The festival season is our favourite and all the food we eat during festivals is mostly unhealthy, despite being so tempting. There are certain steps we can follow and enjoy guilt-free eating this time of the year. Festivals are a great time to introduce traditional food to your diet. As we can observe all these festivals appear in conjunction with climate change and wrong eating can lead to major health issues like heart problems, indigestion etc.

Stick to homemade traditional food
Restricting oneself to traditional old recipes made with pure ingredients like wheat, rice flour, ragi flour etc. can keep you healthy during festival season. Sweets made with wheat flour, semolina, curd, milk, and nuts should be chosen over sweets made in the market, which are generally made with refined flour and contain preservatives.

Portion control is the key
Since we have understood that we can enjoy our homemade delicacies, it is also important to eat a controlled portion. For example, most sweets that we eat are high in calories. So eating it before meals will not make you feel satisfied, you will end up eating more. But eating sweets after meals will make you satisfied with fewer quantities.

Avoid eating heavy night meals leaving space for some sweet indulgence
Suji ka halwa, Badam ka halwa, homemade laddus and barfi have lesser calories than the sweets in the market and so we can enjoy them guilt-free!

Compensate your meal
When we eat heavy meals, we need to compensate for it by having light meals like soups, khichadi, fruit platter and salad etc which will detoxify the body. These types of foods are rich in fiber which helps the digestive system work properly. Also avoid impulsive eating or eating if you are not hungry.

Choose oils wisely
Another factor of our diet is the oil and it is important to choose the oil wisely because when we eat fried food we should consider eating oil according to the climatic conditions we live in. Avoid refined oil for frying and instead use cold pressed oils like mustard oil, canola oil etc. Avoid reheating of oil as it  increases the toxicity of the oil and converts into trans fat which is not good for the body.

Tip: Have 3 to 6 cups of green tea in a day as it contains antioxidants which help in reducing fat. Drinking coconut water can also help in heavy meal digestion. It has a lot of electrolytes which keeps the body hydrated.