Hi!
I'm Claire.
Let's talk about how we can use diet to balance elevated vata dosha.
I'm going to tell you what a vata-pacifying diet is, how it creates balance, and give
you ten tips for how to incorporate it into your everyday.
Plus, there's a bonus at the end– meal ideas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Let's dig in!
Vata is balanced by a diet of freshly cooked, whole foods that are soft or mushy in texture,
rich in protein and fat, seasoned with a variety of spices, and served either warm or hot.
These foods calm vata by lubricating and nourishing the tissues, preserving moisture, and maintaining
warmth—all while supporting optimal digestion and elimination.
The following tips will explain some specific principles about a vata-pacifying diet and
we hope they will empower you in discovering what will work best for you.
Pay Attention to Overarching Patterns
Before we go any further, please understand that following a vata-pacifying diet is a
practice far more than it is a collection of absolutes.
No one expects you to wake up tomorrow morning and eat a perfectly vata-pacifying diet for
the rest of your life!
Even the most recognized Ayurvedic teachers have the occasional difference of opinion,
which can create some discrepancies between different Ayurvedic diet and recipe resources.
The point being, successfully following a vata-pacifying diet is not a matter of sticking
to a strict set of dos and don’ts, or getting overly bogged down in the details.
In fact, it is often far more helpful to pay attention to the generalities and overarching
patterns.
At the end of the day, any strides that you take to shift your diet toward being more
vata-pacifying than it currently is should be considered wins... which brings us to our
next tip:
Make Small Adjustments
Think of the transition process as an intention that you are holding, and also a powerful
invitation to increase your self-awareness.
We recommend that you begin by noticing where you might be able to make small, incremental
changes in support of your healing journey—at a sustainable pace.
From there, notice the ways in which these small shifts are supporting you, and where
perhaps some of your current habits are costing you.
If you enjoy a food that is vata-aggravating, notice how you feel when you do eat it, perhaps
keeping track in a food journal.
Does it increase the presence of vata symptoms in your digestive tract, like gas, bloating,
or constipation?
Is there anything that you can do to serve this food in a more vata-pacifying manner—by
adding extra oil, ghee, and digestive spices, or by serving it hot?
And if so, do these adjustments change your digestive experience?
Use your developing awareness to continue to inspire one small step forward at a time,
keeping tabs on how your health and well-being are improving.
As you continue to work with your Ayurvedic diet and lifestyle recommendations, it is
likely that your digestive strength will improve, which will eventually support your capacity
to digest more challenging foods.
Ok.
The last tips offer ideas on how to approach this, so now I’d like to introduce the qualities
that you’ll want to favor in your diet, and by contrast, the qualities that will tend
to be inherently vata-aggravating.
By nature, vata is cool, dry, rough and light, so eating foods that neutralize these qualities—foods
that are warm, moist, oily, smooth, and nourishing—will help to balance excess vata.
The following tips offer a closer look at how you can begin to recognize the qualities
of different foods.
The intention is to give you a more intuitive grasp of what will soothe vata, without having
to constantly reference lengthy lists of foods to favor and avoid.
Favor Warm Over Cold
The warm quality can be emphasized by eating foods that are both energetically warming
and warm in temperature, and by using digestive spices generously.
On the other hand, it is best to minimize foods with a cooling energetic, such as cold
and frozen foods or drinks, carbonated drinks, large quantities of raw fruits and vegetables,
and even leftovers that have been kept in the refrigerator or freezer.
The cold quality is inherently increased in these foods, so freshly cooked is best.
But again, you have to be realistic about what you can take on, and leftover mung dal
is going to be far more vata-pacifying than canned black-bean soup or a raw kale salad.
Favor Moist and Oily Over Dry
Vata’s dryness is offset by eating cooked rather than raw foods, by cooking and garnishing
foods with generous amounts of high-quality oils or ghee, and by staying hydrated.
Drink plenty of fluids, ideally warm or hot—but no cooler than room temperature.
In addition, moist foods like berries, melons, summer squash, zucchini, and yogurt help to
offset vata’s dry quality, as do hydrating preparations such as soups and stews.
Oily foods like avocado, coconut, olives, buttermilk, cheese, eggs, whole milk (preferably
non-homogenized), wheat, nuts, and seeds are generally supportive as well.
