comeback?

Is The Anti-Gluten Frenzy About To Be
Countered By A Pro-Wheat Comeback?

Americans at one time lived their lives utterly unconcerned about the gluten in their diets. But an anti-gluten craze that erupted in the last decade has become so prominent that it spawned a $16-billion-a-year industry.

Gluten became branded as the enemy of good health, bestselling books scared the public away from wheat, and foods marketed as gluten-free popped up everywhere.

But it’s time everyone takes a deep breath and re-evaluates this whole “wheat-is-a-villain” attitude, says Dr. John Douillard, a leader in the natural health field and author of Eat Wheat (www.LifeSpa.com).

“Wheat was found guilty without a fair trial and there are risks when we just blindly take a food that people have eaten for 3.5 million years and remove it from our diets,” Douillard says.

He’s ready to lead the charge in the opposite direction, though even Douillard acknowledges that avoiding gluten is the right move for certain people.

May, for example, is Celiac Awareness Month, which brings attention to the genetic autoimmune disease that damages the small intestine.

“People with celiac disease should avoid gluten, there’s no doubt about that,” Douillard says. “But for the greater majority of people, the anti-gluten frenzy has gone too far and needs to dial it back.”
Far from being a dinner-table scoundrel, wheat can be beneficial, helping to lower the risk of diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer’s disease, he says.

“The real problem is that processed foods have changed our digestive systems,” Douillard says.

“That’s why people often feel bad when they eat wheat. But taking foods out of the diet won’t fix what processed foods have done to your system. That just kicks the problem down the road, leaving people at risk for more serious health concerns later on.”

So if going wheat-free isn’t the answer, what can you do to begin to improve your digestive system? That can get complicated, but Douillard has a few suggestions to get you started in the right direction:

• Eat more fiber. Aim for 50 grams of fiber in your diet each day. Make half your plate green vegetables, one-fourth starch and another one-fourth protein. Increase the amount of beans you eat. Of course, beans can be difficult for some people to digest, but one easily digestible bean is the split yellow mung bean. As your digestion improves, you can re-introduce other beans.
• Drink water between meals. The brain’s relationship with the rest of the body can be a funny thing. When people are dehydrated, the signals to the brain often get translated as hunger signals. So people scarf down an unhealthy snack when they should be reaching for a glass of water. A good guideline is 16 ounces 30 minutes before each meal.
• Don’t overeat. Perhaps it can be traced back to our mothers telling us to eat every bite, but people have a tendency to eat until their plates are empty rather than stopping when they’re full. Douillard says it’s better to stop even before you’re full. About three-fourths full is the way to go, he says.

“Your digestive strength is the key to a long, healthy and vital life,” Douillard says. “Whether you eat gluten shouldn’t be decided for you because of weak digestion. It should be decided by you based on what you prefer.”

About Dr. John Douillard

Dr. John Douillard, DC, CAP, author of Eat Wheat (www.LifeSpa.com), is a globally recognized leader in the fields of natural heath, Ayurveda and sports medicine, and is author of six previous health books. He is the creator of LifeSpa.com, the leading Ayurveda health and wellness resource on the internet. Douillard also is the former Director of Player Development and nutrition counselor for the New Jersey Nets NBA team. He has been a repeat guest on the Dr. Oz show, and has been featured in Woman’s World magazine, Huffington Post, Yoga Journal and dozens of other national publications.
 
Eat Wheat is available on Kindle as well as in paperback and a hardcover editions.

 

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please be sure to visit David over at Random Thoughts and Observations.

I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
Please subscribe to David's YouTube Channel. Thanks!