Resolution #2 Eat Healthier Right Now

Change is hard. Changing the way we eat isn't just about substituting one thing for another, portion control, and following a set of rules. If it was that simple, maintaining a healthy relationship with food wouldn't be one of the top 5 New Year's Resolutions year after year. Where we buy our food, how and where we eat our food, and the company we keep while we eat all factor into the choices we make.

Here are some articles, tips, and ideas to masticate in 2011

In 2008, Kino Macgregor (Certified Ashtanga Yoga teacher) contributed an article to the Living Mysore Journal which lists 10 healthy eating tips from interesting factoids to knowing when to cleanse. Click to view article.

Where we opt to shop impacts what we choose to eat. Here are some health food stores in and around Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Learning how to cook differently and with new foods is much easier with a good cookbook. Books on food and cookbooks at the AYB blog.

A yogic diet is very specific. Guy Donahaye (Certified Ashtanga Yoga teacher) discusses key points here and lists suggestions from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.


Tips on how to eat and feel healthier right now
Replace sugar with agave, brown rice syrup, or date syrup
Get in the habit of reading labels
Do not eat high fructose corn syrup/corn sugar
Do not eat partially hydrogenated vegetable oil
Replace butter with ghee or non-hydrogenated vegan butter
Replace cheese with tahini
Replace eggs in sweet baked goods with mashed banana (1 egg = 1 banana)
Do not eat refined grains
Only drink fresh juice
Drink water instead if soda
Have dark chocolate instead of light, keep it dairy-free
Steam veggies rather than fry
Avoid labels that say "natural flavors"
Buy fresh vegetables instead of frozen
Buy whole fruit and vegetables rather than pre-cut



Quick and Easy Veggie Bowl for One
Cook Together:
1 cup Rice or Quinoa
2 cups Water
2 inches Sweet Potato
1/2 cup Onion if desired
Handful of Kale or Broccoli
1 small Beet
1 small Carrot

Garnish:
1/2 Lemon
Splash Olive Oil
Pinch Sea Salt or Tamari
1/2 small Avocado
1 stalk Green Onion/spring onion/scallion
Sprinkle Sesame Seeds or Pepitas
1/2 sheet Nori

Add grain and water to pot, turn up the heat. Wash and chop up about half a small sweet potato and onion and add to pot with grains. When it comes to a boil, turn down, cover, and simmer until water is gone and grain is cooked. In the meantime, wash and chop some kale, toss in. Wash and shred the beet and carrot, toss in.

Once the grain is cooked, plate it. Squeeze half a lemon (or more if you really like lemon) over the food. Add a splash of olive oil and a pinch of sea salt or tamari. Add half of a small avocado, sliced. Add green onions, sliced. Sprinkle sesame seeds or pepitas on top. Tear up 1/2 a sheet of sushi nori and add. Mix it all up and enjoy!

Eat Local: Saturday Farmers Market

While the produce isn't from your neighbor's backyard, the bounty at the weekly Greenmarket in McCarren Park is pretty darn close. Sometimes you'll spend a bit more than at the grocery store, but often you'll find yourself spending much less. Plus, you can glory in the fact that you are getting really close to the source of what you put in your body. You're also able to literally put your money where your mouth is... Each dollar you spend is a vote, an investment if you will, for local, whole, healthy, sustainable, different, not factory farmed, etc. sustenance.

You are what you eat and eat what you are.

Greenpoint / McCarren Park Greenmarket

Location: Union Ave between Driggs & N 12th Street

Schedule: Saturdays, year round, 8am-3pm. 2010 Schedule changes: 12/25 & 1/1 will close for holidays.

Subway: L, to Bedford Ave; G, to Nassau Ave
Bus: B43, B68

EBT/Food Stamps and WIC & Senior FMNP Coupons Accepted

Greenpoint/McCarren Park Greenmarket from GrowNYC on Vimeo.

Food, Inc. Trailer

Healthy Eating Tips for Yogis

Healthy Eating Tips for Yogis

by Kino MacGregor
originally published in Living Mysore July 2008

1. Be conscious of your emotional state before, during and after eating. If you are angry, sad, anxious or depressed before or during your meal you will not digest your food as well as when you are peaceful, relaxed and happy. If you notice that you feel worse after you eat it’s a good sign to take a deeper look at your food choices.

2. How you feel about what you eat is as important as any dietary rule, dogma or guideline. A peaceful state of mind is crucial to a sattvic lifestyle and your relationship with food is a great place to start. Let go of any rules that cause you stress or create rigidity and allow them to soften and be replaced with more relaxed attitudes about your body, food and health.

3. When you eat anything you say an internal “yes” to the entire means of production of that food item. This tacit “yes” includes the agricultural system, the food production system, the distribution system, the marketing behind the products, the preparation and everything that goes into the production, creation and delivery of the food that you eat. In a sense, eating is a highly complex method of consumerism and your food stands for what means of production you support.

4. Food is one of the most intimate relationships you make with world. What else that you interact with actually passes through the semi-permeable membranes of your body and literally becomes you from the cellular level and up? Your dietary choices are the building blocks of your body, mind and soul.

5. The brain is as affected, if not more affected by the chemicals in food as the rest of your body. The same receptor cells for neurotransmitters that evoke happiness, anxiety, depression and anger respond to the molecules of food as they are digested and transported throughout your bloodstream. What you eat really makes a lasting impact on how you feel, think and act.

6. If you want to live a peaceful life take notice of the principle of Ahimsa or non-violence in your eating habits. Notice not only whether your food choices cause other beings like animals pain, but also whether your attitude towards food causes you or other people pain. A vegetarian person can be very violent towards other people about their non-vegetarian food choices. While a vegetarian diet certainly helps establish you in a more peaceful relationship with other beings, reacting violently towards those who choose a different path violates the deeper purpose of ahimsa, that is, that of creating and living a more peaceful life.

7. The definition of food as molecules such as fats, proteins and carbohydrates belies a more subtle reality of our eating habits. Food often has a very poignant emotional reality that far outweighs the sum total of its molecular structure. In the most simple way of understanding food, it is a way for us to receive nourishment for our universe and the energy that supports it. In the deepest sense it is an expression of love.

8. Food will nourish you to the extent that you’re open to being nourished and it will pollute you to the extent that you’re open to being polluted. How you think, feel and act about food opens doors to your ability to truly assimilate its power. Just as a great deal of the world in the yoga practice is about surrendering, a great deal of health is about receiving and when you eat you must literally surrender and open yourself up to receive the gift of health from the nourishment of food.

9. The body rebuilds itself constantly on a molecular level and over approximately seven years your body will have replaced most every cell throughout itself from your hair all the way down to your organs. When you eat you have the chance to transform the cellular structure of your body.

10. Your body can be thought of as the home for your spirit. Just as you would thoroughly clean out your residence a few times a year, it’s also a good idea to clean out your body a few times a year. The old tradition of spring cleaning can also be applied to your body. After the holiday season and the winter diet of heavy foods it might feel good to fast, cleanse and eat lightly for a few days to keep everything flowing along the inner channels of your body.

Kino MacGregor is the founder of Miami Life Center, a space for Ashtanga yoga, holistic health and consciousness on Miami Beach, where she and her husband Tim Feldmann teach together. She is the youngest woman out of a select few people in the world to receive the certification to teach Ashtanga Yoga by its founder Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, India. Both teaching locally on Miami Beach and traveling internationally, she leads classes, privates, workshops, yoga conferences and retreats in traditional Ashtanga yoga and total life transformation. In her unique, inspirational and playful approach, Kino helps her students expand and deepen their understanding of yoga and life.