The Basics

Here’s our understanding of macrobiotics, as we know it — how to get started — questions we’ve had — hesitations — triumphs — again, this is a living website - so if you have thoughts, comments, questions, please email us.

• Macrobiotics is essentially a vegan diet, but it’s more than that - it is a spirituality, a commitment to listening and getting to know your body — the energies that it has, that it takes in, and the energies of the things that it takes in (including food, from others, and the environment you’re in generally).
• At the heart, macrobiotics is about balance. It involves the study of yin and yang energies in foods, bodies, and the world in general. Yin energy is centrifugal, expansive, light, and cold. Yang energy is centripetal, contracting, heavy, hot, and bright. Macrobiotics practice intuition with their bodies, minds, and foods, to balance meals with yin and yang energies, and to balance their bodies with the energies from foods and activities that their bodies may need at any given time.
• Macrobiotics is a worldview that is about choice. Making the leap to macrobiotics involves a lot of re-thinking and changing one’s outlook on the world and the idea of “choice.” Although it would be easy to think of macrobiotics as a series of denials — can’ts and don’ts, macros prefer to think of the choices we make as just that - choices. We seek to own the choice to put healthy, wholesome foods into our body in order to nurture healthy, wholesome lifestyles. Changing the frame of mind with which you approach macrobiotics to one of freedom and choice makes a radical difference in your ability to stick with it for the long haul. Trust us.
• Ideally, macros eat locally and seasonally. Meaning, we eat vegetables that are in season as much as possible - to cut down on the carbon footprint of our nutritional needs as well to nurture our bodies as they evolved to eat — the idea being that our bodies have evolved to digest things that are grown in our region best. This also means eating different things during different seasons - it makes sense - most everyone, no matter what their dietary scheme, will notice trends and things that our bodies crave are different depending on the season - macrobiotics is about honoring that - eating more warming grains in the winter and cooling grains in the summer, for example.
• It’s really important to remember to be gentle with yourself - be kind to yourself. Macrobiotics should not be just another way to beat yourself up - don’t get discouraged if you eat something that’s not macro, or if you don’t understand yin/yang right away. Be patient and calm about it, and it will start to make sense.

So what do you eat?
We’ve raided our kitchen and here is a list of things that we keep stocked regularly:

• Whole grains: quinoa, brown rice (depending on the season, long or short grain), millet, steel cut oats, rolled oats, buckwheat, cracked wheat, cous cous (sparingly).
• Legumes & Beans: lentils (red & green), adzukis, black beans, garbanzo beans, split peas, navy beans.
• Nuts & Dried Fruit: craisins, golden raisins, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds.
• Vegetables: kale, collard greens, broccoli, daikon root, carrots, green onions, cauliflower, onions, avocado.
• Baking Goods: spelt flour, brown rice flour, wheat flour, cornstarch, aluminum-free baking powder, kosher sea salt, black pepper, brown rice syrup, honey, maple syrup.
• Spices: tumeric, oregano, thyme, basil (dried & fresh), garlic, ginger (dried, ground, and fresh), cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, coriander, cumin.
• Other macro-foods: umeboshi vinegar, umeboshi plums, shoyu or tamari, rice wine vinegar, white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, safflower oil, toasted sesame oil, arame, agar agar, dulse, nori, kombu, tempeh, tofu, seitan.
• Snacks & other: hummus, peanut butter, almond butter, kashi TLC cookies, brown rice crispy cereal, kashi whole grain frozen waffles, morning star spicey black bean burgers, pickles, rice milk, oat milk, kamut/quinoa/other whole grain pasta, trail mix

About the best advice that we can offer is to go out and get a book about macrobiotics that speaks to you — we refer to many of them in our blog posts - read it, ask questions, then challenge yourself to “go macro” for a period of time to try it out.  This is what we did:  we went “whole hog” as Jessica Porter, the Hip Chick, terms it in her book, for 3 months, and after those three months we reevaluated.  Macrobiotics, despite what some may tell you, is not an all or nothing game.  You can take what resonates with you and use it… remember, it’s about balance.