Suhas G. Kshirsagar - The Hot Belly Diet: A 30-Day Ayurvedic Plan to Reset Your Metabolism, Lose Weight, and Restore Your Bodys Natural Balance to Heal Itself

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To all the people who wrestle with weight and search for eternal well-being.

To those who have rekindled the fire in their belly and illuminated their life.

And to my parents, who taught me patience, adaptability, and resiliencethe simple keys to a happy life.

When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use.

When diet is correct, medicine is of no need.

AYURVEDIC PROVERB

by Deepak Chopra, MD

Looking back, I find it astonishing to realize that almost everything that was left out of medical school training when I was becoming a physician now occupies center stage. I was taught nothing about the mind-body connection, which most of my professors would have scoffed at if it had been brought up. Thoughts and feelings were like ghosts in the machine, disconnected from the body. Prevention was considered unworthy of wasting time onit could be left to hygienists and public health authorities. Nutrition was even low on the totem pole and could be left to home economics teachers in high school.

As for Eastern medical systems, they existed somewhere over the horizon, so far over that nothing about them was actually known before it could be dismissed. Now the situation has changed, and when I welcome The Hot Belly Diet as one of the most practical and useful ways to improve your life through Ayurveda, many readers will know what Im referring to. Thanks to the popularity of integrative medicine, Indias traditional system of Ayurvedathe term literally translates as science of lifehas become another healing modality that is worthy of respect and study. More to the point, it has made invaluable contributions to self-care.

Self-care has become the dominant focus of prevention over the past few decades. In medical school, I was taught that health is the absence of disease, an entirely inadequate definition. Health is a positive state whose elementsbalance, energy, a sense of well-being, resistance to disease, and the promoting of healingare exactly what Ayurveda aims to maintain and nurture.

Dr. Suhas G. Kshirsagar has founded a thriving practice on his extensive knowledge of Ayurveda, so one would expect that his book contains a fund of fascinating information and guidance. At the same time, however, its basic principle is simple: The digestive tract is the most critical system in the body, because it supplies the energy that allows cells to go through their life cycle, from birth to death, in a state of perfect balance. The key concept is agni, the digestive fire, which supplies vitality to the whole mind-body system when it is burning brightly and efficiently. Moreover, the quality of your metabolismthe process of converting food energy into bodily tissuesdecides the quality and quantity of the life you experience. If you have a humming metabolism fueled by agni, you will slow down your bodys aging process and boost its overall health. This is the very basis of The Hot Belly Diet .

As used in India, agni crosses all kinds of boundaries. The original Sanskrit word can be literal (any fire is called agni), metaphorical (as in digestive fire), mythic (as in the sacrificial fires that ceremonially burn away evil and nourish good), and spiritual (the Vedic gods include one named Agni). This flagrant liberality would have appalled my medical-school professors, as proponents of Western scientific medicine (as was my father, one of the first British-trained cardiologists in postindependence India). But the need has since arisen to approach well-being from a holistic perspective. In reality, when mind and body are totally intertwined, respecting rigid boundaries makes little sensein fact, its bad medicine.

We are lucky to be living during an exciting time for self-care, prevention, and the rise of holistic health. More knowledge about health is available than ever before, yet society continues to suffer from serious lifestyle disorders that are largely preventable. Getting new MDs up to speed is still a problem, although integrative medicine is fast making inroads. So its up to anyone who wants to maintain a high level of well-being to explore the possibilities personally. Dr. Kshirsagar is an excellent, reliable guide to the most important questions that we all face:

What is the wisdom of the body?

How can our innate healing system be supported?

What part does diet play in long-term health?

What is the best approach to slowing down and preventing the aging process?

There are mind-body answers to these questions, and since Ayurveda respected the wisdom of the body thousands of years before Western medicine stopped dismissing the concept out of hand, I think The Hot Belly Diet will prove invaluable.

A personal note: I first met Dr. Kshirsagar more than twenty years ago, during the height of the Transcendental Meditation movement, when I was just beginning to turn my focus to Ayurveda and mind-body medicine in general. Ive seen him grow over the years as a compassionate healer and expert clinician who now directs Ayurvedic Healing, an integrative wellness clinic in Northern California. As a sought-after speaker and lecturer, he travels throughout the world teaching courses in Ayurveda, training doctors, and providing consultations for thousands of people.

In 2006 we started to work closely together, and hes become a regular teacher at The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, in Carlsbad, California, as well as a featured speaker at many of its signature programs and workshops. As one of my trusty advisers, he is responsible for helping me create a number of formulas and products rooted in our shared philosophy.

Its nice to see more people embracing the power of integrative medicine today, but many are still lost and confusedthe things theyve had drummed into them about prevention havent turned into action. Change is hard. But as the obesity epidemic rages and lifestyle diseases remain the number one cause of fatality in America, people will keep wishing and hoping for the secret to perfect health. This book holds many such secrets. It will show you how to gain control over your waistline and guide you to the right way to eat for your body type ( dosha ) that current dieting fads cannot. May The Hot Belly Diet help you to bring mind-body balance, nourishment, and health into your life like never before. Dr. Kshirsagar has done all the hard work for you, telling you exactly what to do while also highlighting the pertinent science that hes diligently researched to make his ancient message come alive in the twenty-first century.

For all of these reasons, you need to turn to Ayurveda, and I cant think of a more qualified person than Dr. Kshirsagar to translate the concepts that Ive been exploring and writing about for years into a practical program that anyone can access. The invitation is open; healing awaits.

To eat is human, but to digest is divine.

AYURVEDIC PROVERB

J ane was a forty-eight-year-old executive whose weight had crept up in recent years despite her constantly counting calories. When she came to see me, she was hoping Id give her a secret formula for revving up her metabolism and effortlessly shedding the extra twenty pounds shed been trying to lose to no avail. Her belly fat in particular bothered her the most, and it didnt budge even when she went to dieting extremes. She also wanted to gain back the vibrant energy that had escaped her some ten years ago, for she felt chronically tired, spent, and bloated. And she was clear with me that she knew everything there was to know about weight loss. While she admitted that she had no time to exercise during the week due to her constantly busy work at a large nonprofit, she followed all the other rules that stood at the center of virtually every popular diet of late: going low-carb; curbing refined sugars, gluten, dairy, and alcohol; making breakfast the most important meal of the day; and eating routinely throughout the day to dodge dangerous feelings of hunger.