This Ramadan will be like no other for many reasons… not least of which, because I’m taking up – and inviting other adventurous souls to – The Ramadan Challenge: To live and thrive on just 800kcal per night, during Ramadan.
This may seem extreme, but because the eating window in Ramadan is so small, it actually amounts to 2 decent, filling meals… assuming we take out all the unhealthy foods and eat clean, pure, wholesome foods instead.
I’ll share my exact food plans in future articles, but here, I want to share the essential idea with you.
Intermittent Fasting is gaining a lot of traction in popular culture and a lot of scientific studies are being carried out about the effectiveness of a Muslim-style fast. The idea is, if you just stop eating and drinking calories for a longer period of time than you’re used to, your body meets its energy requirements by burning fat.
Common sense, right?
Despite the last few decades of many corporations filling fitness magazines and popular culture with the idea that if you want to be in great shape, you need to eat 6 times a day… it turns out there’s actually no down-side to just fasting instead. (Unless you consider the food and supplement industries losing money a down-side).
Your body doesn’t suddenly throw away of the hard earned muscle you gained at the gym. Nor does it go into starvation mode and shut down. (Although, that does happen over a much longer period of time).
So, why not just do Ramadan the normal way, without changing our eating habits at all?
Because, many of our cultures encourage us to eat even more than normal during Ramadan, we make up for all the hard work we’ve put in, by gorging on fatty, sugary, fried foods and fizzy drinks… instead of eating small portions of pure, clean food – ie. following the Sunna (Prophetic practice).
Instead, I’m going to do the opposite: eat less food and eat only clean, wholesome food (mostly greens with a small portion of protein or beans) and as a result burn more fat in Ramadan than I would probably be able to manage if I tried all year long.
Will it be tough?
Sure, but the toughest part of Ramadan is the part that we all do anyway: not eating and drinking all day.
All I’m going to do is remove unhealthy food options at iftar time. Because it’s lockdown, not being able to freely mix with other families as much as we usually would, will actually make this a lot easier to achieve. However, even if there were other more calorific food options available, I simply won’t take them. That’s part of the reason for capping it a 800kcal. And it’s part of the challenge. (If you open the door to “generally eating healthily”, you’ll soon find yourself “generally eating what everyone else does”… and that likely won’t work at all.)
