As we enter the season of dinner parties, summer picnics and social get-togethers - healthy eating suddenly shoots up to the top of our priory list - as this also happens to be the season of boardies and bikinis! Yussssss.

But eating the right type of foods is usually where it stops for many of us... it's not like we were ever taught at school that what you do or more importantly DON'T do after dinner can have just as much effect on your metabolism and digestion as the food you eat.

Of course I am not only talking dinner, but any and every meal all through the day. Here are my...


1. DON'T drink liquids, especially cold water. Water will solidify the fats and oils you have just consumed and arrest digestion. Think of what happens to warmed liquid butter if you pour in into a jug of cold water- it solidifies and doesn't move.

2. DON'T eat fruit. Fruit should be eating on an empty stomach and on its own, as it is such a great cleanser and doesn't require long to digest. Mix it with anything else (like your dinner which is trying be digested) and it will sit on top, fermenting and rotting, making you bloated and gassy.

3. DON'T loosen your trousers. This sudden release could twist your intestines and block the natural movement of food.

4. DON'T smoke! Not that I would recommend smoking at any other time, but apparently having a cigarette right after eating increases the chances of cancer even more, as it becomes equivalent to ten whole cigarettes.

5. DON'T have dessert. The sugar will stay in your body for longer, sitting on top the meal, fermenting, acidifying the system and feeding any present candida. If you are going to have dessert, have it before the meal so that at least the saliva you produce will promote more digestive juices in the stomach for when dinner arrives.

6. DON'T drink coffee or black tea. Both have high amounts of acids, that make the protein (in any form) that we consume harder to digest.

7. DON'T sauna, bathe or bikram. High heat increases the blood to flow to the hands and legs, thus away from the stomach area, where it's required the most for proper digestion.

8. DON'T go to sleep. When we sleep, we relax and everything slows down, including the body's work and digestion. This can lead to gastric issues and infection in the intestines, as well as acid reflux.


Do you have a 'DON'T after dinner' that I've missed? Please share in the comments below...



Would you like to use this article? I'll be my pleasure! Please add this at the end:

Tanya Alekseeva is a wellness coach, chef, author, and a renowned raw food and detox expert. She healed herself with raw fruits and vegetables at the age of fourteen after a near fatal car accident damaged her internal organs. Born in Russia, raised in New Zealand and now based out of London, she travels nationally and internationally to provide seminars, workshops, retreats, detox programs and one-to-one coaching, to educate and ensure busy individuals achieve their most desired wellbeing and ultimate health objectives. She is the founder of Better Raw, creator of 'Raw Food 101' DVD, author of numerous eBooks, as well as a FR*EE report '15 World's Healthiest Foods' available on www.BetterRaw.com 

What is 'Raw Living Food'?
-A crazy, beautiful, fresh, and clean lifestyle often confused with a diet.
-Whole foods, that are prepared at no higher than 47degrees.
-Not sushi! Although you can make the best sushi and nori rolls with raw ingredients, they won't contain cooked rice or animal products.
-Foods included are fruits, vegetables, green leafy vegetables and herbs, nuts, seeds, sprouted grains and beans, superfoods, sea vegetable, oils and spices.
-Not boring! With 1000's of ways to juice, blend, sprout, ferment, process, roll, dip, mix, and dehydrate, Raw Food is scrumptious and fun to make.


Why oh why 'no cooking'?
-Heat -whether you are baking, frying, boiling or microwaving- damages vital nutrients and vitamins, slashing proteins and antioxidants in food by at least half.
-Enzymes which are crucial for every function of our body, our digestion, energy levels, glowing skin and healthy hair are destroyed completely during cooking.
-Enzymes are crucial for every bodily function, from walking to breathing.
-We are born with a limited enzyme supply and if we don't keep it topped up via the 'fresh food fuel', we'll start to age rapidly, invite disease easily, and feel low on energy and crappy all the time.
-During cooking the healthy carbohydrates turn into sugar. Sugar is addictive, hence the reason people become so dependent on cooked food and develop unhealthy cravings.


