Determine your Dosha – Kapha
Your dominant constitution is Kapha and these are your guidelines for your food choices. Please take these suggestion below with an open mind and don’t be to strict for yourself. Be open for change and feel how this relates to your current food consumption. Enjoy every bite & drink!
Don’t you know your dominant constitution yet? And do you like to check if you are more: Pitta, Kapha or Vata? Determine your Dosha here!
When your dominant constitution is Kapha these are characteristics
- Blessed with strength, endurance and stamina.
- Earth & Water element
- Faith, groundedness, calm, fluidity, and lubrication.
- Frequent shifts in routine will actually help you create greater healing.
- Lust, greed & attachement
- Food & security are important
- Attributes: Oily, cold, soft, dense, heavy, slimy, static, and slow (primary importance when sustaining life).
- Body’s production of mucus. Mucus is both a useful lubricator in the appropriate amounts and a source of congestion, in excess.
- Lot’s of exercise. You can tolerate more intense exercise of longer duration than any other constitutional type.
What can you do to balance Kapha
- Get plenty of physical activity (like Yoga) on a daily basis.
- Keep your consumption of fat to a minimum, including fried foods.
- Avoid iced foods and drinks, sweets, and excessive amounts of bread.
- Choose foods which are warm, light, and dry.
- Drink no more than four cups of fluid per day
- Emphasize pungent, bitter, and astringent tastes in your food and herb choices.
- Luxuriate in fresh vegetables, herbs and spices.
- Allow excitement, challenge and change into your life as much as possible! Kaphas need variety and stimulation in their foods, friends and activities. It provides the perspective to shake up old ways of experience the world and support for the new. It helps them out of stagnation and into healing.
Dietary advice
- Little oil or no oil! (Mustard oil is alright: warming and pungent, but sesame oil is to heavy).
- A low-fat diet is the greatest.
- Dairy is moist and heavy (just like Kapha) therefor avoid it! Use goat milk or small amounts of ghee instead.
- Light low-fat proteins serve you best, especially high-fiber beans.
- Anything which stimulates elimination tends to relieve Kapha (barley and beans being classic examples).
- Fluids & Salt should be kept to a minimum.
- Hot, light spicy foods are great for you! You were born for Asian and Latin American cuisine (without the cheese).
- You can lighten up more in summer and in warm climates, eating more raw foods at these times, and save the warmer heavier foods for winter and cold climates.
- In general, light crispy foods will serve you best. Popcorn is a great example, as are rise crackers, corn tortillas, and steamed vegetables.
Dining suggestions
- Breakfast: A light breakfast of fresh fruit and/or yogi tea treats you gently.
- Lunch/ Dinner: The most light, warming and drying carbohydrates like millet, barley, rye, kasha, noodles, amaranth, quinoa, corn, oat bran, and toasted oats.
What shouldn’t you do as a Kapha?
- Overeat as often and as much as possible
- Eat lots of fatty foods and oils
- Take nice long naps after meals
- Deny your creative self
- Assume someone else will do it
- Don’t exercise
- Live on potato chips and beer
- Use drugs, especially sedatives and tranquilizers
- Repress your feelings