Do your best to minimize exceptionally drying foods like popcorn, crackers, white potatoes,
beans, and dried fruits.
Favor Grounding, Nourishing, and Stabilizing Over Light
While the heavy quality is the true antithesis to vata’s lightness, especially heavy, dense
foods can easily overtax vata’s delicate digestion.
Eating too much in one sitting can also be overly heavy, so try to eat regularly in order
to avert any temptation toward overeating.
In general, it’s better to think in terms of grounding vata’s lightness with sustenance—eating
foods that offer solid, stabilizing sources of energy and deep nourishment to the physical
body.
Generally, these foods will naturally taste sweet.
Ideal examples include cooked grains, spiced milk, root vegetables, stewed fruits, nuts,
and seeds.
Highly processed foods such as canned foods, ready-made meals, and pastries are often quite
heavy, lack vital life-force energy, and are generally quite aggravating to vata.
Similarly, stimulants such as caffeine, nicotine, and hard alcohol should be minimized or avoided
because they tend to undermine vata’s need for grounded stability.
Favor Smooth Over Rough
There’s a reason that raw fruits and vegetables are sometimes called roughage; their fiber
content gives them a very rough quality.
This is why vata does well to resist large quantities of raw vegetables, and should enjoy
raw fruits in moderation.
Even cooked, foods like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, dark leafy greens, and many beans
are exceptionally rough and may be best minimized while you are working on pacifying vata.
If you do eat them, cook these foods well and serve them with generous amounts of butter,
oil, or ghee and add some vata-pacifying spices.
Conversely, eating foods and preparations that are smooth in texture—things like bananas,
rice pudding, hot cereal, hot spiced milk, root vegetables, puréed soups, and the like—can
really help to soothe vata’s roughness.
Emphasize Sweet, Sour, and Salty Tastes
Vata is pacified by the sweet, sour, and salty tastes.
Understanding these tastes allows us to make better choices.
Favor naturally sweet foods like fruits, grains, root vegetables, milk, ghee, fresh yogurt,
eggs, nuts, seeds, oils, and lean meats.
The sweet taste is the foundation of a vata-pacifying diet.
It is the predominant taste in most of vata's staple foods, and also vata's primary source
of nutrition.
Emphasizing the sweet taste does not require us to eat large amounts of refined sugar or
sugary-sweet foods.
In fact, doing so tends to exacerbate vata's tendency to over-exert and then crash.
Naturally sweet foods tend to be grounding, nourishing, strength-building, and satisfying.
Favor sour additions like a squeeze of lemon or lime juice, a splash of vinegar, a side
of kimchi or sauerkraut, a bowl of miso, a slice of cheese, or a dollop of sour cream.
Sour fruits like green grapes, oranges, pineapple, and grapefruit are also appropriate when eaten
separate from other foods, and in moderation.
These make great vata-pacifying snacks.
The sour taste is generally not the centerpiece of a meal; instead, it tends to compliment
and enliven other flavors.
The sour taste awakens the mind and the senses, improves digestion, promotes energy, moistens
other foods, and helps to eliminate excess wind (think gas and bloating).
The salty taste is almost singularly derived from salt itself, but favoring the salty taste
does not mean that your food should taste as if it's being cured.
Salt is already over-emphasized in the typical Western diet, so simple being mindful of including
savory flavors and ensuring that your food as some salt in it will likely be sufficient.
Ayurveda recommends a quality sea salt or natural mineral salt over common table salt.
Salt stimulates the appetite and digestion, helps retain moisture, supports proper elimination,
and improves the flavor of many foods.
Minimize Pungent, Bitter, and Astringent Tastes
Vata is aggravated by the pungent, bitter, and astringent tastes.
Again, understanding these tastes allows us to know how they affect us.
Pungent is a spicy, hot flavor like that found in chilies, radishes, turnips, raw onions,
and many especially heating spices.
However, in moderation, most mild spices are quite vata-pacifying.
The pungent taste is hot, dry, and light; too much of it is extremely drying to the
system, exacerbates the rough quality, and can therefore disturb vata.
The bitter taste predominates bitter greens (like kale, dandelion greens, collard greens,
etc.) and is also found in foods like bitter melon, Jerusalem artichokes, burdock root,
eggplant, and chocolate.
