Macrobiotic Life

This is my answer to one of the reader’s question. This opinion is very personal view on the “how to follow the macrobiotic diet” topic (why do I say it, this is personal blog, right?) So read it like an interesting opinion from someone who eats 6 years macrobioticaly and take what you want from it.

Here’s Wendy’s question, that inspired me to write this post:

Hello, I just searched for “macrobiotic lifestyle how-to” and stumbled upon your blog. It is extremely informative and wonderful. Please keep writing and don”t feel discouraged to quit just when I’ve found you! I need all the info I can get as I would like to begin this lifestyle.
I am a vegan and obviously would continue that while eating the macobiotic way. Any thoughts on this? I know many people following this lifestyle eat fish, is that essential? I would think not. Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
I am going to go back to reading your blog and gleaning more knowledge.
Thank you!
-Wendy

Hey Wendy, thanks a lot for a lovely comment
No worry, I won’t stop posting new things that interest me. It’s just, that when people comment, like you did, and ask about specific questions, I can relate to them with my posts. I can provide them with many answers from my macrobiotic experience and I am not playing “I know it all”, I know when to give my personal advice and when to provide an useful link to another website with interesting answers.

About the fish.. from the people I know around me, they have no problem at all, being on the macrobiotic without any meat/fishes. Don’t worry, experiment. Me personaly, I eat fish about 1 time a month, I don’t eat any other meat. I have no need for meat. There are questions about the B12, but there are so many different opinions, that I wouldn’t worry with this issue at the beginning. I think the best thing you can do when starting with macrobiotic is this: take it easy, keep it simple and most importantly in M, learn cooking. Don’t be stressed and obsessed by too much theories at the start, the books are full of them. The M system is very complex. But also very simple. It depends how you look at it. Leave the complexities for later if you want. Because the most important, why people don’t stick with M longer is, they hadn’t patience to learn the proper cooking styles and because of that, they don’t know how to satisfy their cravings.

The cooking doesn’t take much longer time than any different cooking style/diet. It’s only that it seems so, at the beginning. People think, it’s very complicated. But it is not. Just take it easy and learn a little each day. Practice new recipes. It’s all down to the cooking. All the theories are great, but in the end, to any illness, problem, the general suggestion is to follow the standard macrobiotic plate. You can know many details about each topic later, but when you don’t know how to cook, you are just a full head of theories without action.

Practice, practice and don’t be afraid that you can do anything wrong. Don’t be obsessed by the exact cooking rules (there are many tiny-details in each cooking book, that are making new comers crazy). Don’t fret about the exaxct cooking times, exact procedures, when you start with M. I see many people around me, they have problems with this. They ask, if it’s too bad if they boiled miso for 5 minutes instead of simmering. If it’s totaly bad for their health if they eat honey or raw fruit, or if they put raw salt on their plate instead of cooking it, the same with oil. And then, people are stressed and rather stop with macrobiotic and switch to completely poor eating habit, instead of making mistakes with macrobiotic and continuing the learning process.

But this is typical in all the human’s endeavors. We are just like this. This could be summarized as the complex of perfectionism, idealism. If we don’t eat macrobiotic (switch to your favorite diet/activity) perfectly well, we rather stop it. If we don’t go to the gym each day, we rather don’t go at all, instead of going once per week for example. If we eat something non-macrobiotic that day, we follow the same poor pattern the whole day and are thinking, that only from tommorow we can start again.
I suggest anyone starting the M diet, don’t be so strict with yourself. Accept the biggest rule of Life: we are not perfect, nothing is perfect!
Do the best you can, with what you have, where you are.
And never, never give up

I see this path as perfectly ok too:
If you have no serious illness and you would like to start macrobiotic, start just eating 1 single macrobiotic meal a day. For example for 1 week, or 2 or 3, depends on you. Then, it will become perfect habit and very easy to follow for you. For a dinner or supper or breakfast, you will have 1 macrobiotic meal. You will slowly learn the cooking. Then, simply add a second M meal to your daily eating. Again, stick to it for 1 week or more. And then try to eat 3 meals and then continue with snacks too. No need to hurry, you can transition to the full macrobiotic diet for a period of 1 year. Anything is better than nothing.

But if you are cold turkey person.. hey, no problem, just go for it in your style. The paragraph above was for the easy, relaxed people

And here are few links for your continuous research and inspiration. Check this website and there is a selection box, where you select any person and you can read their interview. The first sentence is usually how they started with macrobiotic and it follows with their real life experiences. Very interesting reading.

In general, the whole macrobiotics.co.uk website has many many informative articles about M.

But ofcourse, the first thing to do, is to buy a complete, comprehensive book. I am sorry, but I won’t give any book suggestion, because I am not from the english speaking country and I am not acquainted which books are good for he beginners. If you have any suggestions, please, leave them at the comments.

Also, anyone, anytime, anywhere.. if you have any question, post them to comments. Don’t think it’s a stupid question, there’s no one like this! I can answer many questions, give you opinions and useful links.

Macrobiotic is wonderful lifestyle system. It’s not only about eating. It transforms you completely, not from the outside, but from the core inside. Nothing can transform you so deeply as food, no other knowledge. The deepest knowledge is coming with the food, that creates all your body cells. Your physical body, but the spiritual too! All si connected.

Love&Peace

Tags: Diet, fish, Health, how to, Inspiration, Macrobiotic, rules

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Macrobiotic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.