Don’t get carried away…

Maintaining the ideal weight, pre or post festivals is something that needs to be taken care of by the health conscious lot. Since most of the festivals in India are related to foods, it becomes almost impossible to check the calorie intake these days. Therefore, during these festive days of customs and faith, dieters need to act smartly, if they really want to come clean out of such inevitable situations. 

Smart choice   

Avoid building up of sweets. Out of sight, out of mind would be the best mantra to get out of this situation. When you are out to buy sweets, you need to act smart. There would be many options available, where you can choose between heavy caloric to less caloric one. Like you can go for rasgullas over gulabjamuns, as the former is a better option over later, which is otherwise deep fried. 

Cautious exchange

What you do comes back to you. Therefore, wise and healthy selection of gifts can set the ball rolling for exchange of health-friendly gifts in your circle. Try to buy nuts, basket of fruits, box of dark chocolates or just khus-khus or oats ladoos over sugar syrupy sweets.

Go easy on sugar

The other smart step is to prepare yourself for the festivities by restricting sugar, oil and heavy foods intake pre and post festive celebrations. Tea and coffee can be sugar free. Boxed fruit juices, colas and sodas should not be a part of your lifestyle. Go for fresh fruits or home-made fruit concoction with plain water to satisfy those sweet cravings. Fruits  give you a detox too.

Home-made treats

Home-made sweets can be another good option. You must have heard of those jaggery and puffed rice lodoos made by your grandmothers in festive seasons, which is definitely a healthy choice over the ready-to-eat sweets available in market. You can further make them healthy by adding flax seeds, sesame and walnuts. Make healthy banana or carrot cakes to serve your guests, which will be a healthy option for them.

Quantity control 

Instead of implementing a complete ban on sweets in the name of health, controlling the quantity of healthy sweet intake should be another mantra, which will not dampen your spirit. 

(Renupreet Kaur is a Mohali-based dietician)