The impressive and inspired Lee Holmes has dished up her fifth book, Eat Right For Your Shape and we’re hooked!
The practical guide and cookbook gives insight to Ayurveda, which is an ancient healing system, originating from India, that takes a holistic approach to feeling well and living in harmony with yourself and your surroundings.
The book focuses on the doshas. Doshas are energies that circulate around the body and govern physiological activity; they also determine individual temprement and specific physical characteristics.
The three doshas are: vata, pitta and kapha – and they’re made up of the five elements – air, water, fire, earth and ether – that constitute our nature. The idea is to find out your dominant dosha to establish harmony and balance within the body, which will help maintain weight and overall health.
Here is an brief outline of the doshas – notice if you are compatible with one particular dosha.
Vata
- Vata types are creative and contagiously energetic
- Vatas tend to talk a lot and worry a lot
- Vatas tend to feel the cold, are prone to dry skin and can brown in the sun easily
Pitta
- Pittas are fiery people with leadership skills and intellect
- Pittas have a competitive personality and do well in sport
- Pittas have an athletic build and their frame is medium-sized
Kapha
- Kapha people are steady, grounded and nurturing
- Kaphas are peacemakers and extremely popular
- Kaphas have a larger, well-build frame in even proportions
Lee is half Indian and has a great passion for her culture. We asked her a bit about her book.
How quickly can people’s bodies adapt to changing their diet to suit their body shape?
It really does depend upon the person and the level of imbalance. Some people can see results quickly whilst other may take a little longer. Our conditions change throughout our life for various reasons: an unhealthy diet and poor nutrition, emotional upsets and imbalances, an overload of stress or anxiety, and/or a lack of physical activity. While each dosha in Ayurveda plays an individual role in our body, complete wellness is only achieved when all three are in balance. Once you have an understanding of your dominant dosha and your unique proportions of vata, pitta and kapha, you’ll be able to correct these imbalances and enable your body to feel calm, relaxed and in shape, but best of all in harmony.
When did you adapt your diet to suit your body shape and how did you realise what it needed?
I started becoming interested in Ayurveda two years ago after I had the pleasure of spending time in Kerala, India. I studied Ayurvedic practices and philosophy along with taking part in a hands-on Ayurvedic cooking and nutrition course which was absolutely wonderful and very eye opening. Because I am bi-cultural (half Indian), the Ayurvedic philosophies and practices resonate well with me and I began implementing them into my life the and after a few weeks I started to feel really fantastic. I followed the principles of Ayurveda and discovered my dosha and from there it led me to discovering exactly what my body needed.
Did you feel a noticeable difference when you adapted your diet?
Yes, but it wasn’t just my diet. It is more than that. Think of it as a union of the mind, body, senses and soul. Through nutrition, yoga and meditation, it focuses on treating the individual as a whole rather than a specific issue or disease, so that you can achieve balance and good health, not only in your physical body, but also in your mind and spirit.
The practice of Ayurveda has three main objectives: to prevent disease, to encourage wellbeing and to promote longevity. These objectives are reached by applying four healing modalities to your life: eating nourishing food, engaging in cleansing and detoxification processes to purify the body, administering warm oil massages to eliminate energetic blockages in the body, and practicing yoga poses and meditation to create physical and emotional transformations. Diet certainly helps and is a large part of feeling whole wellness.
What are some of your favourite eating destinations in Sydney?
For more holistic approaches to food head to Lee’s site http://www.superchargedfood.com/
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