What are the benefits of eating raw foods?
-Raw Food has helped thousands feel better when nothing else has worked. 
-Benefits are endless and range from a huge energy gain and less time required for sleep, which also means more time available for all those hobbies you've been dreaming of to more miraculous results such as people healing themselves of chronic fatigue, diabetes, depression and cancer. Many other regularly recorded illnesses healed have been adult acne and skin diseases, migraines, joint pain, obesity, bloating, colitis, Candida, anxiety, mood swings, high blood pressure, arthritis, heartburn, allergies, fibromyalgia and the list goes on.
-Since uncooked foods are so much easier to digest and have all the nutrition your body requires, you can eat all you want and never gain weight. Just use your common sense and eat a varied colourful diet, not just munch on nuts all day long.
-Spiritually, this kind of clean eating helps to evolve on many levels, your telepathic channels clear and intuition heighten. 
-A-listers like Demi Moore, Alicia Silverstone, Woody Harrelson, Bill Clinton, Gwyneth Paltrow and Donna Karan have graced the raw food theme and are thriving on it.


Where do you get your protein?
-"Where do cows get theirs?"
-We require nowhere near as much protein as the [obese and diseased] society tells us. During the most rapid physical growth of our entire lives is when we require it the most and nature's clue is in the breast milk, which contains just 3% protein! This puts the claim of your RDI of protein being 30% in perspective.
-Meat takes three whole days to pass through the digestive tract, slowly rotting as it does so, creating excess acidic waste, and making depleting demands on the body.
-Excess [animal] protein intake is a primary cause of 'death by degenerative disease'.
-There is plenty of protein in nuts and seeds but the most bio available to us are in the form of individual amino acids, which are indeed the building blocks of all protein. Amino acids are in many superfoods, and you can find a full spectrum of them in sunflower baby greens and snow pea shoots. 


Tanya's top tips on going raw
-Decide how raw you want to be and most importantly WHY you want to do it.
-Do an initial detox for 7-14 days to cleanse your entire system and improve digestion to make the most of the goodness you are about to introduce to your body.
-After the detox, begin to add more living foods gradually into your diet.
-Pick one or two nights of the week when you'll experiment with a brand new recipe, you'll be amazing at how quickly you'll develop a stack of your favourites and even start coming up with your own.
-Don't rush into getting all the equipment you've never used before, just choose one and experiment with all and any recipe you can utilise it for. My top three are a good knife, a food processer and a blender. 
-Still skeptical? If you didn't want to change anything in your current diet and were willing to just add one thing, without a doubt I can tell you to make it a green smoothie/juice. Greens leafy vegetables are so full of nutrients, oxygen, chlorophyll and many healing and energising properties, that you will soon notice your taste buds changing, cravings vanishing and miracles happening. 
-Call me bias, but I've spent a lot of time collecting your most frequently asked questions, coming up with the most useful recipes to beginners and best ever tips, so I'm recommending that the first DVD you watch is Raw Food 101! :)


Who is Tanya Alekseeva?
Tanya is a wellness coach, chef, author, and a renowned raw food and detox expert. She healed herself with raw fruits and vegetables at the age of fourteen after a near fatal car accident damaged her internal organs. Born in Russia, raised in New Zealand and now based out of London, she travels nationally and internationally to provide seminars, workshops, retreats, detox programs and one-to-one coaching, to educate and ensure busy individuals achieve their most desired wellbeing and ultimate health objectives. She is the founder of Better Raw, creator of Raw Food 101 DVD, author of Purified, Seduced and Festive eBooks, as well as the report 15 World's Healthiest Foods available to you completely FREE. Invite Tanya to speak at your next event by emailing tanya at better raw dot com. 

Over the Easter break my inbox has been getting quite a workout with questions, so I decided to make a little video, which should answer the most common of them all for you...

http://youtu.be/-nRT96yfGmQ

In this short video, you will learn:

What the consequences are when your blood is too acid
What the exact pH level is required for pure health
Three ways to determine whether you are acidic or alkaline without any tests
How to measure your pH levels at home
What are some of the goodies included in the upcoming course



Lots of love
xTanya


PS The most common question I'm getting asked is 'Is the program open to us living outside of the UK?' and my answer is a big giant alkaline 'YES OF COURSE'! It may be the middle of the night for you or the middle of a work day, but I would love to offer all this information to you no matter where you live, so we'll be recording every call! Register for 28 Days of Alkalising Give-Aways to learn more about the upcoming online course>>

PLEASE NOTE: Acid Alkaline Breakthrough course has ended and will be available to you as a downloadable product from 28th September 2012. Check out the insane 28 DAYS OF ALKALISING GIVE-AWAYS kicking off 10th September>>


As you know we are gearing up to start our 28 Days towards Acid-Alkaline Breakthrough shortly, many of you have already registered to be on the program and many of you are so keen to get going already ("Right Now!!"), that I wanted to share a few small and MAJOR tips on how you can start de-acidifying and creating a more alkaline environment within your body right away.

