From the amazing food to the figure-hugging clothes, looking good during Diwali isn’t without it’s challenges. However, by making a few adjustments to your wellness plan, you can fix your fitness and wellbeing in time for the festivities.
1. Start with a good night’s sleep: According to ACE-certified Personal Trainer Sasha Gusain, who is also a fitness writer and editor for HealthyLivingIndia.org and HealthMeUp.com, ‘Sleeping right, on time and for the minimum six to eight hours every night is crucial to how you look come festival time.’ If you get plenty of regular, restful sleep, you’ll be better able to digest your food for the next morning, rest and recover more effectively after workouts and avoid the overall look of facial puffiness and weariness that comes from sleep deprivation.
2. Sort out your exercise routine: Gusain recommends planning a strength and cardio combination workout with a professional trainer. ‘Two weeks of regular workouts can help you trim the extra flab to a certain extent,’ she notes. ‘You won’t lose weight, at least nothing more than one to two pounds (at best – the healthy way), but you won’t add any more fat to your body.’
3. Try to clock five or six days at the gym for the next two weeks: Gusain advises, ‘Depending on workout intensity, plan the workout days in advance and stick to them. Don’t skip a single workout. You’ll be amazed to notice how much better you look and feel within just two short weeks.’
4. Incorporate interval training: Studies have shown that it isn’t the length of time that you workout for that makes the difference; it’s the type of activity and the intensity at which you do it. While this is a great method to keep your weight in check in the weeks leading up to Diwali, Gusain insists that it might become a way of exercising that you’ll fall in love with and stick to for life. She asserts that interval training ‘is immensely more involving and encouraging than hour after boring hour on the treadmill.’
5. Clean up your diet: With Diwali right around the corner, stopping eating healthy foods in the weeks leading up to the festivities will help you to look your best. This means you need to avoid all fried foods, greasy snacks, high sugar foods, and foods made with refined and processed flour. Gusain adds, ‘Avoid more than two to three helpings of high starch foods like white rice and potatoes during this phase as well.’ Moreover, as adding salt to foods causes you to retain more water and lose nutrients from your bones, cutting salt down as much as possible can get your body Diwali-ready.
6. Say no to your sweet tooth: While it’s OK to include a little bit of salt in your diet – and we’re talking about a very little bit here – any more than a teaspoon of white sugar every day is too much. Gusain explains, ‘Not only does white sugar add unnecessary calories to your diet, it removes nutrients from your body, and adds no nutrients of its own.’
7. Eat your fruit and vegetables: Veggies are ‘an important food group and help trim the fat, quite literally,’ Gusain says. ‘Strict fitness diets sometimes forsake the extra fruit sugar and follow just one or no fruits for daily consumption. This, however, is debatable and has many different schools of thoughts and reasoning. You should eat some fruits for the antioxidants, flavinoids etc, but if you’re on a strict calorie count, then trade the extra fruits for vegetables. Either way, a single serving of an apple, papaya, or pomegranate will benefit you as a healthy snack that satiates you and keeps you away from unhealthy snacking.’
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