Celebrate Holi Smartly: Tips for a Healthy and Enjoyable Festival
Holi is a festival of vibrant colours combined with a scrumptious variety of food. Indulging in traditional recipes may ruin your healthy lifestyle regime. Here are some tips to help you enjoy the festival without keeping yourself deprived of delicious food and make you stay on track this festive season.
At SMART bariatrics, we always emphasize that you need to be smart enough to make healthy choices to feed your body. Let’s know how to keep it up this Holi!!
Stay active
Do not make the festival an excuse to miss your daily workout schedule as it helps you balance the daily calorie intake. Celebrate Holi by playing with natural colours. And also participate in outdoor games with friends and family to make the celebrations more fun.
Stay hydrated
With this ever-changing weather remind yourself to drink ample amounts of non-aerated, no-sugar liquids to stay hydrated and keep yourself energised the whole day. Coconut water, lemon water, buttermilk, vegetable juices and low-fat thandai are some of the healthy options.
Choose healthy cooking techniques
Instead of eating calorie-dense traditional foods, get inclined towards roasted, baked or grilled snacks made up of fresh veggies, paneer, tofu, soya, nuts, whole grains and pulses. As against deep-fried gujias opt for baked ones made up of whole wheat stuffed with multi-grains and nuts with added artificial sweetener instead of high khoya and sugar. Mouth-watering dahi-bhallas can also be baked and relished with low-fat curd and tamarind chutney. The traditional Thandai can also be tweaked by replacing fat-rich milk with skimmed milk, and sugar with artificial sweetener and adding musk melon, khus-khus, kesar, almonds and walnuts making it healthier. Avoid adding bhaang to it, as it is highly injurious to health.
Home-made desserts:
All festivals are incomplete without delicious desserts and being a Weight Watcher it is important for you to choose your desserts thoughtfully. Grilled pineapple, home-made fruit yoghurts, quinoa phirni, makhana-carrot kheer and ragi pancakes dressed with honey are some healthy alternatives to add to the Holi dessert list.
Make healthy savoury
We all love to eat chaat papdi but the sad part is the routine preparation which is full of fat and refined cereals. Instead of suji gol-gappas, switch to atta ones and stuff them with steamed sprouts and enjoy with home-made kanji, khaata-dhania paani or top with low-fat curd and mint-tamarind chutney. The traditional murmura bhelpuri can be replaced with puffed wheat, roasted quinoa and soyabeans crunchy mixture. You may also add lots of chopped vegetables to improve the fibre content. Dress it with lemon juice and spices as per taste.
Holi is a special celebration of the year to meet our near and dear ones. Let’s make small, little steps to be a positive change in our lives by taking care of each other’s health. Good health is the best gift you can offer to yourself and your family and friends this Holi. Do your bit, and exchange your healthy ideas with me and each other, to make this a collective effort. After all, being healthy is being smart, that is what we preach and practice at SMART Bariatrics!!
Happy Holi, revel the colours in you!!
