Ramadan began this year on April 2 and many of you are wondering how to manage your diet during this religious fast. The recommendation will follow the obligation, we will have to distribute the foods differently, a bit like 16/8 intermittent fasting.
Does the Ramadan is a fast like any other? Fasting is something that is part of almost all religions, it is part of the initiatives of meditation and it is also part of the young people we call therapeutic young people, whether they are intermittent fasting or complete young people.
Ramadan, 16/8 intermittent fasting?
The Ramadan fast lasts approximately 30 daysit starts when the sun rises and stops when the sun sets. It’s a young person where we don’t eat and where we don’t drink.
We can then identify three types of weight change during this period: one part will maintain its initial weightanother part will gain weight and a last one goes lose weight.
With Ramadan, we very often find ourselves in the situation where we consume more than 1 or 2 meals per day, most often 2 meals per day, a bit like a intermittent fasting 16/8 which you can find in this article.
Starting and breaking the fast
The big difficulty with Ramadan fasting is the ban on drinking. Not hydrating yourself for a whole day is a difficult ordeal, which will be easier to follow if the morning diet is well adapted. Drink half a liter of water just before sunrise is, for example, not a bad idea.
Before sunrise, it is important to choose your diet carefully to get you through the day.
2 tips:
- don’t eat too much sugarto avoid a feeling of hunger after a few hours,
- do not eat too salty to avoid the feeling of thirst.
In the evening, to rehabilitate the digestive system after a one-day fasting period, it is important to start with fairly simple things like a bowl of soup, yogurt plus a piece of fruit or possibly some dried fruit associated with a glass of milkwhich roughly corresponds to the traditions observed in the Muslim world.
These meals should not be too copious because contrary to what we think, it is not because you have abstained from food for around fifteen hours that you need to increase your daily calorie balance.
We have already seen that with intermittent fasting, there is no question of eat more or lessit is a question of eat so muchbut distributing the food differently.
Religious and therapeutic fasts
Fasts exist in all religions : Lent among Christians, Yom Kippur and other fasting days for Jews, and there are also fasts among Hindus and Buddhists.
These fasts also allow us to transcendencethat is to say, to bring us closer to ourselves, to empty the body and the mind of material substances and to bring us closer to the spiritualityoutside of any contact and any transfer with the outside world.
Be more careful with so-called therapeutic fasts practiced at wilderness retreats and often led by “gurus.” It’s very fashionable at the moment.
To take care of your body and mindsome need a radical change of environment when this can be done in the daily setting, by changing small things in life.
My Ramadan menu
By following the times of sunrise and sunset, most people will distribute food over 2 mealsas in 16/8 intermittent fasting. On the basis of 1400 calorieshere is a model of a typical day (this caloric level is the caloric level of a so-called “comfort” diet for women with the Cohen method), you will need to adapt the quantities according to your caloric level:
The morningbefore sunrise:
- Coffee, tea, water, infusion as desired, without sugar, with or without sweetener
- 4 Rusks or 60 g of bread + 10 g of fat (1 individual store-bought portion or 2 level teaspoons)
- 2 hard-boiled eggs or 2 slices of chicken breast
- 30 g of cheese with less than 45% fat on dry matter
- 1 Dairy product at 0% fat without sugar with or without sweetener
- 1 Fruit
The evening at the end of the fast, from around 9:30 p.m.:
- 1 plate of chorba: vegetables as desired, 125 g of lean or defatted meat, avoiding excessive additions of oil, and counting per person 30 g dry weight of vermicelli or crushed wheat
- Raw vegetables and vegetables cooked as desired + 1 tsp of oil, with as desired: lemon, vinegar, mustard, shallots, onions, fine herbs
- 1 fresh fruit or 30 g of dried fruit (figs, dates, etc.) OR 15 g of walnuts, hazelnuts or almonds
- 1 Mint tea
- 1 Dairy 0% fat
We therefore realize that the 16/8 intermittent fasting is ultimately the equivalent of a young religious person during which we would be allowed to drink and we find exactly the same problem, that means that if you eat too much or more during the hours when eating and drinking is allowed, you will gain weight.
