Tips To Find The Right Meal Plan For You

Yogis are always experimenting with cleaner and healthier ways to eat. Whether you’re thinking about trying something new or already following a popular yogi diet (think vegan, paleo, macrobiotic, or ketogenic), these little tweaks to your meal plan can mean big results for boosting energy, mental clarity, and well-being.

- Lindsay Tucker

You know that your food choices inherently affect how you feel, but with influencers from famous doctors and celebrities to your favorite yoga teacher touting healthy eating fads, it can be difficult to separate the sound advice from the sensationalized.

Meanwhile, researchers are constantly mindful about how well your diet fits into your overall lifestyle. “The primary reason most diets don’t stick is that they simply aren’t sustainable,” says Seattle-based nutritionist Carole Freeman, who specializes in low-carb diets and helps her clients implement long-term dietary change. “With any diet, ask yourself: Are you eating nutrient-dense, whole foods that you find delicious? Do you look forward to your meals? And does the diet provide you with hours of sustained energy and feelings of well being?” If you don’t answer yes to all questions, something needs to shift.

In the following pages, we look at four diets that are trending among yogis right now—paleo, vegan, macrobiotic, and ketogenic—and provide expert advice for how to approach meals and supplements in order to feel your best.

The Vegan Diet

LOTS OF YOGIS EMBRACE veganism— a strictly plant-based diet and lifestyle that excludes the use and consumption of animal products and by-products— not just as a way of eating, but as a complete way of being. For many, the vegan philosophy is considered a practice of ahimsa (non-harming), one of Patanjali’s five yamas—moral and ethical guidelines for following a yogic path, as laid out in the Yoga Sutra. For health, environmental, or ethical reasons, strict vegans don’t buy or use any animal-derived products or substances. This includes dairy, eggs, silk, wool, leather, honey, gelatin, and certain soaps and cosmetics.

THE BENEFITS