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When a big sporting event like the IPL occurs each year, it is easy to get swayed by that extra pint of beer or an extra serving of chicken wings, without realising that you’ve crossed your daily calorific intake by leaps and bounds. As a result of this, it can be a bit tricky for your body and digestive system to readjust and adapt to your regular routine, without any hassles. From overeating to drinking excessively, both of which also increase the capacity of your food intake, it can be quite the challenge to bounce back to your regular diet of dal-chawal-sabzi and avoid odd cravings through the day. Hence, following a few simple tips to make small but effective tweaks in your eating patterns can prove to be beneficial to the body, without leaving you feeling hungry or reaching out for a packet of chips.
Physical Activity
First things first – it is important to burn off those excess calories and sweat off the toxins that have accumulated in the body through some form of physical activity. Although that might seem unrelated or far-fetched in terms of resuming your daily dietary habits, activities like walking, cycling, swimming or skipping allow you to sweat and hydrate yourself at regular intervals. Engaging in physical activity is also a great aid to good digestion, making it an effective first step on the road to fitness.
Eat As Per Appetite
Portion control or serving sizes of the food you eat must solely depend on how hungry you feel on a day-to-day basis. Since appetite is a factor that varies, depending on the time of day, your state of mind and how much time you have to throw together a meal, eating until you feel satiated is important in order to provide the body with a balanced meal and essential nutrients to keep you going. The trick lies in not skipping breakfast, including a healthy mix of carbs, protein and vitamins as well as keeping your metabolism in-check.
Eat Right
As creatures of habit, it is easy for us to pick up a bar of chocolate or a packet of biscuits to munch on when the hunger pangs strike. However, making healthy swaps with seasonal fruit, makhana, rice cakes or a salad when you’re hungry, keeps you from packing in the empty calories, without the nutritional value that you would otherwise stand to gain. Having a high protein snack like apples with peanut butter or a paneer sandwich gives you the feeling of eating something substantial yet healthy.
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Hydration
As cliched as it might be, drinking plenty of water through the day is one of the best ways to keep up a healthy digestive tract and maintain optimum levels of oxygen in the blood. Drinking water also helps with other consequences of bingeing – like bloating, constipation and an overload of sodium, by flushing toxins from the system. Squeezing a bit of lemon juice or adding mint to your glass of water is also beneficial for aiding digestion as well as helping blood pump through your body more effectively.
Keep Junk Out Of Sight
Many psychological reports have proven that the more you see a particular type of food in front of you, the more your desire to eat it increases. Getting rid of all the leftover snacks that do not enable you to eat healthy is crucial to maintain good health as well as not give into temptations. Giving them away or throwing them in the trash will prevent your brain from being triggered to feel like it is being deprived of something and help you stay on-course with your healthy eating habits.
Stay Guilt-Free
In order to be fair on yourself, it is necessary to understand that all of us binge once in a while and that there is no shame in admitting to yourself that you enjoyed the phase of digging into junk food. Negative feelings about body image or your eating patterns only tend to multiply in the mind, making healthy eating seem like an unachievable task that you must tread through. Instead, inculcating the practice of savouring everything you eat and appreciating it for what it is, lets your body and mind be more accepting and forgiving when the binge fest occurs from time to time.
