Some girls struggle with noticeable weight loss during Ramadan due to long fasting hours. This makes them always look for many ways to gain weight with no success. But here, we give you some steps that help with weight gain in Ramadan. First, you need to know reaching your goal needs consistency and sticking to a healthy diet and a good workout plan.
Being underweight is also a disease like obesity. It's diagnosed by body mass index, where BMI is less than 18.5. It's best to reach a normal weight so you can do daily activities and avoid malnutrition.
Ways to gain weight in Ramadan:
There's a wrong idea that you can fix being underweight by eating lots of high-calorie foods even if they aren't healthy. But this is wrong and harms the body a lot. Gaining weight like this means adding fat tissue to the body and leads to many negative effects on your plate. The right way is to supply the calories needed for weight gain from healthy and useful sources, and do specific exercises to gain weight by building muscle mass.
It's different in Ramadan because of limited eating time. So, focus on foods with high calories that don’t fill up the stomach much like dates. It's better to follow some healthy steps that help you reach your goals:
- Add high-calorie foods: Try to replace sugary juices with yogurt shakes like fruit yogurt shake, use avocado instead of cucumber slices, add olive oil to your veggie salad or healthy cheese sauce.
- Make sure to eat 3 meals at breakfast time:Breakfast and suhoor plus one main meal, and you should set fixed meal times.
- Add some snacks with protein sources like meat and legumes.
- Try to increase calorie intake: From 700 to 1000 calories per day.
- Focus on dried fruit: Because it has a high calorie count and is also healthy.
Tips for maintaining weight
If you don’t want to lose weight in Ramadan due to long fasting hours, here are some tips:
- Write down your weight: Write your weight and know the calories you need to maintain it, eat meals within those calories, and try to split them between iftar and suhoor.
- Make sure to drink water: Your body might get dehydrated during fasting, so at iftar try to drink lots of water and fluids to make up for it, and eat foods with a lot of water like cucumber, watermelon, lettuce, cantaloupe, and healthy soup.
- Get enough sleep: Make sure to get good sleep at night because not sleeping enough can raise hunger hormones, making you eat a lot of unnecessary calories.
Try to keep up the healthy habits you get during Ramadan after the month ends to reach your goal. Exercise really helps build muscle mass a lot.
Diet plan to maintain weight during Ramadan
Carbs that can be in your breakfast meal:
- 7 spoons of rice or pasta.
- Boiled potatoes.
- 2 slices of whole wheat toast.
- A plate of orzo pasta.
- 4 stuffed pieces.
Meats that can be in the breakfast meal:
- Half a grilled or boiled chicken.
- Quarter kilo of grilled veal.
- 250 grams of grilled shrimp.
- 4 grilled burger pieces.
- 100 grams of light white cheese.
Vegetables that can be in the breakfast meal:
- Vegetable salad.
- A bowl of vegetable soup.
Juices that breakfast can have (with less sugar).
- Hibiscus.
- Guava juice.
- Banana with milk.
- Fresh orange.
- Lemon.
- 3 dates and a cup of yogurt.
Allowed suhoor
- 2 brown toasts + 50 grams of light feta cheese + a cup of tea with milk.
- 2 brown toasts + 2 boiled eggs.
- 1 slice of brown bread + 5 spoons of fava beans + 1 spoon olive oil + tea with milk.
- 3 spoons of corn flakes + milk
- 250 grams of yogurt + a cup of yogurt.
