Ramadhan for me used to be all about having a large meal at sahur time (or none at all at times), then breaking fast with a another huge meal and finishing off the night with desserts galore.
Visiting the Ramadhan bazaars daily was a big must and picking up seasonal food like kuih pelita, roti john, murtabak and colourful drinks was mandatory.
It was all about food believe it or not and less about the remembrance of those in need.
Are you in the same boat as me?
I always imagined that I’ll lose a massive amount of weight and come out slim on the other side of Ramadhan. But oh my gosh, it was always the opposite story for me every single year.
I mean, you would feel the same way too if you don’t eat food at all during the day right? My excuse for a huge iftar would always be because I didn’t eat at all during the day or if I’ve accidentally skipped sahur, the pre-dawn meal.
But this is where I got it wrong you see.
And once I’ve fixed this way of thinking, the kilos dropped off tremendously. I felt truly energetic to perform my ibadah in Ramadhan and it was less about the huge meals at the end of the day.
So what was it that changed my mind?
Why some find it hard to go on a ramadan diet plan to lose weight
When I started writing this blog post, I realised that Malaysian culture promotes over-eating in sublime ways. You don’t even realise it.
Now, I’m not saying that it’s bad going to Ramadhan bazaars, Ramadhan buffets or having iftaars with your loved ones.
It’s just the amount of food that is insane.
My 1200 calories per day body would eat 3000 calories in Ramadhan vs. normal fasting days. Eating vs. the remembrance of those in need.
Let’s break down a typical 3000 calories Ramadhan eating plan in Malaysia which will definitely gain my petite self some weight:
Sahur
- Rice 2 plates – 320 calories
- Fried Chicken – 580 calories
- 3 Dates – 60 calories
- Syrupy drink – 150 calories
Iftaar
- 3 Tepung Pelita – 300 calories
- Syrupy drink – 150 calories
- Rice 2 plates – 320 calories
- Chicken curry 2 servings – 550 calories
- Vegetables – 60 calories
- Apam balik – 560 calories
Moreh
- Bihun – 550 calories
- 3 Karipap – 390 calories
- Coffee (with condensed milk) – 110 calories
That’s a whopping total of 4,100 calories 😟😟😟
Here’s a fun fact…
With each 7700 calories that we store in our body and not being used as energy, we gain 1 kg of body weight.
So if I were to carry on eating 4,100 calories as my Ramadhan diet and considering that my body can only burn 1200 calories, each 3 days I can potentially gain 1kg. 10kg in just one month.
So how exactly do we change this crazy eating habit in Ramadhan?
How to lose weight while fasting in Ramadan
I hope I didn’t give off the vibe that it sounds impossible to lose weight in the Ramadhan month.
It isn’t impossible if you know how and here’s how…
First of all we understand that we’re going to have less activity and less time to consume food. And so it’s essential that it’s not too much food but enough calories and nutrition to fuel our fasting days.
Here’s my simple plan:
Sahur Ramadhan diet
Food for sahur should provide just enough energy to go about our day. Go for more proteins and hydration to sustain our bodily functions and just enough carbohydrates for energy.
Sahur example (200 calories):
- 250ml Milk or boost it by adding protein shake powder
- 3 Dates
- 500ml Water
Now let’s take a look at iftaar (meal for breaking fast)…
Iftaar Ramadhan diet
Iftaar has so many benefits that we humans can’t even fathom. In terms of health, one of them is to sustain nutritional needs and give us energy for night ibadah.
Prioritize your protein intake (lean chicken meat and fish), high fiber veg and fruits (colourful please yes?) and complex carbohydrates (like brown rice, brown bread and rotis, brown pastas etc.).
Iftaar example (700 calories):
- Tahjil with 500ml water and 3 dates
- Perform maghrib prayers
- Eat your main iftar meal using the Suku-suku-separuh plan by Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia (KKM) as shown below
- 1.5 liter water through the night for hydration.
Moreh (100 calories)
- I’ve got to be honest with ya, Moreh feels more social than nutritional.
- But it does provide us with energy to go for more night ibadah
- Suggestion
- Snacking
- 1. Kekacang
- 2. Yogurt (Greek Yogurt is better ✅)
- 3. Apple slices with peanut butter
- 4. Dark chocolate + Almonds
- 5. Cucumber + Hummus
- 6. Eggs x 2 (hard boil, half boil, soft boil, omellete guna olive oil, pepper dan garam)
- 7. Shake
- 8. Edamame
- 9. Avocado
- 10. Buah + Yogurt
- Snacking
That’s a total of 800 calories. Since we’re aiming for 1200 calories minimum to lose around 1 kg per week, you get some wiggle room for a kuih or two.
Congratulations on building your first Ramadhan diet plan!
Building a Ramadhan diet plan is a great way to reset your eating habits back to it’s fitrah
Now that we’ve got our Ramadhan eating plan written down and pasted on the wall, it’s time to have a mindset reset.
First of all, this is not just all about losing weight, it’s about creating a new and healthier eating habit.
