balancing with food

Heartful of colorful food

 ’Let your food be your medicine and your medicine your food’ – Hippocrates

One of my favorite sayings is “Increase your color, increase your life”.

This can apply to many areas of your life from the clothes you wear, to the foods we eat. Eating a diet full of color is one of the best ways to increase and keep our energy balanced. It also  promotes harmony in our bodies and keeps us vital. This means having a balanced diet.

What is a balanced diet anyway?

There are many ways to approach having a balanced diet in our life. We can use the food pyramid that we all learnt about at school or we could follow one of the thousands of diets out there. There is also the 5-Element approach.  It is based on Traditional Chinese Medicine [TCM].

What are the 5 Elements?

The five elements are: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. Each element has meridians associated with it, where the chi or energy flows through. Each element is associated with a different taste and organ (each element is also associated with an odor, environment, direction, emotion, sound, tissue. sense and season). Each of these elements makes up the material world and is in a constant state of change and movement.

In TCM, it is believed eating a variety of foods from each of the five elements containing the taste and color is an important part of a balanced diet and helping a healthy energy flow. This does not mean we need to eat an equal amount of each taste. In nature, there are more sweet tasting foods than salty, spicy, sour or bitter. When an element or meridian is under stress it may be needed to increase the amount of its related taste. Whereas, when a certain taste is taken in excess, as in salt in modern society this can lead to chronic disease.

5 Elements – Colors and Tastes

How does this relate to a balanced diet?

If each element has a color, taste and organ associated with it, when we have a diet that incorporates all the different colors and tastes we are giving our meridians energy to help us materialize a healthier being. Another aspect to consider it that foods can either be supportive by increasing our energy or unsupportive by decreasing our energy. Eating supportive foods that are colorful and tasteful help to increase our energy.

For example, the Wood element has a taste of sour and the color green, if we were to have a diet that had no green foods and no sour taste our Wood element would not be receiving all the energy it needed to be whole and balanced. So we can keep functioning, the wood element will draw energy from another element to get it’s energy. Let’s say Wood draws energy from Metal. Metal has a taste of pungent (spicy) and a color of white. Increasing the intake of either white or spicy foods help keep things balanced or again it will draw upon another meridian in an attempt to keep balance. This is why we can have cravings; it is our body’s way of trying to keep balance by getting some energy from the foods we consume.

Below is a list of foods for each of the elements to give you a starting point. You may not know exactly what element is undernourished or over nourished, but your body will give you signs. What are your craving? Is there anything that you eat everyday and it is not  satisfying anymore, but you keep eating it out of habit? Sometimes we get stuck in habits and routines that may not be beneficial for anymore. As our energies are in constant movement so are our nutritional needs. What is good one day may not be the best tomorrow.

Pay attention to how foods and flavors make you feel.

Having a diet that is balanced, colorful and tasteful helps to increase our ‘energy’ and thus our health and well-being.

Here is a great challenge to get you to notice your diet and how it makes you feel.

For one week  try and eat a diet that contains all five tastes and colors.

This can be a challenge but it is an amazing exercise in increasing your awareness about what you are eating.

Can you notice a difference in your mood? Your energy levels?

* http://www.yinyanghouse.com/theory/chinese/five_element_nutrition_theory

References:

ICPKP. Professional Kinesiology Practitioner Manual. 2010

Tagged as: 5 element theory, energy, energy kinesiology; 5 element nutrition; kinesiology, nutrition