Book Review – Eat Right for your Shape by Lee Holmes + a GIVEAWAY!
Eat Right For Your Shape is a beautiful and easy to read, Ayurvedic food and lifestyle guide by Supercharged Food author Lee Holmes. I have spent a lot of time pouring over this book, and have cooked several recipes from it – loving every one. My favourites so far are the Green Bean Subji and Sweet Potato Hash. Below you will find my review and details on how to win a copy of this book for yourself.
“Even if you only follow Ayurvedic recipes one day a week, see this as a positive change.”
Lee recommends implementing changes at your own pace which is a suggestion I agree with – whenever faced with the idea of a radical diet overhaul I immediately think of all the foods I can’t have, then proceed to stick my head in the sand. Instead of coming at these diet principles from the approach of what you can’t have, think about it more like something that you can do in bits and pieces to suit you.
Lee makes it easy for you to get an idea of your Dosha (constitution/body type) and then choose the right recipes for you with colour coded symbols and helpful summaries. To start with, there is a quiz where you can find your dosha, and then a chapter describing the characteristics of each dosha so you can get to know it, and then a handy graph listing the best foods to eat for each type for easy reference. Not only that, there are meal plans as well.
The meals are also split into seasons and tagged for their appropriate dosha, with suggestions given on how to adjust the recipe for other doshas. I think that one of Lee’s aims is not to provide you a strict list of meals to eat (although there is meal plan for each dosha included), but rather to provide you with guide of what foods will boost your health, and then encourages you to incorporate this as much as is possible for you.
There is also a section explaining intermittent fasting – you might know this as the 5:2 diet – and the practice of this in a traditional Ayurvedic diet. While commonly recommended as a tool for weight loss, Lee also recommends this method of eating as a way to give your digestive system a ‘rest’.
One of the things I love about the way Lee writes is how laid back she is – she suggests just taking on as much as you would like to from her recommendations, and if you have a moment of eating some less health promoting foods, to absolutely NOT feel guilty about it.
But wait, there’s more.
Not only do you get a beautiful guide to eating for your dosha, recipes and meal plans, there’s also a section on incorporating Ayurvedic lifestyle techniques, including yoga, mindful eating and breathing techniques. This book is much more than a recipe book, it is a complete Ayurvedic lifestyle guide. And while there are several Ayurvedic books already published, many could be considered overwhelming, and I am yet to find one quite as pretty as this.
In case you missed it, check out my interview with Lee where we chatted about her trip to India which inspired her recipes for this book and how her eating style has changed over the years. We also chatted about intermittent fasting, some Ayurvedic principles and Lee explains Doshas and how we can balance our health by eating to suit our type.
Eat Right for Your Shape GIVEAWAY
Want to win a copy of Eat Right for Your Shape? Just comment below in 25 words and tell me what your favorite food memory is.
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Competition guidelines
Competition ends Saturday 21st May 2016.
Winners will be announced in my newsletter on Monday 23nd May 2016
Only open to Australian residents.
The winning entry must be subscribed to my newsletter.