And here comes that time of the year where all my patients ask me for a diet plan to follow in Ramadan. As a family physician, its part of my job to give advices about healthy eating, but my patients push me sometimes to help them generate a diet plan that they can follow, simply because they don’t want to lose track and gain weight during Ramadan. After all, no one can resist homemade harees, tashreeb or the famous lgaimat!
At first, I used to agree and write them few notes about healthy fotor, sohor and snacks. But, I don’t believe in the concept of” dieting to lose weight “because no one can be deprived from what he/she loves for a long time. Furthermore, literature, and evidence proved that the best way to lose weight is to change your life style into a healthy one.
Taking these few words into consideration, and armed with literature and evidence based medicine, I started to find a solution for the Ramadan diet issue, and what I found was amazing.
In Ramadan,
- The average person loses 2.5 to 3.6 % of his/her body just by fasting.-
- Those that are overweight lose more during Ramadan than those with a normal weight.
- The metabolism increases.
- Women lose weight more than men.
Consider fasting, a self cleaning system. We fast for a month every year. That is a day of fasting for every 12 days in the year.
During fasting, the body which usually uses glucose for energy will have to breakdown the more complex glycogen to get this energy. When that is not enough, the body then attacks the infamous FAT. The metabolism increases and voila… you lose weight.
- The total calorie intake of an average person in Ramadan is much less compared to prior to Ramadan.
- Women do chores around the house, especially in the kitchen and end up burning more calories than men.
- Ramadan is holly month; all of us try to pray 5 times a day, Taraweeh, and qyaam. All that need huge amount of energy. Furthermore, the timing of Taraweeh is one hour after fotor, which helps digestion, and boosts the metabolism. Qyaam is in the middle of the night, so it helps the body shed more calories, and use energy rather than store it.
By that I came to an agreement with my dear patients not to ask for a diet plan in Ramadan. All you need to do is to decide to change your life into a healthy one and use Ramadan with all its religious chores as your diet.
