27 Quick Alkaline Diet Tips You NEED to Know

lemon water

The 27 Top Alkaline Tips You Need to Know!

Ross Energise - the Alkaline Diet GuyDo you want to get to the health, energy, vitality and body of your dreams? Do you feel like sometimes you’re doing all the hard work but not getting the results you deserve?

Or do you feel like you’re constantly stopping and starting, trying and giving up?

Then this guide will really help make the goals you want for your health far easier to reach, and make the journey much more enjoyable!

Get stuck into these 27 alkaline diet tips and see if you can get at least five into your daily life!

27 Quick Alkaline Diet Tips

 

1. Lemon water

 

Hydration is critical and quality is often forgotten. So much of our focus is on quantity (and that holy grail 4 litres per day) that we often forget about making sure our water is doing the best it possibly can for our body.

The ideal is to drink alkaline, ionized water, but a great first step is ‘lemon water’. There are so many benefits of lemon water, and my favourite three are:

1) it tastes great so encourages hydration
2) it’s very mildly alkaline
3) it’s a great kickstart to your digestion and metabolism when you wake up

You can read all about lemon water in more detail here if you need to, but in short it’s simply:

– 300-500ml of lukewarm water
– with 1/3 – 1/4 of a fresh lemon squeezed in!

Simple.

Try to start each day with a big glass of lemon water – you’ll love it and it will kickstart your hydration habit!

 

2. Importance of greens each day

 

There’s a lot of talk about getting your 5-a-Day (five serves of fruit/veg) and it’s a great start.

In Australia it’s expanded to 5+2 to include 5 veg and 2 fruit, which I think is better…

But when we focus specifically on getting GREEN FOODS it takes our health, energy and vitality to a whole new level!

I’ve written a great guide on this here on How to Get 7 Serves of Green Foods a Day with a sweet video too – but here’s my quick tip cheats guide:

1) Have a salad with every meal: carry on eating what you’d normally have eaten, but just add a side salad (no unhealthy dressings though!). This TOTALLY takes the pressure off but the cumulative effect of having several salads a day will have a big impact.

2) Disguise green foods: you can shave broccoli heads with a knife over foods or into pasta sauce giving you heaps of broccoli, but you can’t see, taste or smell it. OR wilt spinach down with a little butter, salt and pepper – this gives you a HUGE amount of spinach in just a couple of mouthfuls. OR make pasta sauce by blending tomatoes with steamed pumpkin, broccoli, spinach, watercress etc. When it’s all blended down it still tastes very rich and tomato-ey, but you’ve got a heap of green foods in there too!

3) Get into Sprouts: sounds weird but it’s SO worth it – sprouts are sprouted seeds of plants such as broccoli which, when harvested at the sprout stage, contain all (or more) of the nutritional content of the fully grown plant – this means you can easily eat one handful and get a HUGE hit of nutrients. I’ve blogged heaps about sprouts (and have a guide coming) so click here to read all about sprouts.

get the alkaline recipe book here

 

3. Sneak spinach in

This is touched upon above, but needs it’s own point. You can SO easily sneak spinach into foods by:

– steaming it
– blending it
– juicing it

Spinach is incredible because it disappears! You can throw so much of it into stuff and it disappears and doesn’t affect the taste hardly at all! For instance I was making my Alkaline Thai Green Curry (a favourite from my first Alkaline Recipe Book)the other night for two of us, plus Leo and threw in 2-3 serves (big handfuls) of spinach in right at the end and it wilted away to nothing.

Genius.

 

4. Wash salads when you get them home from the shop

The key to always having a lot of salad in your life, and the tip of having a side salad with every meal is this – when you get back from the shops, wash the leaves, dry them (salad spinner recommended) and then store, washed, in an airtight container in the fridge. Some folks recommend putting a sheet of kitchen paper in there to absorb any other moisture.

This means that when it comes time to make a quick side salad you just have to put your hand in the tub, grab a big bunch of leaves, chuck them in a bowl, dress them with a delicious alkaline dressing and you’re done.

That’s an extra serve of greens right there.

 

5. Always have snacks available

Alkaline Diet Recipe Book BannerThis tip is hot off the heels of last week’s guide to snacking and it’s crazy-important. As I said in my Ultimate Alkaline Snack Guide:

As I’ve said before many times, one of the key pressure points for people in sticking with the alkaline diet or any other health plan or lifestyle is what happens when you get hungry. When you’re hungry, you HAVE to eat, and if you leave it long enough – nothing will stop you. And if you’re not well prepared and well stocked up with healthy, alkaline snacks……you could end up eating anything!

