Mono Meal Melon
It’s still hot here in California and melons are in season! Melons are a perfect, refreshing meal and I often find myself eating mono meals for breakfast or lunch during this time of the year.
What’s a mono meal?
A mono meal consists of eating one type of food until satiety. I was introduced to fruit mono meals when reading the book The 801010 Diet by Dr. Doug Graham. Most immediately think, how boring, to just eat one fruit until you’re full? Well it was actually one of the greatest things I’ve learned about this lifestyle. It is the most satisfying and satiating way to eat, and obviously the easiest. These days, most people have little time to prepare or cook food beause of work or kids, and also think that eating a clean diet requires more time and work. Well, here’s the answer for them! Mono meals are actually easier and faster than ordering at a fast food drive through. This is the original fast food, brought to you by Mother Nature!
But it doesn’t stop there. The benefits of eating a mono meal are quite impressive.
Digestion
Combining meat, potatoes, salad, sauce, and condiments isn’t easy to handle for our bodies. Meat requires different digestive enzymes and stomach pH than plant foods, and starches / grains require a whole different set of enzymes as well. So when we eat this cocktail of ingredients, the end result is that the body cannot optimally breakdown and absorb the nutrition from these foods. It can’t create 3 contrasting environments simultaneously! So even if you’re putting quality foods in, your body cannot digest it optimally, therefore the essential nutrients won’t be absorbed. The key is to limit the amount of different foods that are combined in each meal. This could be 8 bananas or 1kg of grapes or half a watermelon etc. In this case, being summer, I ate a full canteloupe. Melons are best eaten alone, by the way, in terms of digestion. Many people get stomach aches, or bloated-ness when eating melons with other fruits or foods, so I try not to eat melons with other fruits. This portion is actually perfect for me (1 small canteloupe) and I am full for a good 3 hours.
Energy
The optimal scenario is eating a meal consisting of only one type of food or a few foods closely related within the same food group. When only one particular food is consumed in a meal, the body is able to create the optimal digestive environment required for the breakdown and absorption of the nutrients in that food. When the body digests efficiently, less gas is experienced and food passes more comfortably though the system. Because the body uses less energy for digestion, the person has more energy available for being active.
Weight Loss
Modern day proponents of a mono diet, such as author Christopher Vasey in his book “The Detox Mono Diet,” believe that eating a single food can help you cleanse your body of toxins and lose weight. Mono Meals can help with weight loss because it helps support proper digestion (goodbye bloating!), optimal nutrient absorption, and better assimilation. All of which result in a more nourished body with more energy, a flat belly and less cravings! Mono meals can also help end the cycle of emotional eating which is usually triggered by addictive or stimulating foods & spices and plays a huge role in weight gain. As for me, I can attest that these meals definitely contributed to my weight loss when I started eating 100% raw vegan. I remember eating 5 melons per week. It was my breakfast for many weeks.
Easy & Portable
I often take the melons to places where my friends would go eat, or to the beach. I just take my knife to cut it and melon baller to eat it. Easy peasy! My friends always want a bite too, because everyone knows melons are so refreshing and delicious!
It forces you to eat good quality foods
It’s easy to settle for fruits and vegetables that are low in quality when they are mixed with a lot of other ingredients and
their true taste is disguised, but when you eat mono meals you have no choice but to seek out better quality foods
because eating a meal of nothing but bananas that aren’t ripe yet or nothing but tomatoes that taste like cardboard will
quickly change your standards.
It’s a lot easier to know when it’s time to stop eating
If you only eat 1 type of food and you pay attention to the chewing, the taste, and the texture of what you are eating
your body will clearly let you know when it is no longer hungry and when it is time to stop eating, and it will do this by
causing your taste buds to literally shift in a way that will cause the delicious foods that you are eating to become
tasteless and unappealing, making it almost impossible to overeat.
Try it! Go to the market and get a meals worth of your favorite fruit, and eat it when it’s perfectly ripe. You won’t regret it. And notice how you feel afterwards. After eating that melon I feel so light, clear minded, and I have a natural, balanced energy.
Conscious Nourishment 
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