We don’t want to lose kilos upon kilos of weight just to gain it all back again in the first 3 days of eid. What you would want to do is to keep losing weight if you’re not already at your ideal weight and maintain it once you’ve achieved your goal.
Your Ramadhan eating plan can easily be switched to normal timing as illustrated below:
- Sahur switch to breakfast (200 calories)
- Add on a morning snack (100 calories)
- Iftaar switch to lunch (600 calories if minus the tahjil)
- Moreh switch to evening snack (100 calories)
- And add on a healthy dinner to complete your calorie needs (200 calories)
A total of 1200 calories and with a daily aerobic exercise which can burn 200 to 300 calories, you’re on your way to lose weight even after the Ramadhan month!
Well done you!
Can eating the right kind of foods boost your Ramadhan diet plan?
For sure you guys!
Let’s compare two types of sahur to one another. One is a typical Malaysian sahur (think rice here) and the other is a pretty alternative yet satisfying sahur.
So let’s check out the first type of sahur…
You’ve got a couple plates of white rice with chicken. Or maybe instant noodle if you want to be quick. Or maybe cereal and milk to get the proteins in. And then a piece of date or two.
What can you see here?
The white rice, instant noodle and cereal are all in the complex carbohydrate category. Fibres and essential nutrition have been stripped from these foods.
When you eat this as sahur, you will feel what people call a sense of “Sugar Rush”.
You’ll feel full at first just by the sheer amount of food that you’ve eaten, but after a short while, sometimes even as short as 30 minutes, you’ll start to feel a little light headed. You’ll feel sleepy and a sudden pang of hunger that’s not supposed to be there this early.
What’s happening?!
Take a deep breath and let me explain…
What you’re feeling right now is that sugar rush. The simple carbohydrates that you’ve consumed in great quantity for iftar has now turned into sugar into your blood stream, but since we’re not going out anytime soon to do some heavy work, the sugars are then grabbed by this hormone called insulin which lowers the spike in blood sugar.
When there is low sugar in the blood, we get hungry fast.
When we get hungry, we get sleepy, lethargic and will experience a low energy through out the day.
What’s the typical reaction of your body after a simple carbohydrate sahur?
We want to sleep right after subuh!
It’s not a good habit to start in Ramadhan as it can carry on even in the eid month and beyond.
The huge amount of sugar which has now been converted to fat will add up each day and hence the static weight or even weight gain that happens in the blessed month of Ramadhan.
What’s the best way then you might say?
Build up your skill set of selecting, preparing and cooking a balanced and complete breakfast.
You’ve got complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamin, minerals and hydration. Scroll up to the Sahur Ramadhan diet section, take a screenshot and apply it to your daily routine. This has been my go to sahur since 2011.
And it’s doing wonders to my Ramadhan days 😀
So now you got the sugars in your blood at normal levels. Hence these sugars are not being converted to fats and instead are being used as energy by the body to go about our day.
At iftar, you’ve got your appetite in check and you don’t overeat
Hence you don’t gain weight. As a matter of fact, you’re going to lose weight.
You got this ok?
Ok now it’s time to combine that ramadan diet plan with a workout plan
So first of all, why do we want to combine workout with our Ramadan meal plan since we’re fasting? And especially when our energy is quite low?
The reason why is that we want to keep our body activated. We want to keep our metabolism high 🔥🔥🔥
We want to keep our body burning off excess calories.
And then there’s a few more reasons why we want to exercise during Ramadan with a healthy diet plan, and you can find that in this blog post here.
So now we’re going to go to the types of workout that we can match with our Ramadhan diet meal plan.
The first type of workout that we can do during Ramadan is strength training.
Strength training is really, really good if you feel kind of lethargic and you don’t have enough energy for a full-blown cardio. Definitely go for strength training. And the second type of workout that you can do as well are light cardio workouts.
Later on in this post, we’re going to go through more examples of these workouts.
Now, the second thing I’m going to talk about is matching your workout, with your sahur or your iftar timing
From my observations, there are two kinds of people that workout during Ramadan.
First are the types that workout in the morning, right after the morning prayers.
And the second type of people like me workout before iftar.
So for those who would like to workout in the morning… I think this is great because you have enough energy from sahur and ofcourse you need to keep it light. This is because you want to reserve some energy for the rest of the day.
Okay. So that’s for your morning workout.
But if you prefer to do like a more vigorous workout like cardio for example, check out brisk walking.
Walking is a great workout and you want to do it right before iftar, at about 6.30pm for a duration of 30 to 45 minutes. However, if you feel kind of like low energy, but you know you need to workout, so you do that also right before your iftar.
Keeping things low impact, I prefer, yoga.
Yoga is a great cardio workout too believe it or not.
Or you could even do stretching exercises which are also amazing.
So this, this is how you match your workout with an amazing Ramadan diet plan.
Download my 7 days ramadan meal plan pdf to start losing weight yourself!
Free meal plan reveals 7 days worth of super easy recipes that took me from 71 kg overweight to 19kg weight loss! Especially for fasting in Ramadhan.
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