So I suggest you head straight to the alkaline snacks guide now and pick your favourite five snacks to always have within easy reach.

 

6. Get enough oils

Fact: most people are chronically deficient in omega 3. And when you’re lacking omega 3 you’re likely to experience a whole host of symptoms. Udo Erasmus (the world’s leading fats & oils authority) lists a 14 basic and common symptoms of omega oil deficiency (click here to see Udo’s list) and they include: poor immune system, skin conditions, low metabolism, weight gain, increased liklihood of many degenerative conditions, poor digestion, slow recovery and healing, premature brain aging and so on.

Put it this way, omega oils are called an Essential Fatty Acid – which means they’re one of our body’s ‘essential’ nutrients. Something classified as ‘essential’ means we NEED it to be healthy but the body cannot make it itself, you have to consume it.

Here’s a guide I wrote on how to get enough oils and just in case you didn’t believe me here’s my article on when Harvard called Omega 3 deficiency the world’s 6th biggest killer!

 

7. Exercise daily, even if its just a few pressups, squats or a walk

 

Simple. Exercise. Do it.

When we exercise it makes all of the other efforts we put in with our diet and lifestyle 10x more powerful. It’s like compounding. The benefits become exponential.

The reason why I am saying daily is not to get you lifting weights or running or hitting the gym every day – your body DOES need recovery. It’s more to get you moving every day. If you go to the gym today, go for a little walk tomorrow. Even though you’d not normally have considered that walk as part of your exercise regimen, it’s essential to build momentum.

When you exercise every day like this (even if it’s only something tiny on your ‘day off’) the brain gets addicted and positively attached to you doing it and you halve your risk of accidently going 5 days without doing anything.

 

8. Filter your water

 

Again, back to water quality. If you don’t yet have a water ionizer, please still do aim to get some level of filtration for your tap water. Tap water IS full of stuff you don’t want, so get filtering!

To put it in quantitative terms, the reason I love ionized, alkaline water so much is because tap and bottled water are:

a) full of toxins
b) have an acidic pH
c) have an ORP of +200 to +400 (this means it kills cells in your body and is an oxidant, ageing you)

Whereas ionized, alkaline water is:

a) filtered for toxins
b) has a pH of 9.5
c) has a -ORP of up to -450 which means it’s a strong antioxidant (read anti-ageing)

The difference in how you’ll feel over 4 litres of water per day for 30 days is VERY noticable.

BUT if you don’t have an ionizer, at least filter – this will also do you the world of good.

 

9. Organic clean and dirty dozen

Organics are always a hot topic and it always revolves around the arguments of: “how much more expensive vs. how bad are the chemicals/how much more healthy are organics”.

Thankfully there is a chart from the Environmental Working Group called the Organic Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen that helps you at least prioritise.

As for me personally, I try to buy organic whenever possible, but don’t sweat it when I can’t. The last thing I’d want you to do is NOT eat a green food because it was not organic and then go without.

 

10. Dress all salads with a drizzle of flax oil

This is a quick tip going back to tip 6 – every time you have a salad, or veggies or ANYTHING drizzle it with a little flax oil. Udo recommends we get 3 tablespoons of omega 3 per day and I’ve found that on a big salad for 2 people, you’d add 2 tablespoons of flax oil to make your dressing (plus your lemon juice, garlic etc).

So with each salad you’re getting a spoon of flax…so if you have 2-3 salads a day (side salad with every meal tip) then you’re going to hit this target!

Please note: don’t fear omega 3 if you’re looking to lose weight – it will not and CANNOT make you gain weight and it’s very hard to have ‘too much’.

 

11. Have husks every day

Psyllium husks are very cheap and are a FANTASTIC source of insoluble and soluble fibre. If you have any kind of mainstream digestion problem then get onto the husks and include a serve in your diet each day.

A teaspoon mixed in a glass of water (followed by another glass of water) will do a great deal of good. Husks are really cheap from health food stores (and online). Get natural, unprocessed and unflavoured. A lot of packaged husk products add flavour and dextrose, making it quite acid-forming.

Every time I put a shout out for husks I get a mountain of emails saying thanks – so go for it! Get husky!

 

12. De-stress

Dr Young told me a few years ago that emotions can be 10x more acidifying than any food or drink. I believe him. I went through a period of stress earlier this year and I didn’t realise until I started to realise and get on top of it how crap it had made my body feel. I was suddenly full of aches, pains, felt on the brink of having a cold all the time and just couldn’t understand why.

Stress was the cause.

This stands for all negative emotions but especially stress, anxiety, fear, anger, guilt and the emotion that I am sure is more hardwired into us Brits than other countries – the ‘poor me’ emotion.

