How to arrange your diet before practicing yoga

Yoga requires practitioners to be on an empty stomach before practicing, but an empty stomach does not mean hunger. When you are too hungry, the body's blood sugar level drops significantly, which is not conducive to practice. In fact, it is more appropriate to practice when you are full.

Here are some food digestion times, so that you can flexibly arrange the meal content based on the practice time.

Fruit: 30 minutes to 1 hour, melon fruits (such as watermelon) are the shortest, while bananas are the longest.

Vegetables: From 45 minutes to 2 hours, melon vegetables (such as wax gourd) are the shortest, followed by nightshade vegetables (such as tomatoes and eggplants), followed by leaf vegetables (such as spinach and pakchoi) and cruciferous vegetables (such as broccoli), and the ones with the longest digestion time are root vegetables (such as sweet potatoes and taro).

Cereals: 1 hour, 30 minutes to 3 hours, liquid or semi-liquid cereal foods (such as porridge) have a shorter digestion time, and fermented foods without added fat (such as steamed buns and non-fat bread) are also easier to digest.

Protein: 1 hour, 30 minutes to 4 hours. Liquid protein foods such as milk and soy milk are easier to digest, while it takes 4 hours or more to fully digest protein-rich meats such as beef and chicken.

Fat: 2 to 4 hours, but we rarely consume fat alone, usually with vegetables or grains. Eating fat together with grains or protein foods will prolong its digestion time, so foods like cakes that contain a large amount of oil, protein and carbohydrates will place a large burden on the stomach and take about 3 to 4 hours to fully digest. (Internship Editor: Wu Jinyu)