Aside from being a form of worship, fasting is also useful for detoxification or removal of toxic substances from the body naturally. When fasting, we don't consume food or drink for at least 14 hours, so the body tends to be weaker when carrying out daily activities. Not only that, if you don't follow the rules of eating healthy at dawn and breaking the fast, your immune system can weaken and make you fall sick more easily. Even so, there's no need to worry, there are five things you can do to keep your body fit and healthy during fasting.
Don't Miss Sahur with Nutritious Food
Sahur is one of the important things to keep the body fit during fasting. Good breakfast intake can be an energy reserve for the body so that you can stay energized when doing activities while fasting. Therefore, take advantage of the sahur moment to eat foods that are nutritious and rich in fiber, such as spinach, mushrooms, broccoli and pumpkin. For carbohydrate intake, choose complex carbohydrates, such as brown rice or whole wheat bread. These food choices contain lots of fiber and nutrients that take a long time to be absorbed by the body so you will feel fuller longer when fasting.
Continue to Meet the Needs of Body Fluids
To avoid the risk of dehydration during fasting, you still need to meet your body's fluid needs. Dehydration can cause headaches and decreased blood pressure so that it can interfere with your smooth fasting. Therefore, try to keep drinking at least eight glasses of water a day, for example two glasses at dawn, four glasses when breaking the fast, and two glasses before going to bed.
In addition, it's a good idea to avoid drinks that contain caffeine at dawn, such as coffee and strong tea. This is because caffeine is a diuretic, so it causes you to urinate more often and risks dehydrating your body.
Avoid Foods That Are Too Sweet, Spicy and Oily
At dawn, you should not consume too much sweet food or drink because it can easily increase blood glucose levels. Increased blood glucose levels can have an impact on insulin release to lower glucose. Blood glucose fluctuations that occur due to consumption of sweet foods is what will make our bodies feel hungry quickly. Apart from avoiding consuming too much sweet food, it's a good idea to also avoid spicy and oily foods so as not to stimulate stomach acid and excessive cholesterol.
Keep Doing Light Exercise
Fasting is not a reason to completely stop physical activity because physical activity while fasting can keep the body fit and healthy. However, you should only do light exercise in a short time of about 30 minutes. Do sports that are easy to do such as walking, cycling, gymnastics, or jogging. It's best to do this exercise in the evening before breaking your fast so that after you finish exercising, you can immediately drink water to meet your intake of lost body fluids due to sweating during exercise.
Enough rest
Apart from paying attention to your diet and doing regular exercise, adequate rest also needs to be done so that your body stays fit during fasting. Lack of sleep will affect brain performance and hinder your activities while fasting. Therefore, try to stay rested with enough sleep, namely for six to eight hours at night to restore your drained energy during the day. Try to sleep early after the tarawih prayer and not sleep too late so you can wake up refreshed for sahur. Adequate sleep can also prevent you from feeling sleepy while fasting.
Those are some tips that can be done to keep your body fit during fasting. By adopting this healthy lifestyle, the body can have better endurance and not get sick easily so that fasting can go smoothly. #LiveExcellently