Here’s Why Over-obsessing about Healthy Food Is Harmful

Many of my readers want to find out about my take on food, so in this post I describe the most important points of my current food philosophy.

The danger of attachment to certain food

Many awakening Westerners are into healthy food. I was definitely one of them in the past, and since I traveled (and travel) a lot, sometimes it was a headache to find any healthy food options.

If faced with such circumstances, a health-conscious person would get into a stressful mode and resistance towards available food choices. But that creates misery, and resistance is only going to make the situation worse.

There’s nothing more important than keeping your mind balanced; if food choices upset you, this shows your attachment to something external. It disturbs the peace of your mind and thus negatively impacts your future.

This constant preoccupation with healthy food unknowingly gets one into a sort of slavery to it. But like any other attachment, it should be shunned, because it keeps you earth-bound as your attention is on something of the world. I wrote about this problem in this post:

A person became a vegetarian. He started buying books about healthy eating and attending courses about health. Soon his whole life is all about healthy eating and health. And so what happened here? The person, thinking that he’s so much wiser than others got on the level of an animal, since all his life revolves around food and the maintenance of the body. So this is again an ego trick, to make one lose the path of Light and focus on the scenery along the way.

A vegetarian diet should be treated as a step towards the Light. It’s not the Light itself. It can be a helpful tool to reach it faster, but it’s only a tool. So never make a big deal out of it. If you can get healthy food, that’s great. If not, it doesn’t matter – you are not the body anyway. Don’t spend hours researching where to eat or which food to buy. These hours can be spent in prayer or meditation, which is a much greater return on investment!

Sometimes I witness in India undernourished Westerners that are into healthy food. They look and are miserable, and they make a huge fuss in any cafe or restaurant they visit. They trouble waiters with endless questions about particular sugar used in the meal, or if dried fruits contain sulfur, or if this or that vegetable is organic… There is no end to their questions.

We live in Kali Yuga. Nothing is perfect. Even if a vegetable is organic, maybe it was grown near a highway which would make its organic quality questionable indeed. There is no end of research and information about the healthiest food choices… It’s yet another trap one gets into and the whole life becomes about food.

When food has no effect at all

There are people in this world who can eat anything and they’re not affected by it at all. They are called “aghoras”. They are Indian ascetics practicing total non-discrimination towards anything, including food.

The genuine aghoras (for there are many fake ones!) can even drink poison, yet not be affected by it. This poison was also drunk by Shiva with no harmful effect, as well as the man Zanoni in this amazing mystical book.

I’m not advising anyone to be so indiscriminate, but it just shows that when the mind is preoccupied not with food but with God, the flesh itself changes to become more immortal-like. Jesus also claimed that it’s not the food which goes into one’s mouth that’s bad or good, but what comes out of the mouth – words.

Thus, with my view completely changed, I no longer advocate any kind of diet at all. Though as long as one thinks she’s the body, the food will keep affecting her. So judge for yourself whether to stick to your particular diet or not – it’s very much to do with your level of consciousness.

Sometimes sticking to a particular diet greatly helps to get the nerves finer and thus perceive more of the spiritual world. But at the end of the day, it’s just an aid, and not the purpose itself. Don’t let the aid become your master. Obsessing over food is obsessing over matter, and thus the consciousness is lowered. Strive for the Light only, look at the Light only – the rest will take care of itself.

Here’s when food can really affect the body for the worse

People who eat only healthy food tend to be much more affected by what they consider unhealthy food than indiscriminate eaters. This has to do with their belief in the harmfulness of some food, and it’s a strong collective belief, and thus can affect one greatly. So this is yet another trap of labeling oneself as being a healthy eater, a vegetarian, a vegan, and so on.

The belief that some food is very harmful is extremely hard to break, because many people are invested in it. It’s a belief only, and not a fact. It’s created by thoughts. So it can be broken, but most won’t be able to do so because of their level of consciousness. Thus, I say, always strive for the Light, as the Light will enlighten you, and you’ll see things as they are. When you really understand the structure of such a belief, it will break down by itself as of itself it’s nothing. And then you’ll be free of this form of slavery.

How to remove negative effects from food

If your investment in food is great and you’re not yet able to break your food beliefs, you must play the game of protecting yourself from its effects. So when you need to eat in a questionable place where food might have been prepared by someone who had low-quality thoughts, it makes sense to remove bad energy from it. If you don’t do this, your digestion might get affected, or you might inherit the thoughts of the cook.

You can purify the food by imagining it bathed in Light and Love. Just imagine it being bathed in pure white light and feel when it’s totally free of negative energy. Also, bless all your food before eating, and make it into an offering to God. This alone will make sure that food has no harmful effects on you.

In general, if your thoughts are about God only, things of the earth will have no impact on you because you’re above the laws of the earth. But that hardly applies to any living mortal, unfortunately, though everyone should strive for such a state.

