10 things I learned from 10 days of khichdi cleanse

If you are anything like me, there is a good chance you will not even bother reading this introductory paragraph. Your thumbs will scroll the page while your eyes scan for the number ‘1’ as you hastily try to make your way to the list.

For those of you who are crazy enough to want to read the introduction, here it is. Khichdi is a traditional Ayurvedic dish made with split mung beans, basmati rice along with ample ghee and a load of spices. A Khichdi cleanse involves eating Khichdi for all your meals for a set number of days, allowing our bodies to detox while providing ample nutrients.

I had doubts, concerns, and questions about the cleanse. Not to mention apprehensions about my ability to go through with it. After all, who would want to eat the same meal 3 times a day let alone for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days, all my notions were expelled along with ample toxins.

(A side note: You need to prepare your body for the cleanse and I would not recommend starting one haphazardly.)

Without further ado, here are the 10 things I learned from my 10 days of Khichdi cleanse.

1. Recovery, not damage, hurts
   
   Before the cleanse, I lived for a month away from home on a company assignment. I ate all my fat-laden processed meals outside, watched my exercise regimen fall apart along with the rest of my healthy routine. I drank, stayed up late and continued the onslaught on my mind and body without feeling a thing.
   
   It was only when I got back home, did I notice that I woke up feeling heavy, groggy, stiff and grumpy (hello toxicity). My system had been extensively damaged but I did not feel a thing.
   
   It was only a few days into the Khichdi cleanse as I started to clean up my act, that I began to feel a whole lot worse before I began to feel a whole lot better. Toxins, both physical and emotional, began to surface before being eliminated and that hurt. Damage is hardly ever painful. Damage is nothing at best or enjoyable at worst. Recovery is painful. Recovery hurts.
2. Choices and memory
   
   Eating 30 khichdis in a row seemed to be high on the list of my concerns going into the cleanse. Two days in and my concerns seemed justified as I grew weary of eating the same meal every day.
   
   Then one day, as I found myself licking the bowl after polishing off the khichdi, I realized something. If I didn’t think about how every meal till now or every meal for a foreseeable future consisted of the only khichdi, every single meal was delicious in itself.
   
   In the absence of memory and time, my now was incredibly satisfying. If I didn’t yearn for all the food that I couldn’t eat; rice, beans, and ghee were a gastronomic delight. In the absence of choices, there were no what-ifs and I was always content.
3. To complicate is easy, to simplify is difficult
   
   I remember the founder of Linn Products once told me, “Anyone can do complicated things but to do simple things in life is difficult.” This aptly applies to our eating patterns and habits. We are the only species on the planet that has managed to take something as natural and simple as eating and turned it into something unnecessarily complex and confusing.
   
   We plan elaborate diets and develop strange eating patterns all in pursuit of a simple goal, to sustain ourselves and be healthy. We burden the system with myriad complex food combinations and wonder why it struggles. Eating the same meal every day which provided almost all macro and micronutrients simplified my food preparation and consumption. It brought a sense of stability and calm to the mind and body.
4. The journey of 30 khichdis begins with a single spoon
   
   I’ve got to be honest; at the beginning of the cleanse, I wished for quicker results. Not only because, we have become conditioned for quick fixes but also because I wanted to enjoy what I could see others having.
   
   I craved sandwiches, omelets, and ice cream. A few days into the cleanse, the results began to appear but the craving never disappeared. I came close to caving in on more than one occasion but managed to eat my way through the cleanse. It made me realize that nothing in life comes easy.
   
   Discipline and sacrifice are critical but incredibly demanding. With almost everyone being undisciplined around you it is easy to cave in. You only have to be accountable to yourself in most cases and let’s face it, you are easy to convince. You are easy because you are human. It takes meta-human tenacity to inculcate long-term discipline and sacrifice. This is why everyone can but not everyone does it.
5. Trust your body-mind so that they can trust you
   
   Our minds and bodies have incredible healing capacity. A capacity that goes far beyond our wildest imagination. Every cell in our mind and body overflows with this ability because they harbor an intelligence that is 3.5 billion years in the making.
   
   Yet, for some reason, we trust our ‘own’ intelligence. We believe that we have all the answers, that we know what is best. We eat according to the watch and not our hunger. We eat according to what we crave rather than what we need. Despite being diurnal animals, we eat most at night upsetting our natural rhythms.
   
