Ramadan and weight loss

For us Muslims, Ramadan is a time for spiritual cleansing through abstinence from the body's physical needs from dawn to dusk and by sharing material goods with the haves not among us.

For me, during this Ramadan, secondary to my goal of spiritual cleansing and well-being, but nevertheless  important is my goal of weight loss and good health. As long as I live in this world, I want to be healthy and I pray to God that I can continue on this journey towards good health.

I have been eating the edayathazham/Sehri between 4am-5am in the morning. I break my fast (nombu thurakkal/iftaar) at 6.50 ish in the evening. For the benefit of people not in the know, fasting means we abstain from all food and drink including water. I am not very sure that I will able to exercise this month, in any case even when I was eating 3-4 meals, I was such a lazy bum when it came to exercise as my earlier posts testify.  My weight loss goal this month is maintenance. I just hope to eat healthy this month, especially to try and avoid fried food which is eaten at Iftaar.  I am going to focus on eating fruits for Iftaar.

 It is very tempting when others are eating fried items to gorge on them myself. Surely, if I can give up on food and water for more than 12 hours, then I can skip eating fried stuff also? Let me see.. this is going to be a test of my will power:-) Alawys trying to look at the positive side - my family members do not insist on more than one fried item for iftaar (it is either samosas or bonda or uzhunnu vada, not everything together!) 

Edayathazham/Sehri: carrot and cucumber salad, 1/2 cup matta rice, sambhar, raw papaya thoran and 1 coffee w/o sugar

Iftar: 2 dates, 4-5 salted cashewnuts, 3 handfuls grapes, mango (around 6 small pieces), 2 musambi slices, 2 spoons of pomegranate, 2 njali poovan plantain and 2 bread sandwiches toasted with cabbage and onion filling. 1 coffee without sugar, 1/2 glass tharikanji

dinner:  I shall eat 1 appam with 1/2 cup of chickpea masala. I ate 2 more toasted sandwiches and 3 salted cashewnuts.