Why our ancestors were healthier than us

The 1/7 Detox System is a diet program formulated by Flt. Lieutenant and fitness trainer Akshay Chopra. It consists of one day of detox or green fasting, five days of clean eating and one cheat day. Below is an excerpt from the book ‘1/7 Detox System: A powerful clean eating system for everyone’ on how our ancestors lived a far healthier lifestyle.

There is a reason why historians say that we need to learn from history. In our context, let’s venture back into the 40s and 50s, the times of our grandparents. My grandfather being a wrestler ate a diet, rich in full-cream milk, almonds and butter. The same was the case with my grandmom who along with all these loved red meat in particular. I could not recall an incident wherein any of them got a heart problem.

The funda today is straight forward, initially corrupt a system and once people are fed up of that system, get it back to the original form with new packaging. I am talking about organic farming, it is the new fad, every magazine and article is telling you to go organic, but who is on the losing end? It is the consumers, who purchase the products labelled as organic at highly-inflated prices. Most of us have to be contended with the pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables available in the market. It has become a social and style statement when someone proclaims loudly to have gone organic. Organic is nothing but basic clean and natural, pesticide-free fruits and vegetables which our grandparents used to have. They never knew fancy terms like organic, detox diet or the latest in the trendy jargon i.e. ‘skinny’.

The latest trend in the market is being skinny or the formula of ‘skinny is in’. How can skinny ever be in, you mean to say that the weakness is the new in-thing. People who are fit are not skinny but lean muscular. Tomorrow if someone walks on the road naked and claims that it burns more calories than all other practices, would you say that ‘naked is in’? We need to think realistically and logically. An actor or model posing for a men’s magazine cover in underwear, in reality may not be even 50 percent of what he looks like in the picture. The use of make-up, body tan, lighting and our best friend ‘photoshop’ can literally turn a Pug into a Bulldog. It is the strength that has been and always will be in. Similarly it was some weakling who by the misuse of media gave the funda of ‘skinny is in’. I don’t know when such people will understand the basic formula that ‘brains are always in’.

In our younger days if we ever felt hungry, our parents used to cook a parantha for us with a spoonful of butter on it, which was not only extremely healthy but very satiating, especially when accompanied by a glass of chocolate milk. Most times there used to be no snacks in the house to munch on, a basic practice which can yield powerful results to control your cravings. All we had was fruits like apples, bananas, oranges, guava, pears, etc. on which we munched guilt free. Junk food was always there, where my grandfather used to havejalebis and puries in the streets of Lahore (now in Pakistan), we as kids used to relish the chhole bhature and other sweets. However, they were occasional indulgences, may be once in two weeks or so. But rest of the physically active days and unconscious nutritional eating used to take care of that one time of indulgence. Read about how you can stop your child from eating junk food.

Today the problem is interlinked. Almost negligible physical activity combined with huge intake of junk food and excess of sugar forms a sort of a vicious cycle. Remember one thing, clean eating and exercise go hand in hand but diet has a slight upper hand when it comes to losing fat and getting leaner. The 1/7 detox system incorporates the goodness of our ancestral way of living with our present lifestyle and presents us with combined benefits of both the worlds.

All major religions and cultures of the world advocate periods of fasting or dieting as a means for the body to burn the toxins. It is just in the modern times, when we are extremely disconnected from our roots that such age old practices seem like a new revolutionary diet program when packaged and presented by a dietician.

Excerpted with permission from Akhsay Chopra. You can buy the book on Flipkart and Amazon.

Originally published on www.thehealthsite.com