A little corner of paradise in one of the most enchanting places on Lake Garda, the Park Hotel Imperial has accompanied us on a wellness journey that starts with food: here is how to find the harmony of your body through simple good daily habits
YING and YANG. The two forces that govern nature: manifestations of the human being, opposed but complementary, to always keep in balance. For the ancient fTaoist philosophy diseases are an energy block due to a problem of imbalance between the two energies.
The Tao diet, or rather the Tao method, aims to help regain lost balance, energy disharmony, while respecting the comparison between human beings and the surrounding environment.
The energy diet
In traditional Chinese medicine there are no diseases, but sick people: every patient is treated with different methods, even if he suffers from the same illnesses or shows the same symptoms. In Chinese dietetics it works in the same way: if we, in the West, focus our attention on the number of calories, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, to be taken or to be deprived of, in the Tao diet, personalization is very high. We are not simply the sum of nutrients or calories consumed, but we are also the result of how the energy characteristics of foods interact with Ying and Yang of our body.
Difficult to undertake a dietary route of this type independently if not accompanied by someone able to interpret the signals of our body but some simple practices of the Tao diet can be introduced into our routine guaranteeing our body the possibility of recovering energy, detoxifying and finding again a balance.
Let food be your medicine and your medicine be food, cthat is what Hippocrates said, in the third century BC and he was not wrong. Even the most modern luminaries have reiterated the extreme importance of good food in the care of one's body, especially at the preventive level.
Diet, with taste
Difficult to combine the pleasure of the table with the diet? Yes, it is true, but this is because we are more and more accustoming our taste buds to artificial flavors, added with sugars and salts, not respecting the raw materials and thus also subjecting our body to unnecessary excesses. At the TAO Center of the Park Hotel Oriental we immersed ourselves in a clean, colorful Mediterranean cuisine, full of scents and fantasy, not at all mortifying from the point of view of the palate. Their secret? Years of experimentation in total respect of the raw material: no salt, no sugar, simple cooking, but extreme creativity in the enhancement of ingredients and customization of menus based on the needs – medical – of customers.
5 tips to try every day
1. Start the day with a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil. More than a condiment, extra virgin olive oil is a real natural cure: it improves digestion, reduces cholesterol, prevents constipation, improves food digestion … Drinking in the morning, fasting, will amplify all these effects.
On the way to the Tao Center the extra virgin olive oil used is just that of the Risatti Family olive groves, the hotel owners of the Park Hotel Imperial, an oil that, like all that produced in the Garda area is of the highest quality, guaranteed by the Protected Designation of Origin (DOP) "Garda" and Garda DOP extra virgin olive oil has an acidity level of less than 1%.
2. Eliminate salt and sugar added to your recipes and learn to use all the power of the ingredients and their natural flavors.
To enrich your dishes, try using spices, fresh or dried aromatic herbs. At the TAO Center at the table you will always find a selection of extra spices to add to the dishes according to your tastes. Why not even try it at home?
3. The first dish of your meals: a rich salad of fruit and raw vegetables. Raw vegetables help make the enzymatic reactions of the intestine less aggressive, thus creating a healthier digestive environment. Moreover, as we now well know, our brain takes about a quarter of an hour to "record" the information coming from the stomach: the time to eat a beautiful and rich salad and your body will understand that its stomach is already partly full and it will make you feel less hungry.
4. The Tao snack. Snack is another important point in the Tao diet that fits in well with the latest research, all of which agree that it is essential to take five meals a day, so three main meals plus two snacks. Eating a sweet snack can do good: choosing foods rich in simple sugars, quickly absorbed, helps the production of serotonin and melatonin with important implications for good humor. The snacks recommended by the TAO center are based on fruits and vegetables: centrifuged, sorbets, ice cream (soy) and even … dark chocolate. A square of dark chocolate we all know how it can change the mood! Few calories that allow the body to replenish minerals and vitamins and reactivate digestion.
5. Eat less. Western society is exposed to a life that easily disrupts biological rhythms due to an unruly and stressful lifestyle and the overabundance of foods rich in calories but poor in nutrients. The right nutritional balance is not easy to preserve but, basically, eating less is a first step to help our body understand what the real needs are and which ones are bad habits: eat less, but better, of course.
The Tao center in Limone sul Garda
The Centro Tao is a small corner of the Orient in one of the most beautiful places on Lake Garda; a reference point for those who want to experience the approach of traditional Chinese medicine: the Tao method aims to achieve a balance between energy and in the Center you can find different paths to rediscover harmony and health.
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