Its taste is cooling, rough, drying, light, and generally reducing or catabolic– all
qualities that tend to aggravate vata.
The astringent taste is basically a flavor of dryness– a chalky taste that dries the
mouth and may cause it to contract (picture biting into a very green banana).
Legumes are classically astringent in taste– adzuki beans, black beans, black-eyed peas,
chickpeas, pinto beans, soybeans, and so on.
Its taste is also found in some fruits, vegetables, grains, and baked goods– things like apples,
cranberries, pomegranate, artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, rye, rice cakes, and
crackers.
It's dry, cold, heavy, and rough in nature, making it understandably aggravating to vata.
Eat In A Peaceful Environment
When it comes to pacifying vata, how we eat may be just as important as what we eat, so
this is an especially useful place to focus if the prospect of radically changing your
diet feels overwhelming right now.
Vata is deeply soothed when we choose to eat in peaceful environment—one where we can
offer our full attention to the act of being nourished.
Routine itself also balances vata, so the practice of eating three square meals per
day (at about the same times each day) further reduces vata, and helps to strengthen delicate
digestion.
Practice Feeling Nourished
Visualizing your food grounding your energy, nourishing your body, and promoting health
and vitality can go a long way toward pacifying the negative impacts of a vata-aggravating
food.
Experiment with taking a moment to resonate with your food in this way, particularly if
you know you are about to ingest a food or a meal that is especially cool, dry, light,
or rough.
Alright, so those were our top ten tips for crafting your own vata-pacifying diet.
But here are a few bonuses… suggested meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Breakfast
Breakfast is a critical meal when vata is elevated.
After an overnight fast, vata needs real nourishment and a hearty breakfast is generally very stabilizing.
A power-packed meal of eggs and buttered toast is always a winning choice for vata and can
be served with sautéed veggies or avocado, if desired.
Hot cereals– things like oatmeal, rice porridge, cream of rice, and cream of wheat– are also
excellent choices.
For a richer, creamier breakfast, the grains can be cooked in milk (or a substitute), or
you can add a bit of hot milk after cooking.
To make this meal even more vata-friendly, garnish it with ghee, sliced almonds, and
flax seeds, sweeten it with honey or maple syrup, and add warming spices like cinnamon,
nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and cardamom.
Another delectable breakfast is a date and almond shake, made from soaked dates, soaked
and peeled almonds, and boiled milk (or your favorite substitute)– blended together with
warming spices like cinnamon and nutmeg.
Lunch
Ideally, lunch is the main meal of the day, meaning it’s the largest and the most nourishing
of the three.
Hearty grains, steamed and sautéed vegetables, breads, soups and stews are excellent building
blocks for lunch.
This is also the best time to enjoy a small salad, if you must have one.
Try something like Urad and yellow mung dal with cardamom and naan.
If you like, garnish this meal with cilantro, cucumbers, and a dash of yogurt.
You might try kitchari with crispy okra fries.
Or, butternut squash soup, a hearty bread, and a side salad.
Another great meal for lunch is rice pasta or gnocchi with pesto, black olives, pine
nuts, cheese, and a side of marinated beets.
If you like, add a small green salad tossed with an oily but stimulating dressing– like
lemon-ginger vinaigrette.
Dinner
Dinner is ideally a bit smaller and lighter than lunch.
But to soothe vata, it needs to offer adequate nourishment.
Soups, stews, or a smaller serving of lunch often fit the bill.
Try avocado fried rice and a buttered tortilla, or our recipe for a sweet potato sabji.
And finally, if you’re looking for a detailed list of specific foods to favor and minimize
when pacifying vata, we've got you covered.
Follow the link below to see our complete vata-pacifying foods list.... remembering
of course, that this list is meant to help you deepen your understanding and begin to
see overarching patterns—not to create a sense of restriction or deprivation.
If food lists tend to have that effect on you, do your best to internalize the qualitative
tips we mentioned in this video.
At the very least, embrace eating regularly and being fully present with your meals.
That is as good a starting place as any and can do wonders for your digestion and health.
We hope that you find this information helpful and that applying these tips to your diet
brings you into a greater state of overall health and well-being.
We want to hear how your journey with balancing vata dosha through food and eating practices
go, so tell let us know in the comments below.
Thanks for watching!