Why do we gain weight during Ramadan?

Ever wonder why do we gain weight during the holy month of Ramadan? We fast. From Fajr till Maghrib. Thats a whopping 15 hours (your local time may vary) of no food or drink under the blazing July Sun. But instead of making us thinner and fitter, we end up with an even wider waistline than before. Makes no sense!

Or does it.

The real problem is not what we eat. But how much we eat. And by God, we eat a lot after dutifully abstaining during the hot summer day. Just visit your nearest Iftar party in a typical Lahori restaurant; we literally invade the buffet trays as if we are famished for days.

To us a typical glass of Rooh Afza seems like the holy Zam zam water as we gulp glass after glass of this exotic drink and top it up by swallowing one after the other fried pakoras and samosas as if that’s the last cuisine left on earth. And the worst part is, it is only the beginning. The main course is still some ways away.

And please, dont get me even started on the main course. Which is usually served right after we pray our Maghrib prayers. It’s more like a battle of who can build a mountain of food onto their plates in the shortest span of time. To those who gorge food like never ever eaten before, here is what I have to say: it’s a buffet, you can always go back for seconds!

I am no food expert, but those who are, have ordained on typical human being to eat around 2,000 calories a day on average (for an average person). But we usually end up gorging twice as much calories in one meal, if not more.

To give a typical meal example, see the calories intake for a typical sehri and iftar (as shown here).

Typical Sehri

And these numbers do not even include the dinner that we gobble up which is no less than this in calories.

Typical Iftar

So three meals each averaging 1,400 calories would translate to 4,200 calries in one day. Wow, twice as much intake as is recommended by the experts for an average Joe.

If we really want to control or even reduce or weight, we really do need to go easy on fried food (samosas, pakoras, fried chicken ), colas (yes that means Pepsi), and eat in smaller proportions of our rice, chicken/mutton Handis. No, I am not asking you to go on diet after one month of fasting, all I am asking is that we control the intake. We should eat fewer items and will smaller proportions. So instead of filling our plates with deep fried samosas and pakoras, we should focus on eating at most one piece of it along with some water (no colas please).

I assure you smaller proportions will not famish you, it will only make you healthier.

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