Here are a few tips on how to maintain your weight during the festive season.
Go the nuts way
To improve the overall quality of your diet, choose to consume a handful of nuts. Eating about five to six almonds or ten to twelve pistachios can fill your body with essential nutrients. Pistachios have minimum calories, but are rich in essential fatty acids and minerals. Remember not to eat more than a handful.
Practise portion control
The trick to eating less at a party is to make sure that you consume something nourishing like a fruit salad, banana or a cup of soup before the party. These are satisfying and will keep your hunger pangs at bay thereby preventing you from overeating the junk snacks at the party. It will also enable you to enjoy your preferred foods like burger, panipuri, pav bhaji, biryani and lots more, but in smaller quantities.
Drink water
Water is a weight loss drink as it can prevent you from eating more food. Drink a good amount of water or opt for low calorie drinks like sweet or salted lime soda, coconut water, fruit juice or jaljeera.
Exercise
Festivities can wreak havoc on your normal exercise routine. But, be determined to continue with your workouts as it can help you shed off extra calories and stay calm. You can modify your usual exercise routine by cutting down either on duration or frequency. For example, if you walk 6 days/week for 60 minutes you can reduce that to 4 days/week for 30 to 40 minutes.
Have smart sweets
It may be difficult to resist sweets, but instead of totally avoiding them try to make smart choices. You can choose low calorie (150-200kcal), tasty and healthy milk based desserts like rabdi, yogurt, rosgulla or sandesh made from skimmed milk.
Eat mindfully
Most cravings don’t last for more than 20 minutes. During such times keep your mind engaged by doing other important things. Within 30 to 45 minutes the mind will overcome the cravings and you can resist the temptation to eat. If you are still not able to put off the need to eat after an hour, try to consume dates and other dried fruits (cranberry, apricots, prunes) instead of processed sweets.
Try the crave curbing trick
Proteins help in controlling cravings. Usually the cravings tend to be for sweets. But this is the body's way of indicating that it needs more proteins. Curd, cottage cheese, beans, nuts, seeds, etc. should be part of your diet as it is one of the best 'crave curbing' tricks. They keep you fuller for longer thereby reducing your need to indulge.
Drink smart
Alcohol should never be consumed on an empty stomach as it tends to irritate the intestine. Drink only on a relatively full tummy. Have just one small peg at a time, and make it last by diluting it with soda or water.
Eat consciously
Being conscious about what you eat helps you to stay fit. Try to have healthy snacks if you have a party at your house. You may choose to include masala idli (which are not steamed but shallow fried), hummus and roasted lavash, dhokla, stuffed tomatoes/capsicum, roasted soybeans, roasted paneer (instead of fried paneer) and dry fruits in the party menu.
Keep a tab on how much you eat on a festive day. If you are unable to do that, try to balance it by eating light for the next three or four days. Remember to reduce your food intake, especially your fat and sugar consumption.
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