   How can our intellect of a few years compare with that of a few billion years? It is but a drop in the ocean. Trust your mind-body complex, trust the signals that it gives out. It knows what needs to be done, what should be done. Trust it, so that it can trust you. Trust it and it will heal you. There’s only one thing to do; do nothing and get out of your way.
6. Food is just food but it is also FOOD.
   
   Food is one of those rare pleasures in life like laughing and sleeping that is innate. It was never acquired or learned, it comes from within. It is a source of gratification but it is also a source of sustenance.
   
   Like most pleasures in life, we have a horrible relationship with food. We seek it for gratification and not sustenance. We overindulge but underfeed ourselves. Which is why we eat a lot but never feel satisfied. We inhale our food, forgetting that taste is on the tongue and not in the stomach.
   
   Simple and light meals have the potential to create a healthy body. Rich and heavy meals the potential to create a dull and lethargic one. Remember food is just food (a simple and light form of sustenance) but it is also FOOD (a rich and heavy form of indulgence). It can be the best form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.
7. Small bites == Big gains
   
   No matter how much I lost myself to the now, eating khichdi all day every day was hard. After all, I am only human and I am my memories. Eating the same meal every day can become a drag just like any other activity with monotonous undertones like exercising.
   
   Tying these repetitive banal activities to a long term goal helps you stay motivated and on course. Remembering that I started the khichdi cleanse for a cleaner body and a sharper mind allowed me to eat all the rice, beans and ghee. Remembering what instigated you to start in the first place makes it strangely easy to keep going. After all, you are human and you are your memories.
8. The principal-agent problem
   
   In economics, the principal-agent problem arises when one entity (agent) can take actions that affect the other entity (principal). In eating khichdi, the principal-agent problem arises when the agent (your present self) eats the chocolate cake instead of the khichdi and your principal (your future self) is affected because of not tucking away that yellow meal-in-a-bowl.
   
   The present self is impulsive and selfish while the future you, restrained and altruistic. It is easier to believe, on a Tuesday morning, that you will be disciplined with your meals over the weekend. Not so easy, on a Saturday evening, when friends call you for beer and pizzas.
   
   The present self always desires instant gratification at the cost of the future self. Remember though, the future self is an altruistic fool. The present self lives in the now while the future self for a tomorrow that never comes. So eat that khichdi most of the time but now and then, allow yourself to have the chocolate cake (or maybe just a slice or two).
9. I eat, therefore I am
   
   “You are what you eat.” Never has that been more clear to me at any point in life than during the cleanse. You are quite literally made of the food you eat. The blood flowing in your veins, the cartilage cushioning your knees and the hair falling over your face is made from the food you eat. You are the cheese pasta that you devoured.
   
   Food makes the physical you but it goes beyond that. Food makes the metaphysical you. It affects the neurons in your brain but it also affects the thoughts that float somewhere in between. Not to mention the fact that your gut is your second brain.
   
   Ayurveda believes that food has three qualities (sattvic, rajasic and tamasic) that transform into the subsequent mental states of the individual. Khichdi is a purely sattvic food promoting calmness and clarity. Something I can attest to.
   
   A few days into my cleanse, my mental faculties were firing on all cylinders. My thoughts flowed deep and slow rather than fast and shallow. In those 10 days, I wrote 11000 words of my book, learned the basics of python, practiced 100s of words in Spanish, learned a few chords on the guitar, understood candlestick patterns in the equity markets and finished this article.
10. Life’s simple pleasures
    
    Enjoying the khichdi. What started as a compulsion at the beginning turned into a choice towards the end. What was forced and laborious in the beginning became easy and effortless at the end.
    
    The same khichdi which elicited no response on day 1 gave me great pleasure on day 10. Satisfaction is not derived from things. Satisfaction, it seems, comes from within. To learn to be satisfied with the same simple meal everyday inadvertently taught me to be satisfied with life’s simple pleasures.
    
    No longer was I mixing and matching many foods in a single meal to attain heightened states of sensory pleasures. I didn’t need to start with my meals with fried potatoes and polish off some ice cream to bring it to a satisfactory end. I was done chasing fleeting gastronomic pleasure.
    
    When you learn to find delight in life’s simple pleasures, you don’t need things to be a certain way. They bring joy no matter how they are. The world is suddenly perfect. Not because it has changed but because of how you have.