People have been asking me about macro and how I do it, and how I manage the time it takes and what are the basics. And so here is a very short primer that I hope won't overwhelm.
The essence of macro is balance -- balance in the way you cook your foods, in the taste of the food and in the very foods themselves -- which can take a lifetime to embrace, understand and practice
Meanwhile, the physical picture of macro, if you will, is the makeup of the plate, and how we respond to it:
1. Half the plate is whole grains sprinkled with mineral-rich sesame seeds, the other half is two or three veggie dishes and half a cup of beans -- all flavored with sea vegetables, really good sea salt and soy, all three full of minerals and vitamins.
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| This was my husband's favorite meal, and mine, too, just last night. I think all five tastes were represented. (See No. 6 below.) This is corn chowder, so sweet and yummy, made with butternut squash, corn, onion, carrot and sweetened with a broth made by simmering the actual corn cobs, stripped of corn. You wouldn't believe the yummy broth this makes. Miso was added at the end. The grain is barley. The beans are adzuki, so full of nutrition, and cooked, again with butternut squash to sweeten and mellow. Brussells sprouts are steamed and drizzled with lemon. The other vegetable dish was so yummy, I thought I was at a gourmet restaurant. Really, this is good food, I swear. It was bok choy, leeks and green beans (from my garden!), sautéed in a half teaspoon of high=quality sesame oil and drizzled with soy sauce. So yummy, honest, for real. I licked my plate. Not really. |
2. The meal is accompanied by a soup that is flavored with fermented paste, called miso. The meal is also accompanied by a small, very small, amount of something fermented, like a small pickle or unpasteurized sauerkraut, which helps jumpstart the enzymes.
3. No sugar, very little fat and only high-quality, very little fruit and then only seasonal, no dairy, no meat (except if you want, fish a couple of times a week), some nuts and seeds for snacks, no flour products (although high-quality is occasionally allowed), no nightshade veggies (potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants leech calcium) or tropical fruits (doesn't compute in our non-tropical bodies). No caffeine or alcohol. The idea is balance and stimulants are avoided.
4. Sounds like a lot of nos, initially, but the number of yesses far outweigh the nos, and I swear to the heavens -- honestly and for real -- you get used to it. I know i now find butternut squash and also corn on the cob to be about as sweet as anything I know.
5. Behavior around the food suggests calm. Chew slowly, partly to slow yourself around eating, but to turn the food to liquid, so that you truly are digesting the food to become part of you. Macros believe in chewing each bite 50-100 times, which means you really have to sit down, slow down, to nourish your bodies. Cook with stainless steel or cast-iron cookware. Drink spring water or filtered tap water. Macros also believe in 30 minutes outside every day, walking, moving the body, not for aerobic benefit, but because the body simply wants to move. Bring plants inside the house to get chlorophyll. The macro diet is surely a diet, but it is also a philosophy and can be approached from a Christian or Buddhist perspective. It is also said to be very close to Tao.
6. This is very, very important to grasp, something I still can't believe is happening. I don't crave food anymore. This is because I am moving toward balance. I try to represent all five tastes on my plate: bitter, sweet, sharp, salty, sour. I also feel this balance because every single thing I put in my body, from the salt that I used to salt the food, down to the sea vegetables, is good for me. I feel like I am pouring a river of food into my body that is moving through my body, dumping all the good stuff right where it needs to be. My macrobiotic counselor told me I am in the process of recreating my blood every time I eat. It takes about four months of good macro practice to completely change all the red-blood cells in the body. Now, eventually, some people move back into eating things like ice cream here and there, or having a beer. That can be part of a macro practice, too. For now, I am avoiding.
Here's a really, really good, basic web site and also a really, really accessible book, Modern Day Macrobiotics, with lots of beautiful illustrations, to start with that mostly embraces the food part, which is the part that gets you on the way to the balance part. In the two months since I have learned to cook, quietly and calmly, taking lots of time cutting vegetables, I have learned much about myself and the world.I am sustaining myself as I am cooking. There's something meditative and whole about taking time to nourish your body in the best way possible that brings you into harmony with everything around you.
One other thing, people also ask me all the time how I find time to do all this. It does take time, there is no doubt. But you learn when to find the time and where to cut time. You also learn to love your time, cooking, tending the very essence of yourself and your being. I get up very early in the morning, before everybody else does, and do some of my cooking. When I'm being really, really smart about this, I do a lot of the day's cooking in the morning, so that most of what I do the rest of the day is warm things up. I do indeed find chopping vegetables to be meditative, and that helps. I like chopping.
Please let me know how I can help. I am no expert by any means. Even the experts aren't experts. This is why they call this a macrobiotic "practice."
With love and hope