Kick all of those! I really recommend mindfulness meditation and check out Dr Mark Hyman’s 5 Ways to De-Stress.

 

13. Don’t try to be perfect

This is my biggest tip to all beginners:

DO NOT TRY TO BE PERFECT WITH THE ALKALINE DIET

There is nothing that causes people to fail more than the unnecessary desire to try to be perfectly alkaline from day one. My belief is that you NEVER need to be perfectly, 100% alkaline. But especially when you’re first starting – start slow, go day by day, don’t try to eliminate everything all at once, allow yourself treats and relax.

Build upon every little success. Honestly, if you try to be perfect, it’s too hard.

See this exerpt from Tim Ferris’ “The Four Hour Body” for a full explanation of this concept as the Minimum Effective Dose. What’s the Minimum Effective Dose that YOU need to get alkaline and reach your goals to thrive.

 

14. Get to know the rules arounds what makes a food alkaline or acid

 

It’s fantastic having my List of Alkaline Foods to learn from and refer to.

But it’s even better to know the rough rules to be able to spot an alkaline food from an acid food at ten paces.

Click here to see my guide on The ALkaline Food Test

 

15. Eat lots of the most alkaline foods

And to make this even easier you can focus your daily consumption to always include my Fourteen Most Alkaline Foods.

(…and try to avoid the seven most acidic foods).

 

16. Have a side salad with every meal

Building on earlier points – one of my big tips which allows you to nail:

– tip 15
– tip 10
– tip 6
– tip 4 and
– tip 2

You should aim to have a side salad with every lunch and dinner each day. Using tip 4 (wash leaves when you get them home from the supermarket/grocery store) it makes it super easy to have a side salad with each of your meals.

A side salad will be about 1-2 serves of greens, meaning that if you do this you’ll be getting 2-4 serves of your greens every day with minimal extra effort required.

This alone will have you feeling incredible. Also now see tip 26 🙂

 

17. Learn from the people who have already nailed it!

Stand on the shoulders of giants!

Read as much as you can from:

Kris Carr
Joe Cross
– Watch Hungry for Change
Robert Young
Mindvalley
Jon Gabriel
Tony Robbins
Tim Ferriss
– Me on my alkaline diet blog here!

 

18. Set GOALS!

This is seldom actioned, oft overlooked but critical. It makes a HUGE difference. I don’t have the space to go into it hugely here, so here is my favourite quick guide from Leo Babuata of ZenHabits:

Really Simple GoalSetting

 

19. Allow yourself treats

This is another tip that is about psychology. Allowing yourself treats is so important because it prevents your conscious mind from entering into that state of feeling deprived. When you know that you are ‘allowed’ foods you don’t crave them anywhere near as much as when you’ve consciously decided to go cold turkey.

BUT this does need you to have a little willpower of course. You can’t just go nuts. But there is a difference between your morning espresso and a daily ice cream, dessert after dinner, 15 cigarettes and a bottle of wine.

Pick your absolute favourite treats and allow yourself to have them in moderation.

 

20. Try to minimise sugar every day

Sugar is the biggest, most evil substance on this planet. If you don’t believe me read Pure, White and Deadly.

Sugar is without doubt the most commonly available and highly acidic substance on earth and even if you did nothing else but cut out sugar you’d feel incredible.

Make a plan to minimise sugar as your first item to start to transition away from.

 

21. Learn your favourite alkaline recipes

This can really help make the alkaline diet simple to stick to. I’m all about setting up processes and systems to make it easy – so I recommend you find the five alkaline recipes (start with dinner) you know you like and learn the ingredients in them back to front. This way when you then go shopping you always know that you HAVE to get those ingredients and you’ll always have the basics to make a whole heap of meals.

For example, I always shop for:

– avocado
– tomato
– spinach
– lettuce
– celery
– cucumber
– broccoli
– sprouted bread
– wraps
– hummous
– quinoa
– capsicum

And from this I can make about 8 alkaline meals. Juices, soups, smoothies, breakfasts, lunches, dinners – it’s always great to have this safety net of fast, delicious alkaline meals.

 

22. Don’t fear salt…but the right salt

Salt is important. But in the past 20-30 years it’s been through the same treatment as fats. According to mainstream media – all salt is bad. We haven’t yet been enlightened like we were with fats (now it’s pretty common knowledge that not ALL fats are bad).

I recommend researching this and coming to your own conclusion as to what you need. Personally I have a scoop of pH Miracle’s pHour Salts each day – this is a combination of the four most powerful alkaline mineral salts (sodium bicarbonate, potassium bicarbonate, magnesium bicarbonate and calcium bicarbonate) and I don’t worry about using Himalayan salt on my foods.

