My Energy Improved While I Lived in India

Was it the diet, the exercise or the sense of community?

Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash

When I was 13, I spent a summer in India.

While I did get sick from drinking the water at one point, despite my grandmothers’ best efforts to make sure that what they provided me was clean and healthy. But they couldn’t stop me from eating treats when I went to the beach or drinking the delicious sugar cane juice sold there. I am not sure what the culprit was but it kept me close to a working toilet for a few days.

Aside from that, however, overall my energy levels and my health seemed to improve from my time living there.

Here are the factors that I think were part of it:

• Really fresh fruits and vegetables. My grandmothers had only tiny refrigerators. They were not used to store produce. Instead, every morning, after breakfast, both grandmothers would leave their separate homes on different sides of Mumbai to go to the market. There they would negotiate hard for what they needed. It was rare for them to buy more than was sufficient for that day. The markets were stocked with fruits and vegetables harvested first thing that morning. So it was truly fresh food.
• Most meals were home-made. One grandmother did all her own cooking. The other had a cook…