Contents:
- Medical Video: Everything You Need to Know About the Keto Diet
- Tips and tricks to reduce sweet foods when fasting
- 1. Break fasting do not use sweet tea, but fresh fruit
- 2. Walk after opening
- 3. Reduce sugar to half of the amount you normally add
- 4. Use spices to sweeten food
- 5. Read information on nutritional value and composition on your food or beverage packaging
- It's okay to spoil the body occasionally
Medical Video: Everything You Need to Know About the Keto Diet
Fasting month is synonymous with sweet foods and drinks. Sugar can indeed help restore energy after a day of fasting. Even so, most sweet foods are still not good for health. Besides being linked to the risk of diabetes and diabetes, eating too much sweet stuff also increases the risk of coronary heart disease and cancer. So if before fasting you have succeeded in reducing sugar, do not return to the old habits in this holy month. Come on, consider the following ways to limit eating sweet foods when fasting.
Tips and tricks to reduce sweet foods when fasting
1. Break fasting do not use sweet tea, but fresh fruit
Breaking fast using sweet tea, syrup, or fruit ice is indeed refreshing, but the sugar content is high. Sweet drinks do not provide a filling effect, so you don't realize that you have drunk too much.
Too much sugar intake after a day of fasting can increase blood sugar levels in a short time and then lower them again as quickly. Drastic ups and downs of blood sugar levels make you feel weak and starving fast. As a result, you will eat a lot at night.
Replace your favorite sweet tea or ice fruit with a glass of plain water or tea accompanied by a bowl of fresh fruit. Natural sugar in the fruit is slower to digest the body so it does not directly increase blood sugar. The energy you get from fruit also lasts longer than sweet tea so you don't feel lazy after opening it.
Fresh fruits contain fiber, water, and vitamins and minerals that are important for the recovery of the body after not filling anything for more than 8 hours. The fiber content also helps you to fill up longer, which helps prevent you from starving your eyes and finally gets confused when it's time for dinner to arrive.
2. Walk after opening
If after breaking the fast you still feel hungry, do not immediately be blinded by lust and look for a snack to block your stomach rumbling. It is important for you to be able to tell which hungry is really hungry or hungry due to cravings.
Strengthen yourself against the temptation to crave and use your free time to move a lot. For example, walking goods 5-10 minutes just out of the house, or cleaning themselves to get ready to leave Tarawih to the mosque. Moving actively can help you forget fake hunger.
If you are really hungry, choke your stomach by drinking lots of water or snacking on healthy snacks, such as cold yogurt with fruit topping or slices of one banana dipped in peanut butter.
3. Reduce sugar to half of the amount you normally add
Breaking is better with sweet foods. But what you need to consider is the sugar dosage. Remember that the maximum limit of sugar intake according to the Ministry of Health's Nutrition Adequacy Rate is 4 tablespoons (tbsp) per day. This limit is not only for sugar, but also includes sugar or syrup in fast food and sweet drinks.
To help you reduce eating sweet foods during fasting, reduce the amount of sugar you usually add to your food and drink. For example, you usually use 2 tablespoons of sugar for one cup of sweet tea, or 2 tablespoons of syrup for one glass of ice fruit, then reduce by half (to 1 tbsp).
In addition to direct amounts of sugar, reduce the number of sweet cakes or sweet treats when breaking fast. Suppose you are used to eating 1 bowl of banana compote, then now serve only in a small cup.
4. Use spices to sweeten food
One way to reduce sugar is to add more flavor to the food or drink you eat. You can use cocoa powder or vanilla powder to spices such as nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and others.
Study inJournal of Medicinal Food mentions that spices have been proven to naturally help regulate blood sugar which ultimately helps control your appetite.
5. Read information on nutritional value and composition on your food or beverage packaging
If you want to buy packaged foods or fast food, don't forget to read the nutritional value information label printed on the packaging. Look for food or beverage products with the lowest sugar content per serving.
The term sugar in food packaging can be written like the original "sugar" /sugar) or it can also include other names that end in "-osa or -ol". For example dextrose, fructose, maltose, sucrose, glucose, mannitol, sorbitol. Meanwhile, syrup is more often written as a sweetener of corn, sorghum syrup, and fructose syrup. These are all sweeteners that are often added to drinks.
After looking at the levels, also check the composition label. The earlier the names of these ingredients are listed in the composition label, meaning the content is the most than the other compositions.
It's okay to spoil the body occasionally
Sugar is not to be avoided, but to be limited. Without sugar, the body and various important organs in it cannot work optimally. If it's excessive, the drug and food regulatory agency in the United States, The FDA said that excessive consumption of sugar can make it difficult for the body to digest fibrous foods, vitamins and minerals that are important for the body.
If you are afraid of the difficulty of reducing sweet foods during fasting, you can make certain days your special day to "ditch". Choose a day where you can enjoy certain foods or drinks that you cannot enjoy on other days, for example once every weekend. Limit the portion even though you are playing truant. For example, just a cake or a scoop of ice cream.
To vent cravings for eating sugar in the remaining days, always be ready to provide a choice of healthy and natural sweet foods.
