Diet Advice From a Yoga Perspective: Meet Ed Zadlo

December 4, 5:54 AMPhiladelphia Yoga ExaminerJonathan Bartlett

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Philadelphia Yoga Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

'Convenient' food is everywhere, a perfect 'kapha' setup. (isrealli.org)

It’s no secret that our modern society is very good at providing us with racks upon racks, in aisles upon aisles of food that is salty, sweet and convenient to eat. It’s in supermarkets, convenience stores, vending machines, gas stations. Right out of the bag or box, food that is emotionally satisfying and delicious to our taste buds has been preprocessed and ready for either a one-step or two-step dance to the table, or even eaten right out of its container. It’s all a perfect kapha setup, says Ed Zadlo.

Ed is a local and renowned doctor/practitioner of Ayurveda, a health and lifestyle system with origins in India that is vast, deep, and, like yoga, older than dirt. Ed has been trained by some of the ayurveda greats here in the West and in India, and he himself has trained others who are now making their bones as practitioners with their own client rosters.

Like yoga, ayurveda is gaining credibility and adherents here in the West. In India, many regularly seek out an ayurveda practitioner for advice on health and lifestyle matters. According to ayurveda, people exhibit three different characteristics or doshas: pitta, vata and kapha. One or usually two are dominant in each person.

Ed says that our energetic, frenetic, ‘constant emergency’ lifestyle in the West is permeated with a vata disposition. He says that it’s no wonder that folks from all three doshas are struggling with weight issues and avoiding the slide to treatment for diabetes. Kapha folks tend to carry a little more poundage than those with the other two doshas, and it’s okay, even healthy, for them to carry more weight than others. But when an overabundance of flesh afflicts folks across all three doshas, it’s a sign that we all need to adjust our habits, and not just at the dinner table.

While it might be a little insane to distill the vastness and complexity of ayurveda into dieting tips, I pressed Ed to give me a few general nuggets of advice for folks who wish to lose some weight, and here they are:  

Eat Real Food, Eat the Right Food: “The kinds of foods that make you gain weight are the same elements as kapha is made of. The sweet stuff, sour stuff and salty stuff that makes us feel emotionally content. Those foods produce peace happiness and contentment. McDonalds is tuned into that. We eat the wrong stuff. We have no energy, so we crave sugar, then we crash, and want more. The body does not do well burning sugar for fuel; it’s better that we eat high quality fat and carbs; it’s like a car on high-test gas. The trick is to stop burning sugar and start burning fat.” 

Eat Three Meals a Day, No More: “Only three meals a day, and not a lot in between. If we eat in between then we never digest what we eat. If food is not properly assimilated then the body craves more energy. Again, that’s usually a sugar-based food, available everywhere we go. I have one practitioner in Colorado, who did a study with 400 obese people, and he gave them all one meal at noon, a big one; in six months they all lost 60 percent of what they wanted to lose. So have breakfast big enough to last to lunch, have a lunch that is big enough to last to dinner. That 12 hour cycle is not only a cycle for digestion, but also for absorbion.” 

Add Some Spice To Your Life: Spices and herbs are not just useful items for satisfying taste buds, Ed says. To an ayurvedic practitioner, they also are powerful ingredients for improving digestion, very important when it comes to weight loss, or gain. “There are some herbs that reduce sugar craving, make you not like sweet stuff. Spices and herbs can also improve digestion, among other effects. If we are not properly assimilating food then body starts craving for more energy and in this culture, that’s simple sugars. We have to find a way to get ourselves off the sugar cycle and find a way to burn fat as our fuel, not burn sugar and store fat. When a person comes to me for an assessment, they will leave with a diet tailored just for them and list of spices and herbs that I recommend that they focus on when cooking in order to promote good digestion.”