People recovering from long, debilitating illness, cleansing diets, fasts, or bodybuilders or people who wish to lose weight, assume that you have to eat a lot of protein and animal meats in order to gain weight and build muscle mass, or lose weight without losing muscle mass. They drink protein shakes and think this is healthy. This is simply not true.
Certainly you do need some extra protein, and that can include animal meats, preferably liver because most fasts and cleansing diets are low in vitamin B12, but really all you have to do in order to bulk up is:
1. Eat more calories than your basal metabolic rate.
2. Eat enough fat and carbs to spare your protein for things other than fuel.
Fuel, or glycogen, is the first priority for the body, because without glycogen, which is metabolized and stored by the liver, the brain will die. The brain has to come before everything in the body, naturally!
We get energy from the Kreb's Cycle, which requires fat, protein and carbs together in a good combination. That is the proper fuel mixture, so limiting fats, carbs or protein causes a nightmare for the body because then it has to rob our storehouses of muscle, fat, vitamins and minerals in order to convert things into what it needs.
Carb Energy is so important that both protein and fats will be converted to carbs whenever carbs are in short supply. Thus fats and protein cannot do their main jobs if we eat a low-carb, low-calorie diet.
Fats build and protect cells and scavenge out free radicals, and proteins are the bricks that build muscle, hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters and immuno responses. When we feel angry, frusrated or joyful - or horny - or kill a virus, it's thanks to a protein. When eating fewer calories than our metabolic needs in order to lose weight it is often a good idea to eat a high-protein diet at least 4 days out of the week.
High-protein, low-fat diets are risky over long periods of time because the digestive by-products of protein digestion and converting fat stores are highly toxic, require minerals for buffering, congest the liver and overwork the kidneys. So unless you're under 30, don't even think about eating a high-protein diet for more than three months at a time, even if you’re O positive blood type.
Because proteins are builders, having too many proteins in the body can clog delicate tissues and prevent them from exiting toxins or receiving the oxygen and nutrients they need. Proteins clog up the cell-sized channels that allow nutrients to go into cells and waste materials to come out, making things stagnant and polluted and eventually cells die.
In Ayurvedic medicine we call foods that build up the body "sweet." They can be sweet in taste or sweet in post-digestive effect. For instance, Honey is both sweet in taste and sweet in post-digestive effect. Meat is not sweet in taste, but it is sweet (building) in post-digestive effect. When it's time to rebuild, it's time to include more sweet foods in your diet. Here's a list:
Wheat, barley, All types of Rice, corn, millet, oats
Nuts and seeds
lentils
Milk, butter cheese
Honey, maple syrup, raw cane sugar
Dates, figs
Licorice Root
Red Clove
Peppermint
Slippery Elm
beef, fish, pork
oils
cucumber
potatoes
bananas, grapes, melons, oranges, peaches, pears, plums
As you can see, many of these foods are alkaline, so you can rebuild and remain alkaline.
The most alkaline way to get perfect protein (perfect protein means every essential amino acid) is to mix grains and legumes at a 4 to 1 ratio, and teeny-tiny portions of meat, or cook the grain/legumes in chicken broth. Snack on nuts.
As an example, make up a batch of basmati rice with green peas (a legume) cooked in chicken broth. Top with two slivers of chicken breast meat and all the veggies you want. Every culture has a meal that follows this principle of perfect protein - paella, couscous, Chinese Fried Rice, Japanese rice bowls or noodle dishes (Ramen) with just a bit of beef teriyaki or shrimp tempura, etc.
It's important to remember that vegetables and grains have protein in them, and that we only need GRAMS of protein a day, not ounces. So you can have grams of protein each day in your servings of veggies and grains, and only have larger portions of chicken, fish, beef or eggs (eggs are perfect protein, nothing beats an egg, and they're more alkaline than most protein sources) about 3-5x a week.
So that you don't clog your digestive systems up again now that's it hopefully nice and clean, be sure to use pungent herbs liberally and to occasionally have whole meals of nothing but fruit or nothing but salad or nothing but sweet potato and fast on digestive teas once a week. Overdosing on grains can be just as problematical for some people who have a small pancreas and an ancestral background that does not include a lot of rice, so be sure to accent veggies more than grains.
High Protein Diets
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