What does a healthy lunch look like? Many people really liked the video about breakfast, more than 2 million views, and many asked to tell us about lunch and dinner. Well, let's talk about lunch in this video.
When is the best time to have lunch? What to eat for lunch and what is better not to eat? You will learn about all this in this video.
Let's start with whether lunch is even important. I said that breakfast is the main meal of the day. For those who haven't watched that video, here's a quick reminder: I always recommend eating three meals a day.
Breakfast, from the point of view of Tibetan medicine, morning is the time of the wind, when we must definitely eat something. And here we can consume all foods, ranging from carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Lunch should be from 12 to 2.
And dinner is mucus time, when you cannot eat any types of carbohydrates, because insulin sensitivity is at its lowest level. So, I already said that lunch should be from 12 to 2 ideally. Why?
Because this is the time of bile, the time when our digestive juices are in the most active state, and when we can digest difficult-to-digest animal proteins and fats. And this food is necessary, especially for us who live in a sharply continental climate, in order to accumulate fire energy, in order to feel more alert and energetic, despite the fact that we have short daylight hours and little sun. This heat energy, which is released as a result of the breakdown of proteins and fats, turns on and maintains our internal heaters.
In Tibetan medicine there are a number of diseases called cold diseases. Now, if a person constantly dresses inappropriately for the weather, gets cold and accumulates cold, then such diseases arise. Or, when a person, living in a cold climate, does not eat foods that give him warmth, that is, foods that are hot in nature - these are fats and proteins, then he can also develop internal cold and develop cold diseases.
And, of course, the third thing: there is psycho-emotional cold, when we are always in emotional tension and constantly accumulate negative energy within ourselves. Is it possible to do without lunch? I think it's impossible.
I will say one most powerful argument: if we don’t have lunch, a lot of time passes from breakfast to dinner without eating. When we don't eat anything for 5 hours or more than 6 hours, we experience fluctuations in our sugar levels, and fluctuations in sugar levels greatly affect insulin. Insulin levels affect appetite.
That is, you can go without eating for more than 6 hours, and then you overeat. Those who don't have lunch have a good dinner and are more likely to overeat at dinner. And actually the second point: we must provoke the outflow of bile, and animal fats and proteins provoke the outflow of bile.
In videos about breakfast, I said that our liver produces 600 ml of bile during the day. We must create conditions for the outflow of bile at least three times a day, otherwise we will have problems with bile, cholelithiasis, and so on. You can see about this in the video about bile, what to eat for lunch.
As I already said, for lunch you need to eat all foods that are difficult to digest. These are animal proteins and fats. Let me explain to you a little here: the main product of lunch is proteins, but don’t forget about vegetables.
At lunch there must be a vegetable salad. It could be sauerkraut, it could be carrots, beets in winter, or in summer, in season, it could be greens, leafy vegetables, cabbage. Whatever salad you like, that's the salad.
200-300 grams can be eaten at lunch. Plus the salad should have proteins: meat, fish, seafood. And about the side dish - a very important point: if you are prone to weight gain or want to lose weight, if you have high levels of low-density lipoprotein or dyslipidemia, then under no circumstances should you eat animal proteins with fats plus carbohydrates.
This will increase the total calories of your meal, and whatever you don't burn will be stored as fat and will raise your cholesterol, or you will gain weight. For example, whole grain pearl barley should not be eaten with fried meat or lamb. But if you are actively involved in sports and have a high calorie expenditure, and you need to make up for these costs, it is, of course, better to do this at breakfast and lunch than at dinner.
Therefore, such people can combine these products, but those who cannot, you can eat a large bowl of salad plus either whole grains such as oatmeal, lentils, etc. , or a piece of meat or fish or seafood - shared without a side dish. And for those who can’t imagine their life without soups, I want to say that you can eat either soups or a main dish at lunch.
You have to choose. This may irritate you now, but we should always keep in mind the total caloric content of our lunch. If you eat 200 g of salad, plus soup, and a second dish, this will be much more in calories than you need.
As a result, a good breakfast, a hearty lunch and a normal dinner will lead to a very high daily calorie intake. And here you must remember that no matter what we eat, regardless of the field and quality of the products, caloric intake, that is, energy balance, always comes first. If we eat more than we spend, then the foods we choose will have no effect or benefit.
For vegetarians, I want to say separately, I already see comments that we do not eat animal proteins, fats and the like. I want to tell you separately that you can use plant proteins instead of animal proteins. Lentils are a very good food that contains many amino acids, almost all but one.
Everything is in oatmeal, soy products and so on. You can consume all this instead of animal proteins, and you, too, like non-vegetarians, have active bile and digestive fire at this time. And when I talk about breakfast, lunch and dinner, I always focus on having enough fiber.
Therefore, 200-300 g of fresh vegetable salad or sauerkraut is very important at lunch, and this will be a source of fiber. And for those people who eat whole grain cereals instead of meat or fish, their cereals also have a lot of fiber. This is very good for health, it is good for our intestinal microflora.
Fiber provides food for our intestinal bacteria. What should you not eat for lunch? Carbohydrates, sweets, confectionery, desserts - this is what you should never eat for lunch.
Why shouldn't you eat? Because during lunch, insulin sensitivity decreases. And if we eat sweets at lunch, the body will have to produce more insulin to activate the carbohydrates that we eat.
This is the first. And second: all sweets greatly increase the calorie content of lunch. Even a small piece of sweetness can significantly increase calorie content, and you will not have time to burn it all off during the rest of the day.
If you haven't watched the breakfast video, be sure to check it out.