Food shouldn’t be your priority

Don’t burden yourself with plans where to eat, and what food to buy. Don’t think about this little matter at all; the body will definitely remind you when it’s time to eat – don’t worry about it. And if you leave these matters for the body to decide, its intelligence will awaken, direct you exactly about what to eat, and stop you from eating when you’re full. The body knows how to take care of itself for sure, it’s the human conscious intervention that does all the wrongs to the body and causes its obesity, obsessive eating and so forth.

After all, the purpose of food is to sustain our bodies and nothing more. It shouldn’t be our most important preoccupation, because then we get to the level of animals who eat all the time and all their thoughts are about food, survival and procreation.

The importance of considering digestive power

As Dr. Sumit Kesarkar, an ayurveda doctor, explained to me, if your digestive power is strong, all kinds of food, be it healthy or unhealthy, will be converted into energy. So what logically follows is that if your digestive power is weak, even though you eat really healthy food, some of it might not get digested and will turn into a toxic substance, poisoning your body.

So that means that a vegan with weak digestive power might be poisoning himself on a daily basis because all the raw food he eats doesn’t digest fully, whilst the one who eats fast food but has strong digestive power gets more nutrients from his meal. Also that means that a healthy eater who overeats has food rotting in his stomach creating all kinds of diseases, whilst the one who eats less but unhealthily gets all of it digested and thus extracts whatever nutrients there are in the food.

Ayurveda wisdom

I asked Dr. Sumit Kesarkar about tamasic or rajasic foods influencing us. After all, because of these ignorance and passion-producing qualities some people avoid eating substances such as meat, garlic or onion. He told that if a person was trulysattvic (pure, positive), whatever foods she eats would be converted into sattva. That goes against ayurveda texts, but he said that it’s because people only know half-truths about ayurveda. His opinion is in harmony with the stories of saints consuming poisonous substances and transforming them into non-harmful elements that are assimilated by the body.

Eat less and chew well

I learnt long time ago that the most important thing is to eat less than what’s normally accepted. In ayurveda texts it’s recommended that a person should eat only what he can hold by the cup formed out of one’s hands as one’s meal.

If you chew food very well, eat mindfully and eat only when you are hungry, the food will get completely digested and will provide you with energy. Also, you’ll need to eat much less if the food that you eat isn’t nutritionally empty; thus the preference should be given to whole-foods like nuts and fruits and vegetables as well as grains, milk and cheese, though again, one shouldn’t make a fuss when such foodstuffs are not available. Usually a person becomes overweight because he eats foods empty of nutrition, and thus the body demands more and more, never getting satisfied, because the nutritional content of food is low.

According to ayurveda, you should only eat after a bowel movement to avoid the generation of toxins due to the digested food getting mixed with new food in the intestines. If that’s not possible for you, at least have your breakfast only after the bowel movement.

Be natural about food

The best thing to do is to focus on the Eternal, live in the present moment, and only become conscious of food when the stomach demands it. This is truly the healthiest way to live, rather than counting calories, researching best health stores, and planning which health cafe to visit next. We really got entangled into this healthy food stuff, when the food should be only thought about as a means to keep the body alive.

But here’s a warning. Don’t use this post as an excuse to eat junk! That’s not the purpose of this post at all! Always be aware of your body reactions and developing addictions. If your thoughts are always centered on God, no new addictions will form, for God is Light and Love, and it’s the Love people are after in all their countless seekings.

Here’s a relevant quote from the Light on the Path booklet channeled by Mabel Collins, which can be applied not only to food but to many other human concerns:

(I’m paraphrasing it a little as without the full context the literal text wouldn’t be understood.)

He who would escape from the bondage of karma must raise his individuality out of the shadow into the shine; must so elevate his existence that he’s not soiled by coming in contact with the substances of this reality, and do not become attached.

He simply lifts himself out of the region in which karma operates though he continues to act in the world. Whether his path is rough and dirty, or so beautiful and sweet that it’s easy to get attached, he continues to look up in the sky, and that’s why he’s free from the influence of the murky or alluring paths. This looking up, being centered in the Divine is what keeps him above the laws of karma.

I personally found this to be absolutely correct. In the past whenever I would eat something unhealthy, I had this belief that it was going to affect me negatively, and lo and behold, I’d feel the negative effect of the food. Yet now, if I eat something unhealthy, my thoughts don’t dwell on the effect of the food, but instead I keep my mental peace totally undisturbed whilst I’m eating. I’m totally present when I’m eating, not allowing my mind to dwell on the past instances when I ate something similar and how it affected me. So because I dwell in the Eternal when I’m eating, there’s no effect on me on from the food, or it’s considerably reduced.

