Food for intense ashtanga practice

Tony Romero asked about food for intense ashtanga practice. Here are a few thoughts, certainly not complete.


Answer

Everyone need chlorophyll, it is the best food for building blood. Green drinks are my insurance that I get enough. Cooked greens can also be a valuable part of one’s diet. A basic green drink for me is made up of romaine lettuce, celery (must be organic it is one of the dirty dozen) and cucumber is my base because they are the sweet greens rich in minerals and cucumber is cooling and they don’t taste too bitter.. Greener can be with supper foods like spirilina, chlorella and there are many more or kale etc. I often make my drinks based on what I have. I will put some fruit in my drink, which seems to work for me. I am a firm believer in high quality oil, my favorite is coconut so I make coconut milk a lot and use it also in the green drink. Fresh is not going to be convenient for every one so frozen coconut cream is my next choice.  I had a coconut milk, coconut water, lilikoi, greens with a large scoop of a raw protein powder that is made from mostly all sprouts, a scoop of dehydrated grass juice,  aloe vera and one frozen banana. I may not sound good but it was.

Oils, avocado, nuts and sees that are fresh (not worth eating if they are old and even slightly rancid), olive oil for drizzling or very low heat are my go to oils. Coconut oil has a smoke point of around 375 if it has a lot of milk solids it will burn easy; olive oil has a smoke point of about 175. Do your research so you don’t eat oils that use solvents in their making.

Minerals are so important and I don’t believe we can get enough in our food especially if we sweat. During the most intense years of my ashtanga practice I lost 5 to 10 pounds per session and that was six days a week as you know. By the time I was in my 40s, my bones had degenerated and all my teeth could be wiggled. Teeth are like the canary in the mine, the show a lot about the health of your bones and connective tissue. I had pariadontal disease which is just unhealthy connective tissue (gums) not adhering to denser connective tissue (bones). I smoked and that didn’t help (let’s not get into any judgment here, just telling it like it was) because smoking uses up a lot of vitamin C. If you remember, Vitamin C deficiency leads to scurvy and the first sign of scurvy to the sailors of old was bleeding gums. I fixed this within 6 months with minerals from, fulvic acid, marine liquid ionic trace minerals (high in chloride and other minerals that are depleted with sweating), minerals hydrosols, colloidal minerals ( these type of manmade minerals need to be very small, a lot of colloidal minerals are to large, molecularly speaking and can get into your cells but not out, Hemachromatosis (iron toxicity), argyria (silver toxicity), etc.; so no your source and the little colloidal machines with the two silver probes and the battery that you place in water are only good for making silver for external use.

Vitamins C needs to be from natural source like acerola cherries, camu camu berries, amla berries, citrus etc. , not ascorbic acid. The cofactors, the flavones etc. in the whole food C are very important.

I have been ‘almost’ completely vegetarian since 17 yo but not vegan so some of my suggestions will need to be veaganized for the vegans. I like lots of omega 3s for their anti inflammatory effect on the connective tissue which get a beating with intense ashtanga practice. Vegans can get it from hemp, flax, sachi ichi, chia, algae, etc. but this form needs to be converted to EPA and DHA to be utilize and some folks don’t have enough of the enzyme that does this job, especially as we age or have harmed our digestive system.

There is so much more but this is a good start for a blog on nutrition. Please use this as the area to continue this discussion.

HCL is very important especially for older people to supplement as it will insure proper digestion of the food and better bioavailability of the nutrition in that food. Quantum Labs make the bet that I am aware of. Bitters work well and Quantum Labs make an HCL activator as well.

Never hydrate with plain water after an intense session that leaves you dehydrated, at least put some lemon juice in the water. The is where coconut water is so great. Chlorophyll, coconut water and lemon or lime is a fantastic mineral drink. Add some drops of fulvic acid (the colostrums of mother earth)  and liquid ionic trace minerals to this drink and you have an amazing tonic that will restore your minerals and cleanse the body.

Protein is important for some more than others. Some will like raw milk and free range eggs and some will do well with fermented soy (controversial) and some will eat meat, fish and poultry (also controversial) while some will have access to the raw sprouted protein powders that are  very good. The amount needed is very individual. My feeling on this is that too much or an inability to digest the protein will cause sickness, even auto immune disease as the undigested protein or the partially digested protein will be seen as foreign antigens and the body’s immune system will react to kill it. Could be a major problem. Mysore horror story: I would be so famished after 3 hour class with GuruJi that I would go straight to the coconut man (no problem) and drink a couple of cocos, then to the milk stand and drink a bag of milk, I got tuberculosis in 1979 from the milk. This happened quick as Ama caught me doing this and said it wasn’t boiled. She , bless her soul, would boil the milk for me at first and do this pouring back and forth to cool it so I could drink it as she knew I was famished ( in Mysore at 5’8” I weight about 125# as GuruJi was kicking my ass on a daily basis and sometimes having me do demonstrations on the off day even on full moon which he apologized for. He said that he just couldn’t say no to his friends and community on holy days when they wanted to see a demonstration of the crazy American students in their speedos.

Carbohydrates are not all bad some folks do well with yams, potatoes, sweet potatoes and grains especially if they are sprouted, same with beans. If you always get gas with beans, try sprouting them before you cook them. I think that too much fruit is a bigger problem but I eat what is on my farm and it seems to work well as long as I am in gratitude, just not big bowls of fruit salad with pasteurized yogurt and granola that is not good food.