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Feasting, fasting & fitness
It?s that time of the year again when there would be feasting festivity all round?and some rigorous fasting too! While some would be observing the Navratri vrat, it is going to be roza-e-Ramzan for the rest.
The week ahead will see a flurry of festivity. Besides delicious delights, it would also be the time to realise the worth of all gastronomic temptations through fasting.
It’s that time of the year again when there would be feasting festivity all round—and some rigorous fasting too! While some would be observing the Navratri vrat, it is going to be roza-e-Ramzan for the rest.
While the occurrence of ‘Navratri’ right after the rains is considered to be the ideal time to fast and abstain from food, the Ramzan fasting that doesn’t allow even intake of water is deemed therapeutic in that it sets blood sugar and blood pressure right.
Times are a changin’ and just as the Internet has come to the rescue of the chronic forgetful, reminding and even helping them send gifts and greetings to the near and dear ones on the right day, traditional delicacies for festivals and fasts too, have ceased to be as gooey and sinfully gorgeous as they used to be.
“What’s the point in fasting if at the end of the day you gorged on far more calories than you lost?” argues Ritu Sharma, who has long replaced all the fried and sugary delights with steamy and savoury temptations. “Try poha in place of poori and mattha or low-fat lassi in place of the creamy, syrupy kheer or halwa,” is her holy tip.
The iftaar fare for the rozedaar is no less weight inducing. The usual spread on the ‘dastarkhwan’ comprises a load of calories one doesn’t consume in months.
“Ideally, a rozedaar should break the fast with a mere bite and pray for the roza to be accepted,” says Dr Irfan Qureshi, general physician. “It’s never wise to bombard the system with heavy foodstuff after hours of fasting. It often leads to indigestion and other gastric disorders. Though feasting is part and parcel of the month-long festival, it’s mostly about restraint and self-control,” advises the doctor.
Savvy mithai-wallahs of the city have seen the goldmine that lies in the health fad and begun to offer stuff that doesn’t make the springs on you weighing scale pop out. There’s a variety to choose from in sugar-free barfis, rasgullas and laddoos, besides phalhari platters that comprise low-fat tarkaari to tuck in with poori-kachauri made kootoo-singhara’flour.
The Ramzan post-iftaar meals, however, have remained untouched with the new-age trappings and continued to tempt with the flavour of steaming nahri and fragrance of biryani. The spicy, oily recipes are not entirely bereft of healthy goodness. Nahri, which goes with a tandoor-roasted kulcha, is a soup of meat cooked all night to the extent that the meat is actually dissolved in the gravy bolstering it with all the extra power a rozedaar needs to sustain through a daylong fast and the fairly long session of Tarawi, the after-roza nightly prayer. The iftaar platter too comprises chickpeas that are energising, besides a fruit chaat that’s wholesome and cleansing. It is only stuff like dahi phulki and fritters that do the wrong. But what’s a stray binge for the sake of good faith!
What to avoid
Fried and fatty foods.
Foods containing too much sugar.
Over-eating and too much tea during the meal before the fast. Tea makes you pass more urine taking with it valuable mineral salts that your body would need during the day.
Smoking. If you cannot give up smoking, cut down gradually starting a few weeks before the fasting period. In any case, smoking is unhealthy and one should stop it completely.
A word from the nutritionist for the rozedaar
Divide the food-types on the basis of their characteristics and choose what is best suited to your health type and preference.
Food items that contain grains and seeds like barley, wheat, oats, millet, semolina, beans, lentils, whole meal flour, unpolished rice, etc. are slow to digest.
Fast-burning food contains sugar, white flour, etc. (called refined carbohydrates).
Fibre-containing foods are bran-containing foods, whole wheat, grains and seeds, vegetables like green beans, peas, sem, marrow, mealies, spinach, and other herbs like methi, the leaves of beetroot (iron-rich), fruit with skin, dried fruit especially dried apricots, figs and prunes, almonds, etc. Food should be balanced, containing items from each food group, i.e. fruits, vegetables, meat/chicken/fish, bread/cereals and dairy products. Fried foods are unhealthy and should be limited.