If this is still sounding like alien language to you, I suggest you start by reading the introduction to what PH Balance is all about and what the consequences of being too acidic are, here>>



1. Go Green
The number one, biggest, most major, huge, massive, undeniably important thing to do is start consuming loads of greens. By greens, I of course mean the usual spinach, kale, rocket, wheatgrass, watercress, arugula, and lettuce varieties. But don't forget the herbs- parsley, dill, coriander, milk thistle, nettle, and fennel. And especially superfoods, like barley grass, blue-green algae, spirulina, and chlorella. The power of greens is very well researched and proven to effectively detoxify the body, immunise your system, provide you with energy (saved on breaking down the food and digesting it), heal, build blood and increase oxygen carrying ability as well and iron content, in other words- Alkalise.

2. Follow the 20/40 rule
That is- no liquids for at least 20 minutes before meals and no liquids for at least 40 minutes after meals. Do not ever mix food with even water, as your body has all the relevant acids (in saliva, stomach and gut) to break down all the food you have. By flushing it down with a drink (yes, even water), you are diluting the delicate digestive juices and making them ineffective. This may explain bloating, as the food sits there soaking in with the drink, not stirring or budging and confusing the body on what to even do with it.

3. Eat highly alkalising foods
Greens(!!), fruits, vegetables and some nuts are the answer to the most alkalising foods. But it is also useful to know what foods are at the top of the scale and equally important- what foods are at the bottom of the scale. In the Acid-Alkaline Breakthrough program, I will send you a fully comprehensive chart, that you can print and pin up in your kitchen to use as a truly useful guide, but for now know that cucumber, avocado and radish are amongst the most alkalising foods, while pork, tuna and alcohol are amongst the most acid foods.

4. Remember to breathe
Acidic environment is all about the lack of oxygen (i.e. disease) and alkaline environment is all about oxidisation (i.e. health). According to Master Herbalist Kai Seller' intensive research into human physiology, there is absolutely no mechanism that can turn the blood as acidic or alkaline as the way you breathe. Shallow breaths do not let in much oxygen and therefore make you very acid and sick quickly, while the act of taking in long deep breaths and slowly breathing out carbon dioxide, alkalises the blood. I've been doing this on a regular basis all the while checking my PH levels and I can tell you, I have not seen anything else yet that has as much effect to my results as breathing this way.


The Acid-Alkaline Breakthrough program launches 28th September 2012.... 

I will take you through all the necessary steps to determine your acidity levels and start [by gently] de-acidifying your system with certain simple pointers, going onto incorporating more and more alkalising recipes into your lifestyle, to step-by-step way you can cleanse your system (you'll determine the length of your cleanse with a quiz I'll have for you). Register for the give-away challenge here to learn more>>

Get going right away with a special recipe:




For the essentials
Toothpicks
Mandolin
Food processor

For the rolls
1 large cucumber
1 cup almonds, soaked overnight
1 avocado, meat only
juice of 1 lemon
bunch of parsley
pinch Himalayan salt

Slice the cucumber into thin long strips with a mandolin, by laying it on its side
Transfer all the ingredients, apart from cucumber, into a food processor and process until combined to a desired consistency [Note for me this was slightly chunky almonds and smooth avocado; you may prefer the entire mixture to be more of a paste, so process for longer]
Lay cucumber strips down, one at a time, spoon the guacamole mixture onto the strip about an inch from an edge, making sure it doesn't fall out of the sides, lift off the short edge, bending it over the guacamole mixture and start rolling
Use a toothpick as a pin to hold each roll together
Serve chilled or right away- either way it's so yummy!

Enter 28 Days of Alkalising Give-Aways NOW>>

Tanya Alekseeva is a Wellness Coach who specialises in Raw Food Nutrition and Detoxification options. Tanya works with a variety of clients ranging from corporate organisations through to individuals and schools, to educate and ensure they achieve their most desired wellbeing and ultimate health objectives. She is the founder of Better Raw and Corporate Créme in London, travelling nationally and internationally to provide seminars, workshops, detox programs and one-to-one coaching. Tanya is also an author of various books, and they as well as her DVD 'Raw Food 101' are available now on http://www.BetterRaw.com/