How to Eat Alkaline — Plus Cooking Tips

When your body is acidic, it is not a healthy body. The problem with the Standard American Diet (aka. SAD diet) is that it is pumping us up with damaging acids and toxins every single day that are robbing us of our health and energy.

Most Americans combat this lack of energy with caffeine, coffee, sugar, and energy drinks. They are using more acidic foods and drinks to get more energy and it doesn’t work!

Instead, getting alkaline is simple. The goal is to eat more foods with lots of minerals and less sugar and processed foods. Fresh green vegetables are always a good bet, but there are plenty of other alkaline foods like nuts, seeds, beans, and low sugar fruits.

Follow these simple tips to eat alkaline.

Incorporate Alkalizing Foods into Your Diet Every Day
Adding just one or two raw alkaline foods into your diet every day will make a huge difference for your health without feeling like sacrifice or deprivation. To start, try to eat one alkalizing food every single day, and then later you can add on as you go.

It’s all about moderation, not deprivation.
Great alkalizing foods to start with include:

Avocados
Cabbage
Lemons, grapefruit, and limes
Tomatoes
Almonds
Lettuce
Broccoli
Squash
Cucumbers
Spinach

These foods are all filled with alkalizing minerals like magnesium, calcium, and potassium, as well as the super food, chlorophyll.

High up on the list of great alkaline foods to eat are salads. They are an easy and versatile way to add a ton of alkalizing foods into your diet that go with just about any type of cuisine.

Fresh green smoothies and green juices are another quick and easy meal option that deliver a ton of nutritional bang for your buck. Make sure your smoothie has raw greens like spinach or kale, delicious fruit, a healthy source of fat or two, and alkaline protein.

Eat Plenty of Healthy Fats

While we’ve all been led to believe that fat is bad for you, it’s actually monumentally important that you get plenty of healthy fats daily.

There are fats that kill, and fats that heal!

The first, and arguably most important fat to strive for in your diet is Omega-3 fatty acid. It’s an essential fatty acid, which means that your body requires it, but it doesn’t make it on its own. You’ll find it in:

Fish oil (most powerful source of EPA and DHA)
Fish
Micro-algae oil (this is the best source for vegans and vegetarians)

Here are some plant-based sources of Omega-3s, however, they are ALA, not EPA or DHA. To get the EPA and DHA, the ALA must get converted in your body which requires enzymes (especially Delta 6-Hydrogenanse).

Chia seeds
Hemp seeds
Flax seeds
Walnuts

Here’s the problem. This conversion is SMALL. So small, it’s less than 1%. This is WHY I say that vegetarians cannot be truly healthy! In fact, some of the sickest people I have seen are vegetarians. And it is for 3 reasons –
1. They cannot convert plant-based Omega-3s (ALA) efficiently
2. There are NO vegetarian sources of EPA
3. Many (not all) eat to many carbs (sugar)

Now, I have HUGE respect for vegetarians. My wife Chelsea is one, and I am about 99% vegetarian. But Chelsea understand for her to be healthy and have the resources to fight inflammation, she needs to take Omega-3 fish oil, and she does.

We both take 3,000mg of Omega-3s every day, and I eat wild-caught cold water fish in moderation as well.

Omega-6 fats are also essential, but this one is present in many of the “bad fat” foods that are all too common like fried foods, pasta and pizza, baked goods, and fatty meats.

Therefore, Omega-6s are pro-inflammatory. You need them in small amounts. Your Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio should be 1:1, no more than 1:4, yet the average American has 19X more of the pro-inflammatory fats (and some even 1:25, and 1:50).

So, not only do you need to INCREASE your Omega-3 fats, but at the same time, DECREASE the pro-inflammatory Omega-6 fats. They are most commonly found in:

Soybean oil and soy
Corn oil and corn
Sunflower oil
Safflower oil
Margarine
hydrogenated vegetable oils
non-grass-fed animal proteins
farm-raised fish

Trans-Fats are just as bad.

Cakes, pies and cookies
Biscuits
Breakfast sandwiches
Margarine
Crackers
Microwave popcorn
Cream-filled candies
Doughnuts

Here are two unusual sources:

1. Flax Oil – it is a PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acid, which has the potential to go rancid very easily. Most, if not all, manufactured flax oils go rancid and turn to transfats. If you are making flax oil fresh from home, that is fine. Flax seeds are fine as well.

2. Cooking with any other oil other than avocado or coconut (i.e. extra virgin olive oil) – they cannot hold a high smoke point, and will go rancid, turning into a transfat.

Healthy Omega 9 oils, the last of the essential fatty acids is found in:

Olive oil
Almonds/almond oil
Avocado/avocado oil
Macadamia nut oil

There’s one more healthy fat:Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCT),b> which are found in coconut and MCT oil.

This is loaded with saturated fat, but don’t be concerned - current research is showing that healthy saturated fats are so important to the body, so load up on coconut oil for more MCTs. Combine Fruit With Fat I hear it all the time… Fruit is okay because it’s a ‘natural sugar’.

Don’t believe this myth! All fruits have fructose in them that have acidifying effects. Not all fruits are created equal in an alkaline lifestyle. Eat as much as you want of the fruits that you know have an alkalizing effect like:

Lemons
Limes
Grapefruit
Avocados
Tomatoes
Coconut
Pomegranates

If it’s a fruit that has more sugar, try to stick to one serving of that fruit a day. You can eat or use ingredients like bananas, but make sure to have it with a healthy fat. That’s why smoothies are a great way to consume your favorite fruit. Now, I know you what you’re saying – you should NEVER combine fruit with any other foods. This statement is true, most of the time – EXCEPT when it’s a high sugar fruit. Read this excerpt that explains WHY from my new book, GET OFF YOUR ACID – 7 Steps in 7 Days to Lose Weight, Fight Inflammation, and Reclaim Your Health & Energy!

Combine acidic fruits with fat.

If you are going to eat moderate to high acidic fruits (berries or bananas), combine them with a healthy fat.

For example, combine berries with coconut butter or add one of these fruits (ideally frozen) to a smoothie, as they will make the smoothie taste better. It is very important to add some healthy fats as well, such chia or hemp seeds, coconut oil, and some raw nut butters, which will slow down the metabolization of the sugars in the fruit, preventing an insulin spike.

Even though there will be some fermentation of the sugar in the fruit, it will be the lesser of two evils compared to that of your insulin spiking, which should always be avoided. In doing so, you will have a great-tasting smoothie that is net alkaline.

Drink Alkaline Water

The average person loses 2.5 to 3 liters of water daily, and that’s from everyday activities like walking, eating, and sleeping. Add exercise into this mix, and you can tack on another liter to that statistic. If your body is dehydrated – and it’s a fact that 90% of Americans are chronically dehydrated – it’s got to work that much harder to do everything that’s required of it. That’s how chronic dehydration can lead to getting sick and even long-term diseases. The body is too busy compensating for a deficient amount of water to fight off illnesses.

To avoid dehydration and not live in deprivation, drink 3 to 4 liters of good, pure alkaline water every day. If you want to get more specific for yourself, drink half of your body weight in ounces daily. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, drink 75 ounces of water every day. But not just any water, alkaline water! So drink filtered water and add a slice of lemon to raise the pH to around 9.0. If you really want to dial it in, add some superfood powders like Alkamind Daily Greens or Daily Minerals!