Put it this way – there is a HUGE difference between sodium chloride (crappy, cheap table salt) and proper mineral salts like Celtic and Himalayan. It’s like the difference between omega oils and trans fats.

 

23. Minimise from fermented foods

This is one of the most common misconceptions – fermented food is not alkaline-forming. It does have some health benefits, but so often I see people who have started to go alkaline, are not getting results, and are eating a LOT of fermented foods.

Try to keep them to a minimum until you’re more in balance.

 

24. Only eat fruit in season (and not too much)

Same with fruit! Lots of people say, “Hey, where are my results? I’ve been alkalising for weeks now!” and then I find out they thought fruits were alkaline and have been having fruit juices, fruit salads and fruit smoothies.

Fruits contain a lot of fructose which is highly acid forming. End of story.

Eat fruit only sparingly (one serve per day at most) and only in season.

 

25. Save for an ionizer!

I think I’ve already gone on about Ionizers quite a lot in this article but having my Chanson Ionizer has made more of a difference to my health than anything else I’ve ever done.

Just the impact of drinking four litres of pH 9.5, antioxidant rich water each day compared to tap water (which is an oxidant and acid-forming) is massive.

 

26. Pre-prepare some AWESOME dressings

This is so easy, but makes eating salads (and making them taste great) so simple and do-able. All you need is 3-4 glass bottles and some good quality hemp/flax or olive oil. Then simply pour the oil into the bottles and flavour each with something delicious:

– garlic
– rosemary
– chilli
– lemons
– basil

You get the picture! Having these dressings will make your salads sing! OR you can get even more creative and pre-make some delicious dressings with coriander, lemons, mint, limes, coconut milk, garlic, mustard and all sorts.

Here’s a fab, alkaline one from Jamie Oliver (just swap the soy sauce for Bragg Liquid Aminos if you can)

 

27. Flavour Your Water!

I’ve mentioned getting super-hydrated a few times in this guide, but water can be boring. That’s a fact of life.

So learn to flavour your water to make it even more alkaline but also darn delicious!

I’ve just created a guide on this: How to Make Alkaline Water Delicious!

Check that out – all of the suggestions are super-easy and enjoyable.

Conclusion: why these alkaline tips are important…

No matter what your health goal, getting alkaline will help get you there faster than you could possibly imagine.

Using even just a fifth of these alkaline diet tips will rapidly get you alkaline.

But more importantly than that it will help fulfil my #1 goal for this site and my work:

To make the alkaline diet easy, enjoyable and sustainable.

SO, now it’s over to you:

I’d really love to hear from you – what other quick alkaline diet tips can you share?

Leave them in the comments below!

Ross

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  1. Alice Burns Reply

    Hi ..I’m trying to fight a brain tumour my 14 year old daughter has..we do huge amounts of cabbage and sprouted broccoli daily plus salads ,good fats etc ..I was surprised to see you refer to hummus as have heard it is highly contaminated with pesticides even organic chickpeas/hummus .
    Such a shame..most made with inflammatory sunflower oil too alas.

  2. Erica Swinney Reply

    Ross, I feel like God has bestowed a TRUE BLESSING upon me ever since I found your website. Thank you for all of the GOOD and TRUE information. After, printing out and reading several of your articles I actually feel like I can go vegetarian and maybe even vegan… I know it’s a process. Your recipes, charts and tips are EXCELLENT INFORMATION. There is hope!!! 🙂

  3. susan hamilton Reply

    thank you for your inspiration and vital information.

  4. Eric Reply

    You failed to mention Gary Null on your list of people to follow!! Research Gary Null and you will thank me someday !! E

  5. April Reply

    Beach body is taking a sweep through the United States- very popular nutrition and exercise program to lose weight and get in shape. Their biggest selling point is there “shake” Shakeology. They claim it to be alkalizing. Here is the link to one of their shakes: Can you possibly write a post about the ingredients and why it isn’t healthy? Or is it healthy? Here is the link.

    http://images.beachbody.com/tbb/store/shakeology/pdf/shakeology_vanilla_supp_facts.pdf

  6. Beverley Keogh Reply

    My husband, who is 63, has had rosecea for some years now and it appears to be worsening. I was interested in reading about the alkaline diet and getting him started on it.
    However, he has a heart complaint for which he takes daily medication. Most of what is recommended would not interfere with this, but I would like to know if there was anything he should avoid.
    I am aware that you haven’t details of his condition but he has to take digoxin, warfrin, simvastatins, enalapril, maleape and visoprolol.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your reply. Beverley Keogh.

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