It’s such a freedom to not be food-conscious! Interestingly enough, when your mind doesn’t dwell on food at all, when the time comes to eat, you’re presented with the best food choice for your body! That’s because you’re no longer interfering with what you shouldn’t interfere with, and thus God takes care of these things. The Divine always provides for you, and provides for you in the best way, when you stop interfering with Its workings. The lower order reality, that of money, survival and food, is not your sphere of work.

Be aware of the whole-grain foods craze

The first time I got concerned with the entire whole-grain foods craze was when I questioned a Sri Lankan villager about how they used to eat rice. She was surprised to hear that I assumed that they ate rice with husk.

“But it’s inedible”, she said. “It would harm the digestive system because it’s so hard and the edges are so sharp”. This made me think back about the last time I stayed in England and got into the habit of buying all kinds of whole-grain snacks, and how much painful my stomach felt in the morning.

When I asked her how in her country rice was prepared the traditional way, she said that it depended on rice. There are different types of them. The rice they used was firstly boiled, then dried, then the husks were removed, and then it was boiled again to eat.

Reading the book about how to naturally cure tooth decay also pointed to this way of treating whole grains. Dr. Weston Prince research also shows that all old cultures took painstaking efforts to make grains edible, and not only boiled and dehusked them, but also soaked and fermented, so that the minerals in them would become bio-available to human bodies and that they would become soft enough not to damage intestinal walls.

So if whole grains are simply milled and baked, it’s a recipe for bone demineralisation and gastric problems, because the unfermented husk that’s full of anti-nutrients will make mineral absorption impossible, and sharp husk particles will damage intestinal walls.

That’s why many raw foodists, vegans, and other people who are into healthy eating suffer from tooth decay and mineral deficiencies. They don’t prepare grains well enough for such food to nourish their bodies.

For those interested to read more on this, one of the best sources of making proper food is the Nourishing Traditions book. However, I must warn you again – don’t get caught up with this craze. I wrote this chapter so that you’re aware of the danger of being too health-conscious.

Natural food habits

Don’t let beliefs about food influence you. Eat with total equanimity, being focused on the Eternal. Don’t resist food that’s unhealthy if you have nothing more to eat; resistance itself will infuse it with negative energy. After all, food is only energy; you can change it by your thoughts. So make sure your thoughts are positive!

When no healthy food is available, eat that which is the healthiest that you can find. Sometimes that which is considered healthy is not healthy at all, like I already wrote, so use your common sense.

If you keep yourself busy with doing good to the world, meditation and prayer, and only think about food when the stomach is empty, this will assure a healthy life with one more limitation removed from it (slavery to food).

How I changed my food habits

I used to be really concerned about my food choices, so food was very often on my mind. I enjoyed it and made a big deal about where to eat next and what kind of food to eat. I gradually realized that I had a strong attachment to food and this attachment took my attention away from my meditation goal, as thoughts about food would disturb me during meditations. Since one-pointedness is absolutely necessary for liberation, I couldn’t afford to keep this earthly attachment.

So in order to get rid of this burden, I fully focused on my food habits. Awareness is the universal dissolver; no error can stay for long if you’re totally aware of it. Thus I let this Divine Power do the work, and I also prayed to be free from this attachment.

These two aids worked wonders. Slowly but surely my attachment to food started evaporating. Soon I no longer bothered to think about food at all. Thoughts about food only would start disturbing me when my stomach was empty. Sometimes when I get really hungry during meditation, it’s the increasingly greater stream of thoughts about food which doesn’t go away that finally makes me go to get some snack; I no longer feel motivated to eat for the excitement of it.

I no longer eat big meals because of my reflection on past experiences when they made me lazy. I usually snack around three times a day. I wish I would eat only once a day like Gautama Buddha did, but at the moment the incessant stream of thoughts that follows the arisen hunger still keeps me in its grip.

I no longer do yoga either – almost all my time is spent on sitting or walking meditation. My food choices aren’t usually really healthy (by the standards of the health-conscious) because by the time I go out to get food I’m usually starving. So I get something that can be made fast. But the body knows what’s best for it, so I don’t mind what it feels like eating.

Interestingly, when this matter is left to the body only, there’s no desire to buy things like chocolates, but the focus is on nutrition. So I usually end up getting something that has cheese or milk in it as these are nutritionally-dense, like a croissant with tomato, cheese and butter, as well as milk tea or weak latte.

Since the end of my healthy eating, my health has actually improved because I no longer eat whole grains so I no longer suffer from stomach pains. I’ve been eating this way for around nine months. As the obsession with food is the main cause of various diseases, no wonder my health is excellent as I treat food as body fuel only.

Summary

In this post I described the most important points about my current food philosophy. I wrote it because many readers want to know my take on food, and I see many people getting too obsessed about healthy food choices which makes their life miserable. After all, in these Dark Age times, nothing is really healthy; such an obsession can steal a lot of time (as well as money) that can be spent on more useful activities such as meditation or prayer.

Resource: /simonarich.com