today I am gonna write some about the yogic diet as I know it and some facts and tales about it..

so basicly it is a lacto-vego diet, it is called or compared to a Sattvic diet.
one thing is that it is easy digestive food, unlike meat for example.
so for me when I swithced over to a vegitarian life one of the first things I realized was that I got more subtle energy and did more of the small things we often want to "do later" ike washing the dishes etc..
and especially after eating I was not as tired as you can be after a heavy meal.

if we look at the tradition a "goal" for a yogi is YOGA = union with cosmos [atman in union with brahman etc] wich is often done by practicing  meditation ["dhyana" the 7th limb in Patanjalis 8 limbs from YogaSutras] until you reach the 8th state = Samadhi and becomes one with the universal energy / cosmos.
some say this is Nirvana, but it is actually not true, in yoga and hinduism we refer to Moksha [liberation] to be the same as Nirvana in Buddhism.

so to be able to sit for long and collect you mind we dont want to have stimulants within us that disturbs this of course.
we want to feel light and pure.
so things as coffe is a No No in traditional yogic diet, and onion & garlic aswell. garlic & onion is said to induce the sexual energy in us and that is giving us urges.. and they live in celebacy [brahmacharya].
I read the other day that some say that acually garlic is a bigger no no then coffe he he.

interesting though is that for exmple Kundalini yoga use garlic to enhance that energy for certain chakra activities..

of course drugs, tobacco & alcohol is huge NO NO's..

also mushrooms [fungus] actaully re not allowed.. this is something tht many dont know.

the meat thing is the of course a big part, and there are alot of things you can hear when yogis when they talk about why the dont eat meat..
here are a few:
1. not to eat something that have been killed. [ahimsa - non violence]
2. our intestines are much more like when comparing to animals that dont eat meat, both in structure and in length.
3. if we had for example soya-bean plants on the same area as we have cows, we could feed ceveral houndred percents more people with that food [or somethig similar, I dont remember exactly the percentage they talk about]
4. stress, when someone is threaten to death they produce stress hormones [cortisol] and adrenaline and come to a "fight or flight" mood to be able to either fight for their survival or to be able to run away from the threat. in that state they get killed and all these hormones stays of course in their muscle & organ tissues that we later on eat, and they are same so we actually increase our stress hormone level, wich is not a positive thing as you might understand..
5. some say it is to lie to eat meat, that we lie to ourselves becasue we feel ashame by giving it another name, instead of pig we say pork, or instead of eat a cow we say beef etc. and to lie is a bad thing & something that is avoided both in word and in thoughts..
6. toxins, the higher up in the chain the more concentrated will the poison from for example chemical spraying on vegetables be. a mouse eats a sprayed vegetable and processes the toxins in the kidneys maybe, then a beaver eat the mouse and process the poison again to a stronger more concentrated version, and then a larger animal eats the beaver and then we eat that large animal. [that is just an example I made up now, just to understand.]

needless to say I guess is htat fresh food is the thing, not to eat artificial & processed food.

also the yogic way is to eat without disturbance and not eat to fast.
in the yogic ashram I visited in december we allways ate in silence for example.

fasting is also a part of this, to fast is to give the bowels a rest, and to clean out our inner system, so o drink a lot of water during this period is a good idea, and water is not consithered to stumulate our apetite and needs no diggestion.
another thing with fasting is that when we dont have the energy vibration from taking care of what we put into our body, we get more inner energy to use in our spiritual practice, less disturbance also within ourselves.

AUM shanti, shanti, shantíi