WHILE LIVING IN an ashram in Northern India years ago, I loved playing auntie to two young girls—Chaya and Lakshmi—from a nearby village. When Lakshmi neared puberty, she started to gain weight. As she grew softer and wider, her mother continued her usual mealtime practice of putting balls of rice and lentils into Lakshmi’s mouth, well past the point of satiety . The family became more and more delighted, parading her ahead of them as they walked to temple, showing off their daughter’s fleshly abundance. “Look how round and healthy she is,” they’d say. “She’s going to catch quite a husband!”

Meanwhile, back in California, the wo m en in my own extended family were worried about a distant cousin—a beautiful, creative girl who happened to be a little chubby in her elementary-school years. “We’ve got to help her control her weight,” they’d whisper with desperation. “We don’t want her to feel bad about herself for being heavy.”

Despite their good intentions, both families showed more commitment to cultural norms than to understanding the needs of their girls’ bodies. A person’s perfect weight can’t be sized up by the eye or measured by a scale. According to the principles of Ayurveda, the ancient Indian science of health, everyone has an ideal weight that’s unique to their prakriti, or constitutional nature, made up of the three life energies, or doshas: vata, pitta, and kapha. Because your ideal weight is unique, it can’t be compared with your sister’s, your neighbor’s, your best friend’s, or your own five years ago. Your ideal weight is affected by your age, the season, the climate, and—if you’re a woman—your menstrual stage. The right weight has nothing to do with numbers. Instead, it’s a re flection of feeling and be – ing truly healthy—being comfortable and stable in body and mind, and having the strength and endurance to fully engage in the demands of everyday life.

Knowing your dominant dosha can help you establish healthful eating habits and dietary choices. (Take our survey designed to reveal your dosha at yogajournal.com/ayurveda.) Over time, by living and eating according to your dominant dosha, you’ll settle into the best weight for you— and only you.

Vata-dominant people have slight or deerlike builds. When out of balance, they might tend toward irregular digestion, usually losing weight when stressed. If vata dominates your constitution, you can become imbalanced after emotional trauma, and your weight may yo-yo up and down as your system attempts to insulate, ground, and protect itself.

You’ll find balance in your weight and life by following a rhythm: eating three meals a day at regular times, with the main meal of the day around noon, when digestion is strongest. Warm, moist, and heavier foods with sweet, sour, or salty tastes will nourish tissues, emotions, and overall body weight. Foods that are bitter, pungent, or astringent should be avoided. Warming spices like cumin, garlic, or cinnamon support a stable agni (digestive fire, or metabolism).

You might crave sweets, caffeine, or other substances that affect the nervous system—especially if life has you running in rapid, unpredictable circles. Instead of turning to food stimulants, try developing faith through a devotional or spiritual practice to help you disengage from anxious, repetitive thinking. Warm oil, applied externally with an all-over selfmassage, can calm tense or hypersensitive digestion and bring you back toward a comfortable, stable, balanced body weight and muscle tone.

The pitta dosha is associated with fire energy. If you’re pitta dominant and live in balance, you’ll most likely sport a medium, equine, well-proportioned body. Associated with fire energy, the pitta dosha governs digestion and transformation in the body and mind.

With a propensity for ambition and hyperfocus, you might keep your nose to the grindstone far past lunch, honing your mental aim with acidic coffee and attempting to quell hunger with whatever is most easily available. Sadly, fast food usually means junk food. The salty, fatty processed ingredients, artificial flavors, and preservatives can aggravate acid production, eventually weakening the liver, gallbladder, and small intestine.

MAKES 4 TO 6 SERVINGS

1 teaspoon dried orange peel, soaked overnight in 1 teaspoon boiled water

4 apples, washed and chopped into ½-inch pieces

1⁄3 cup dried apricots, chopped Sprinkle of ground cloves Drizzle of honey

1 Mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl.

2 Let sit at room temperature for an hour, and then enjoy

When you do sit down to enjoy a meal, you’re likely to indulge a craving. Strikingly sour and hot tastes that deliver sharp stimulation—like red wine, garlic, chilies, and vinegary pickles—just add intensity to the fire. These foods don’t translate directly into weight gain, but according to Ayurvedic thought, they do lead to intestinal inflammation, which creates circulatory congestion, or fluid retention, a precursor to obesity.

