Vegetarian diet: Macrobiotic Diet

The Macrobiotic Diet is used by the famous Hollywood to lose kilos. This regimen was born in Japan and seeks not only weight loss but also the welfare and emotional balance through food.

With the macrobiotic diet, is to fight disease in the body and mind, leaving consuming “poisons” found in food (saturated fats, sugar, salt, snuff, alcohol and drugs). The macrobiotic diet is an extreme form of vegetarianism. His followers go through 10 levels of dietary restraint until they are fed only grain.

The macrobiotic diet divides foods into 2 types

Food Ying (liabilities foods)
They are foods that should be consumed sparingly, because their energy is debilitating:
sugar, honey, alcoholic beverages, tropical fruits (banana, mango, kiwi, papaya, pineapple, watermelon, plums), vegetables such as potatoes, eggplant, tomato, garlic, beets. Milk, white bread, sausage, meat, eggs, clams, vitamin C, spices, processed foods, canned foods, dyes or chemical ingredient.

Food Yang (active food)
They are necessary food, because their energy and toning:
cereals (wheat, rye, corn, barley, millet, oats), legumes, seaweed, fish occasionally, vitamins A, B6, D, E and K, and vegetables grown without pesticides. It is very important to prepare steamed foods should be cooked or sea salt without iodine.

Note: this classification makes no sense from a scientific point of view.

Macrobiotic Diet: macrobiotic menu for weight loss

Breakfast:
1 mu Bancha tea or tea.
1 cream sesame millet or rice with cinnamon and raisins.
Rice crackers with sesame puree or vegetable pate. Lunch:
1 millet soup or vegetables with seaweed and soy sauce.
1 Combined plate of boiled rice with kombu seaweed and vegetable protein (beans, seitan or wheat gluten, tofu or soy cheese, tempeh or fermented soybeans).
A bit of cooked apple, or cereals (corn meal or wheat) with fruit jelly made with seaweed.
1 cup Bancha tea.

Snack:
1 tea
Rice crackers with jam or vegetable pate.

Dinner:
1 vegetable soup with shitake (Japanese mushroom) and daikon (a type of turnip).
Rice and some fish.

Principles Macrobiotic Diet

The macrobiotic diet consists of a series of 10 diets ranging from less than three (-3) over seven (+7).
The first five (-3 to +2) include decreasing amounts of animal foods.
The others are exclusively vegetarian and contain increasing amounts of grains of wheat. 7 diet consists only of cereals. The purpose of the macrobiotic diet is threefold:
– Lose weight by avoiding food adulterated
– Achieve happiness and free the mind.

The word “macrobiotic” means “long life” in Greek.

Eating the macrobiotic diet

1. Should remove processed foods, sugar, canned, dyes, unfertilized eggs.
2. You have to cook food with vegetable oil or water, stoneware, pyrex or enameled iron, salt and enriched with unrefined sea salt.
3. Refrain from fruits and vegetables grown or treated with chemical fertilizers.
4. Avoiding foods from countries far from where you live.
5. Preferably eat vegetables every season.
6. Avoid Yin vegetables such as potatoes, eggplants and tomatoes.
7. Do not take spices or chemical ingredients.
8. It is prohibited in coffee; only supported natural drinking tea and Japanese tea China.
9. Are strongly recommended cereals: Full rice, wheat, buckwheat, rye, corn, barley, millet, cooked and raw, boiled or sauteed, baked or cream.
10. Should minimize fluid intake.
11. Chewing is important. You have to chew each mouthful at least 50 times.

Beware the drawbacks of the macrobiotic diet

Very unbalanced regime when it becomes exclusively cereals (+3 to +7).
Reducing the drinking water, can generate dehydration and kidney failure.
Take as little protein can lead to a risk of anemia and malnutrition. With this power were detected cases of scurvy and calcium deficiency. As you may have noticed, many foods are hard to get to be of Japanese origin (millet, soybeans, seaweed, tofu, etc.). And maybe bother you that by not eating many foods, can limit your social and family life surrounding you finish pure macrobiotic friends.

If you decide to try this diet, it is important to periodically make a medical examination to keep under control your levels of iron and vitamin B12.