Jul 222009
 

Healthy decisionIt’s one thing to know that an alkaline body is healthy, and quite another to actually move your body up the pH scale from acid to alkaline. This article gives some suggestions to do so through your eating. The first two articles in this series are: The One Scale You Want To Move Up and How Acid Is Your Body?

First, develop a vision of a healthy you. As your body becomes more alkaline you’re very likely to experience improvements in your health, which vary from person to person, and commonly include: weight release, clearer skin, easier joints, feeling lighter and brighter, mental clarity and easing of various health symptoms. How do you see yourself, once your body is more healthy?

Of the various possible approaches to alkalise your body, the one you’re likely to have most control over is the food you eat. The aim is to eat less of the acid-forming foods such as meat, dairy and wheat, and more of the alkalising foods such as fruit and vegetables.

As a general guide, to maintain good health, your aim is to move towards making sure over half the food you eat is alkalising – say 60%. This should result in your body becoming slightly alkaline with a pH slightly above the neutral value of 7. My article How Acid Is Your Body? explains how to measure your pH.

To restore your health you may need to temporarily increase your consumption of alkalising foods to around 80%.

So, what to eat?

Generally, eat less:

  • Dairy: milk, cheese
  • Eggs
  • Meat
  • Poultry
  • Wheat: bread, cakes, pasta
  • Sugar and sweeteners
  • Fizzy drinks

This is quite a challenge to the average western diet with its focus on dairy, meat and wheat. A meal of burger, chips (fries), tomato sauce, side salad, ice cream and coke/coffee/milk shake would be very acid-forming!

Generally, eat more:

  • Vegetables
  • Fruit
  • Green leafy vegetables such as spinach, lettuce, kale
  • Peas, beans, lentils
  • Seeds and nuts.

The difference between ‘alkaline’ and ‘alkalising’

Generally speaking, foods which are alkaline have an alkalising effect on the body when eaten. Similarly, most acid foods have an acidifying effect on the body. However, there are exceptions, notably lemon juice and cider vinegar, which while being acid have an alkalising effect on the body. So, the most helpful charts are those which give the alkalising/acidifying values of a food rather than its actual pH.

To find out more about individual foods

You can Google up various food charts, including charts giving the pH value of individual foods, and charts giving lists of foods that are high/moderately/low alkalising, and high/moderate/low acidifying. There’s a helpful set of charts here.

7 tips to alkalise your body

1. Develop your vision for a healthy alkaline body

Mine is ‘Fully alive in body, mind and spirit’; bringing this to mind usually neutralises the temptation of acidifying foods such as crisps and biscuits which my family eat. Some people like to develop an image of their vision, as in a vision board.

2. Have a green smoothie for breakfast

Green smoothies are delicious and highly alkalising, See my Green Smoothie Challenge for more information. You may be surprised to find out they contain protein!

3. Introduce salad ingredients to lunch and dinner.

Our family meals always include a salad, which forms the main part of my meal, while the rest of the family eat it as a side dish. This has proved to be a win-win, and I’m having to make increasingly larger salads! For lunch you might choose a salad, rather than a beef sandwich.

4. Familiarise yourself with the alkalising foods, and introduce them to your eating.

You may want to print off one of the charts from this link. For example, highly alkalising foods include: water melon, lemon and seaweeds, while moderately alkalising foods include bananas and potatoes. Experiment to find alkalising foods you really like, then you’ll want to eat more of them!

5. Replace highly acidifying foods with less acidifying ones.

Again the charts will help you. Examples of highly acidifying foods are artificial sweeteners, fizzy drinks, beef and white pasta, which you might replace respectively with: honey, fruit juice, nuts and wholegrain pasta.

6. Aim to have some overall alkalising meals

You could aim to have a couple of overall alkalising lunches a week, later moving on to one a day. Again, experiment to find meals you really like.

7. Get support

Find a friend who is interested in moving to a more healthy, alkaline body, so you have a source of support and inspiration, and someone to hold you accountable for the choices you make.

Please consult your healthcare practitioner before making any substantial changes to your diet.

The Delicious Nugget: An effective way to achieve a healthy alkaline body is to eat more alkalising foods, and less acidifying foods.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)