To eat for balance, you must take time for regular meals, making lunch the biggest meal of the day, as digestion is at its peak at midday. A pitta metabolism is naturally strong with high agni, which demands fuel; if the digestive fire isn’t fed regularly, it overheats. Acids and enzymes then concentrate, disrupting normal digestion and contributing to the formation of ama, the toxic byproduct of a faulty digestive process that Ayurvedic theory suggests can clog various bodily channels and cause weight gain.

Fresh, light fruits, veggies, and grains with bitter, sweet, and astringent tastes (like cucumbers, green beans, apples, quinoa, and greens) calm the dosha’s overheated passion and ease digestion.

Kapha-dominant types tend to have stockier builds and round faces. You fall out of balance slowly and are most likely to gain weight over time and hold on to it. A slide into extra weight might begin with long hours at a sedentary job. Add a few slices of birthday cake, a couple of rainy weekends sleeping in, a movie instead of yoga, and a few servings of rich comfort food, and extra pounds appear.

If kapha dominates your prakriti, you’ll find a healthy weight when you eat smaller meals of fresh raw and light foods with bitter, astringent, and pungent tastes. Eating your main meal around noon is especially good for balancing digestion in kapha-dominant prakritis.

Dessert, unfortunately, is not on the menu. The sweet taste just creates an im – balance of kapha energy that can lead to weight gain. Instead, try an after-meal cup of green tea with dry ginger to boost digestion and metabolism and reduce dependence on heavy, cloying sweets. However, dried fruit and treats sweetened with the herb stevia can bring kapha energy back into balance. Fresh berries, apricots, and apples are great choices, too.

While your natural sense of stability can become stagnation that resists even healthy change, once you have made a commitment, your slow and steady na – ture will keep you on a sure path until you reach your goal for a naturally balanced and healthy body weight.

How will you know when you’ve hit the right weight? The Caraka Samhita, a classsic Ayurvedic text, says: “The senses are fulfilled; hunger and thirst are assuaged; standing, sitting, lying down, walking, breathing, talking, and laughing are effortless; food is digested easily by evening or morning.”

Forget cultural expectations—if you nourish yourself in a way that brings you health and joy, your body will follow your lead to your perfect, balanced weight.

Niika Quistgard directed a women’s Ayurvedic clinic in Kerala, India (rasaayurveda.com).

MAKES 1 SERVING

For a light but satisfying dinner, serve over cooked quinoa and rice.

1 tablespoon ghee

1 small head of broccoli, florets roughly cut

1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated

2 tablespoons scallions, chopped

1 Heat ghee in a sauté pan over medium heat.

2 Add the broccoli and sauté until just cooked, about 5 to 8 minutes.

3 Sprinkle ginger and scallions over broccoli, and serve.

MAKES 3 SERVINGS

This soothing soup is simple to make and beautiful to behold (pictured on page 104).

2 tablespoons ghee

1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch chunks

1 medium sweet potato or 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped

1 large onion, loosely diced

2 large cloves garlic, smashed

1-inch knob of fresh ginger, washed and finely chopped

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon turmeric

3 cups broth or water

1 cup coconut milk or half-and-half Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Freshly minced parsley to garnish

1 Melt 1 tablespoon ghee over medium-high heat in a large, deep sauté pan.

2 Add squash, sweet potato, and then onion. Sauté, stirring very little at first, then more frequently, for 7 to 8 minutes or until all the ingredients turn golden brown.

3 Reduce the heat to low and add garlic. Continue cooking until the vegetables are a rich caramel color, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

4 In separate soup pot, add remaining tbs ghee, ginger, and remaining spices save salt and pepper. Sauté until fragrant.

5 Add broth and vegetables to soup pot. Bring to a low boil over mediumhigh heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 10 minutes, partially covered, until the squash is tender.

6 Purée in a blender until smooth.

7 Return the mixture to the soup pot. Pour in enough coconut milk so that the soup flows easily but has a thick and hearty consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. Heat through and serve, garnished with parsley.