The practice of Ayurveda centres on the premise that by achieving and maintaining health you, in turn, allow your focus to be the achievement of spirituality and transcendence. By cleansing your body through diet you also effectively start cleansing your life.
By achieving and maintaining physical health you allow and create space for mental positivity and begin the process of detachment from the things in your life that no longer serve a positive purpose and have been inhibiting your evolution.
A healthy body creates ojas, which is an Ayurvedic term for vigour. Ojas are created as a result of good and balanced digestion. When you are able to properly process your food intake, assimilate and populate your body with its nutrients and evacuate it from your body healthily and effectively, you become rejuvenated, invigorated and radiant. You feel refreshed with a joyous outlook on life.
Adversely, when your intake of food is not processed properly it stays in the gastrointestinal tract for extended periods of time, this created an accumulation of toxins, which in Ayurveda are termed ama. Nearly every health issue is caused by the accumulation of ama in the body. When a body is healthy and functioning in balance it does not suddenly become afflicted with illness. Illness comes about due to the build-up of toxicity that occurs year upon year, eventually manifesting as illness, affliction or disease.
In Ayurveda, one can consider ojas to be the life-force while ama the toxic. Everybody has both within them, however, through the practice of Ayurveda one can eliminate ama from the body and create a body that is radiant with ojas and so achieve balanced health.