The Hot Belly Diet.

When she came to see me, she was hoping I’d give her a secret formula for revving up her metabolism and effortlessly shedding the extra twenty pounds she’d been trying to lose to no avail. Her belly fat in particular bothered her the most, and it didn’t budge even when she went to dieting extremes. She also wanted to gain back the vibrant energy that had escaped her some ten years ago, for she felt chronically tired, spent, and bloated. And she was clear with me that she knew everything there was to know about weight loss. While she admitted that she had no time to exercise during the week due to her constantly busy work at a large nonprofit, she followed all the other “rules” that stood at the center of virtually every popular diet of late: going low-carb; curbing refined sugars, gluten, dairy, and alcohol; making breakfast the most important meal of the day; and eating routinely throughout the day to dodge “dangerous” feelings of hunger.
 

But nothing was working. Her daily menu consisted of coffee for breakfast, a salad for lunch (dressing on the side), and whole wheat pasta for dinner with fish or chicken and a side of steamed vegetables. To prevent hunger pangs in between meals, she kept whole grain bars on hand. To say Jane was frustrated was an understatement. What probably surprised her the most was the question I asked her once she was done sharing with me her history and discontent: Jane, I know you’re here to seek help with your weight and low energy, but what is bugging you the most?
 

Let’s cut to the story of Macy for a moment, a forty-six-year-old African American woman who had struggled with her weight all her life. She had bloomed to 286 pounds when I first saw her in my office, and those last one hundred pounds had come on during the past decade. Macy was a teacher of nonviolent communication, but it was evident to me at our initial visit that, although she was an excellent listener with an intuitive sense of her students’ inner thinking processes, Macy didn’t listen to her own voice within. Her internal dialogue was as dead as her metabolism, and she wasn’t connected to her own thoughts and body. Which is why she—like Jane—was taken aback by one of my first questions to her: Macy, how do you feel in your body? What does it take for you to feel motivated?
 

Now let’s meet Craig, a twenty-nine-year-old CFO in Silicon Valley with high cholesterol and elevated blood sugar. About forty pounds overweight, he had no history of diabetes, but his blood work indicated that he was in a prediabetic state—a clear sign that his metabolism wasn’t running efficiently and that his issues likely originated in his gut. His doctor wanted to put him on diabetes drugs and Lipitor, a popular cholesterol-lowering medication. Craig had previously visited me to deal with his acne, so he returned seeking help in taking control of his blood sugar and cholesterol without having to resort to drugs. And, like my other patients, Craig was bemused by my question to him: Craig, what’s going on in your life?
 

Within a matter of weeks, I began to turn all three of these people’s health around. I know what you’re asking: What was their protocol? (In other words, what did they eat, avoid, do, and not do?) And what did my somewhat strange and unusual questions have to do with their cure?
 

Welcome to Ayurveda.
 

Dr. Suhas G. Kshirsagar is an internationally recognized leader in the ancient science of Ayurveda. In addition to running his private clinic in Santa Cruz, California, he frequently shares the stage with many of the pioneers in health and wellness, including Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, and Wayne Dyer, and is a keynote speaker and faculty member at several Ayurvedic institutions worldwide.
 

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