- Fresh ginger tea, cumin-coriander-fennel tea, or lime and honey water in the morning or in between meals, or a takrum digestive drink.
- Takrum is a yogurt or kefir based drink that is diluted and spiced to add probiotics and more powerful digestive support througout the day. Take 1/4 cup of unsweetened kefir or yogurt (I reccommend goat or non-animal dairy), 3/4 cup of boiling water, and 1/4 tsp. each of a few spices: cumin, coriander, fennel, chamomile, or cardamom. Blend, shake, or use a frother to mix and drink!
- Hibiscus, rosehips, mint, tulsi, chamomile, cardamom, clove, and cinnamon, are all also great digestive spices you can use to make your own tea as well
- All other meals should be light and easy to digest but still satisfying.
- Some examples are roasted veggies, clear broth soups (barley vegetable, quinoa, minestrone, pho, kitchari, dahl e.t.c.), stir frys, or dairy free and wheat free casseroles.
- Avoid cold, raw, difficult to digest meals like salads, red meats, cheese or cream based dishes, bread and pasta dishes.
- Exercise everyday for at least 15-20 minutes-- a walk is great, especially after meals!
- At night rub your belly in a clockwise direction with sesame oil or a nice massage oil. I use Osi Oils Belly oil, it is also amazing for your reproductive and hormonal system. You get 10% off with code ALEXA10.
For the Big Nights
Drinks:
Choose wine or hot tea instead. Wine is an appetizer, to a point! Beer contains yeast, so just like thick wheat products it will cause bloating, gas, indigestion, heartburn, belching, and a very heavy feeling in the gut. Cider is better than beer but still contains a lot of sugar and carbonation, which will also create those effects. Hard liquor is very harsh on the system, but if you must have that christmas martini or old fashion then make sure you are enjoying it!
Appetizers:
If you can, try to avoid them all together. It is VERY difficult on your digestion to be snacking for 1-2 hours before your actual meal because it takes 3-4 hours to digest the first thing you ate. A lot of times there will be lots of fruit on a cheese plate; fruit digests very quickly (30 minutes) so that is a great option. Olives or anything pickled are good options as well because they are salty and salt is an appetite stimulator. You could also plan on digging into the appetizers right away to give your body ample time to digest or wait until you absolutely can’t stand it anymore as close to the main meal as possible.
Main Course:
Try choosing the main proteins that you are most excited about. Each type of protein, even type of meat, digests at a different rate than each other (turkey, chicken, beef, pork, egg, cheese, yogurt, beans, e.t.c.). If you know you definitely want turkey, avoid the cheese and charcuterie plate. If you can’t imagine holidays without the cheese (guilty!), make sure you leave a couple of hours to digest in between and add a bigger portion of the cooked vegetable dishes to your plate than the main meat dish.
A note on salad. Salad is raw, cold, and not an appropriate winter food. It is very difficult to digest, and will add lots of gas and indigestion to your system. It is always better to choose the cooked vegetable dishes for your fiber, but if that is the only option then try chewing it for an extra few moments to really help your body break it down.
Dessert:
Don’t wait 30 minutes to an hour to eat dessert after dinner if you can. I often notice that this is definitely part of a lot of routines for families to eat dinner then "digest" then eat pie. Your body is trying really hard to break down what you just put in your body and it actually takes 3-4 hours to fully digest a meal through all six stages of digestion, 1-2 hours longer if it was a really big meal. If you eat your meal, take a break that signals to your body you are finished eating, then start to add on more food in the middle of the digestion process, your body pauses the digestion process it's going through to address the extra food that is coming in. This creates a tired, overtaxed gut, and shows up as bloating, indigestion, gas, pain, constipation or loose stool, and just feeling plain gross.
Choose pumpkin pie for dessert!! Look for the desserts that have lots of spices in them because they will aid digestion. Pumpkin is also a laxative so it will help your digestive system to clear it faster-- try to avoid the whip cream and ice cream. Most pies are already made with milk and cream so by adding more heavy dairy (and freezing cold for that matter!) instantly you will feel weighed down.
What to do you if you go overboard because you couldn’t help it!
Fast.
DO NOT wake up and eat right away. It may seem like you are hungry but that is a false craving. If you ate ice cream on a cold day your body would crave spicy food to heat it back up---that is an intelligent craving. IF you ate ice cream three days in a row when it was snowing because you ignored your body’s intelligent craving, you committed prajnaparadah or a “crime against wisdom.” Dun dun dunnnn.... sounds scary but we do it all the time. Your body will then start to crave cold and heavy things as false cravings because you started to train it to do so. With heavy meals, your body produces extra bile in order to handle the overload. Therefore in this case the extra bile is not telling you to eat, it’s telling you it’s still trying to digest your meal from last night.
Fast in the morning until lunch time or until you are truly hungry and that may not happen for a while. Ginger tea, CCF tea, lime and honey water, takrum, and fruit are all suitable substitutes for a meal. Unless you are diabetic, fasting for a meal (breakfast) is sincerely one of the best practices through the holidays. (My not so Ayurvedic hack.... popcorn is a great snack to soak up all the extra mucus in a heavy stomach BUT ONLY if you are not experiencing lots of gas).
Herbal Remedies
Every night: drink triphala or amalaki tea before bed on an empty stomach. Steep ½ tsp. in one cup of boiling water, drink until you get to the herb matter. This will add extra protection for your digestion, cleanse the liver, calm inflammation, and remove anything stuck in your G.I. tract.
You can also take triphala capsules at night before bed and that could help you clean out just as well! Don't forget you get 15% off at Banyan Botanicals using code ALEXAS15 . They are also doing 20% off capsules for Black Friday with code HERBPWR.
Photo by Gabriel Garcia Marengo on Unsplash