How to stay fit while fasting and feasting

Those who fast during Ramadan often end up overeating leading to weight gain, acidity and digestion problems. Experts say one must follow a proper diet plan, avoid fried food and red meat and exercise regularly.

A. Arun Kumar, fitness head at Snap Fitness India, shares a few workout and nutrition tips for happy and healthy fasting and feasting during the holy month.

Recommendations:

- Do cardio exercises like walking or cycling. It helps burn calories and improves stamina.

- One can go for low intense resistance training before Ramadan. It helps maintain muscle strength.

- Do warm up and stretching exercises. Full body stretching helps improve flexibility and also in detoxification.

- You can do mat exercises also like free squats, abs and push ups.

- Yoga and meditation helps in detoxification.

- Low intense group exercises helps burn calories. Also it's fun as you exercise with others.

- Workout for at least 20 to 40 minutes.

- Don't exercise when you are fasting. One should exercise either before Sehri (meal before dawn) or after Iftaar (meal after sunset).

- Don't do high intense exercises like high speed running, stepper and heavy weight lifting as it can lead to joint or muscle injuries and complications like low blood pressure, hypoglycemia and dizziness.

Diet recommendations:

- Eat food items like grains, barley, wheat, oats, millet, semolina, beans, lentils, bran, green peas, apricots, prunes and almonds.

- Avoid big meals and eat slowly.

- Drink prune juice to avoid digestive problems.

- Drink at least 35ml of water.

- Avoid deep fried food and red meat as it causes acidity and digestion problems.

- Have proper protein intake after exercise.

- Diabetic patients should be more careful and avoid hypoglycemia (low sugar level in blood).