5 ways to have an alkaline diet and life
Posted on 9th January 2024 at 10:02
I’m sure you’ve heard of an alkaline diet on your wellness crusade. That you should strive to eat more alkaline foods (aka fruits and vegetables) and eliminate acidic foods in order to be healthy. Sometimes however it’s not as straight forward as just adding fresh produce to your meals. That’s why I’m going to shed some light here on what alkaline and acidic foods are, their effect on our body and you’ll learn about 5 ways to have an alkaline diet and ultimately also life.
What’s the matter with alkaline and acidic?
Balance is life.
Your body strives for harmony and balance on every level possible. That includes the biochemical – aka your blood ph.
What does it mean?
It means that even a slight deviation from a healthy slightly alkaline ph (7.365) means your body treats it as an imbalance.
An emergency which needs to be corrected right away as it could eventually lead to a disease. What may start as a slight acidosis of your body triggered by your diet and lifestyle, can lead to a nutritional depletion, headaches, feelings of fatigue and being run down. Low-grade chronic acidosis can overtime grow into undermined immunity, allergies, chronic inflammation, stress out your kidneys, weaken bones and more. (study)
What are the most acidic and alkaline foods?
When talking about acidic and alkaline foods in this context we consider the effect these foods have inside our body after they are digested.
This is important as what may appear alkaline on the outside like cheese for example, is highly acidic on the inside of our body after digestion.
On the contrary what is acidic on the outside like oranges or pineapple, is highly alkalizing after we eat them.
Below you can see highly acidic and highly alkalizing foods. Just to note, apart from these foods, wholegrains and beans for example, although very healthy in terms of their fiber, phytochemicals and nutrients, are also slightly acidic.
5 ways to have an alkaline diet and life
#1 Remove or minimize highly acidic foods like animal products, dairy, refined grains, sugars, flours, deep fried foods and sodas. Every one of these foods can be replaced by nourishing unprocessed plants and every bit counts. You can always imagine your body lets out a sigh of relief with every bite of a ripe apple or a sip of green smoothie. As your body gets hydrated and flooded with nutrients in place of acidic offenders, you’ll start feeling lighter and eventually ever crave the fruits and vegetables.
#2 Include as many alkalizing foods as possible – fruits, vegetables, sprouts, superfoods and green juices have an incredibly powerful alkalizing effect. It’s their high pure water content (purest in nature) together with high concentration of nutrients what your cells are hungry for and need on daily bases. Not only to combat acidosis if it already exists, but also to detoxify, repair, to produce unlimited energy and to thrive.
#3 Distress your life – stress whether it comes from work, family or as time pressure, can add to the acidic burden in your body. In times of stress we tend to crave more acidic foods like processed carbs. In addition we have a bigger need for certain vitamins and minerals to get through the stress. Including yoga, meditation, walks in nature but even reading a book to take a break from daily hustle, will help us distress. These mindful practices are a great way to naturally re-balance your body on hormonal level and move to more relaxed alkaline and healing state.
#4 Create a healthy exercise routine – it’s important you move your body daily. This is to support your natural detox systems, blood and lymph flow, so you can detoxify easily and maintain a healthy ph balance in your body. If you exercise too much, high production of lactic acid creates an additional acidosis your body needs to deal with. As a solution you don’t necessarily need to give up your favorite sport though. Just make sure you rapidly increase greens, sprouts and green juices in your diet to counteract that.
#5 Relax around your food choices – I believe that even the way we feel about our food creates acidic (disease like) or alkaline – healing environment in our body.
If we stress about whether we are getting all the nutrients, that we don’t eat local, don’t have time to make salads etc. it’s adding to the acidic load. That’s why it’s crucial to find a way of eating and living which is nourishing, yet doesn’t pose extra burden on us. Be it time, our physical, emotional or mental energy.
Acidic foods often stand as synonym for disease promoting foods whereas alkaline create healing environment in our body.
Ultimately it is about balance. Balance which makes sense for your own body and the specific life stage you are in. Some days your cells are going to be thirsty for only alkaline foods – fresh fruits, smoothies, salads and superfoods because they need to do extra repair and detox work. And some days it may be more of a quick trip to a chocolate shop. It’s ok. The bottom line is the more alkaline foods you eat, the more you crave them. And the more you can rely on your body to drive your food choices and create balance from within.
With so much green leafy love
Lenka
Share this post: