7 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight During Ramadan
The Holy month of Ramadan is upon us once again. May we reap its transformative power and taste its profound sweetness. We are all aware that the fast in Ramadan is primarily for spiritual benefit, to draw near to the Divine,
and to as Rumi put it, “starve the body but feed the soul.”
However, as Rumi’s wisdom reminds us, the body and psyche are not separate entities, they are woven together in each of us. How we engage with one profoundly affects the other. Our spiritual hearts are the source of our outward actions and our outward actions deeply affect the state of our spiritual hearts.
We physically prostrate to spiritually ascend, we physically offer zakat with our hands to spiritually be purified, we physically travel to the House of the All-Merciful to spiritually represent our return to the Divine Presence, we move our tongues to physically utter our inner conviction of the Oneness of Reality and the messengership of the Beloved ﷺ so as to illuminate our souls and deepen our realization of the Real. During Ramadan we become physically empty to become spiritually filled.
How we feel physically affects how we feel mentally and spiritually, our mood, our state, our concentration, our ability to be present, and to be fully aware of the One in this realm of trial and multiplicity. Many of us intend to transform, not only our hearts during the sacred fasting month, but our physical bodies. There is nothing blameworthy in wanting to lose weight during Ramadan, or to achieve other fitness goals. Our bodies have rights over us and in order to better serve our Creator, we should strive to be people of balance, wellness, and health — mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Intermittent Fasting: The Fast of the Muslims Goes Viral
While Muslims, and other religious traditions, have maintained fasting for millennia, it has become a central feature of the health and wellness community in the past decade now that modern science has shown fasting to be the key to a wide range of health benefits. Intermittent fasting, which means restricting eating to specific hours during the day (basically what Muslims have done for 1400 years) has been shown to be among the most beneficial things one can do for their health. Insulin levels drop, human growth hormone (which stimulates muscle gain and weight loss) levels go up, cells are repaired, and there are positive changes in genes related to longevity and disease prevention. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg; studies have also shown that intermittent fasting can help you lose weight, become less insulin resistant (lowering risk of type-2 diabetes), reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in the body, improve heart health, remove waste from cells, prevent against cancer, improve brain health, prevent Alzheimer’s disease, and extend lifespan.
The human body simply functions better when it goes through periods of fasting. An example of a popular intermittent fast, often recommended by health professionals, is a 16 hour fast in which one eats only within an 8 hour window during a 24 hour period (basically what Muslims do when fasting inside or outside of Ramadan). It is often recommended that to do this twice a week is ideal (also sunnah). The popular 5:2 diet (5 days of the week you eat and 2 days you fast) is one example.
So as Muslims we have a leg up on people who don’t fast 1 out of every 12 days of their lives to reap the health benefits of fasting and to be a community of wellness and balance. Unfortunately, due to unhealthy eating habits many Muslims fail to lose weight — many even gain weight! — during the holy fasting month. Below we hope to outline some of the things that one can do to find the full physical benefits of fasting. But first, some context.
Sick, Fat, and Nearly Dead: An Epidemic
Nearly three quarters of American men and 60% of American women are overweight or obese. And, frighteningly, nearly 30% of American boys and girls under age 20 are either obese or overweight — up from 19% in 1980. Our generation is the first in the history of the USA that will have a shorter lifespan than their parents. 8 of the top 10 causes of death in our country are diet related. The other two are suicide and accidents. This is an epidemic of epic proportions and is all the more tragic because it is easily preventable. I am not aware of any specific obesity statistics on American Muslims but I doubt anyone who has spent time amongst our communities would argue that we fare much better than the national average.
Ramadan is a great opportunity to break bad eating habits and transform oneself physically as well as spiritually and to overcome the barriers to health and optimal wellbeing. I think it is important to note that this epidemic is not just because people are lazy and gluttonous. Often people are unaware what constitutes a balanced diet, or at least their ideas of a balanced diet are significantly misled. We have been lied to for decades about what is healthy and what is not. For instance, a recent NYT article showed how the sugar industry paid Harvard scientists to obscure the fact that sugar is the cause of a wide range of dis-eases, including obesity, by shifting the blame to fat. Untold numbers of people have suffered and died because of this type of manipulation.
If you follow the diet recommended by the “official” food pyramid (which has been maintained with manipulation from Big Agra) with grains as the overwhelming staple of your diet (“6–11 servings a day!”) — combined with the super-prevalence of sugary foods, drinks, fried foods and highly processed snacks — you are probably overweight. In what follows we hope to highlight some of the most likely reasons you are not losing weight during Ramadan and what to do to remove the barriers to weight loss, wellbeing, and health.
A Personal Note
The past 3 or 4 Ramadans have been very difficult for me personally because I found myself with almost no energy. I felt like a zombie and could barely get out of bed. I was totally lethargic and mentally foggy. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty but I was totally incapacitated. I worked at night just to be somewhat productive. It wasn’t just Ramadan though, year round I was tired. I didn’t have much energy for exercise, was relying on ridiculous amounts of caffeine to get through the afternoon, was mentally foggy, had joint stiffness and digestive issues, and had put on 20 or so extra pounds. After speaking with a few people who are specialists in health and nutrition about my lethargy and other health issues I had developed, I realized that my gut microbiome was totally imbalanced, I was insulin resistant (pre-diabetic), and that my symptoms were typical of a high sugar and carbohydrate diet.
Even though I had always been pretty health conscious, and ate far from the average American diet, I knew the diagnosis was accurate. Luckily, all these things can be fixed with changes in diet and lifestyle, so after a difficult Ramadan last year I decided to heed the advice of health specialists and quit putting my own well being off until “someday” in the future. I made it a priority. It was one of the best things I have ever done. In the past year I have lost the excess 20 pounds; I have become more mentally alert; I have way more energy than I did before; my gut microbiome is healed; my joint stiffness is gone; I have a daily workout routine which has become a great pleasure instead of a chore (and which keeps me high on endorphins all day), and I just feel way better than I ever have, alhamdulilah. Many of my friends and family, after seeing my transformation, have implemented the changes that I made as well and have seen positive results. The list below lays out the main lessons I have learned and personally implemented on this journey to health and wellness. Hopefully you will find some benefit in them.
7 Reasons Why You Aren’t Losing Weight During Ramadan
1. You Are Eating Too Much Sugar
Excess sugar consumption is the root cause of obesity, diabetes and many other health issues. The less sugar a human being consumes in his or her lifetime the better. But it is especially terrible for those looking to lose weight. When you eat sugar your body secretes insulin, this hormone causes fat to be stored. Insulin levels are mostly determined by how much carbohydrates you are putting in your body. When you eat sugary foods (yes, even fruits should be eaten in moderation if your goal is weight loss) you are peaking your insulin and consequently storing more and more fat. If you are eating sugar every once in awhile this isn’t a problem, but for those of us who have eaten a standard Western diet high in sugar since we were children, our insulin levels are likely out of whack. We become insulin resistant (pre-diabetic) and thus our body must secrete more and more insulin each time we eat sugar and carbohydrates; as a result we keep get fatter and fatter. If your goal is fat loss, definitely skip dessert for iftar. Even dates, while being nutrient dense, are high in sugar, so if your goal is weight loss, limit your intake to one date when you break your fast.
2. You’re Drinking Too Much Sugar
You may ask, “why have a separate point for drinking sugar?” Didn’t we just cover sugar in the first point? Yes, we did, but I hope to emphasize the fact that sugar is the main culprit in your lack of Ramadan weight loss, and also highlight the fact that sugar consumed in liquid form is the most harmful. The worst way to take in sugar is in liquid form. It is like taking a sugar I.V. straight into the bloodstream. It is absorbed directly into the blood and causes blood sugar levels to skyrocket.
Most people know that sodas and other fizzy drinks are bad for you. A single can of coke, contains a whopping 38 grams of sugar, which exceeds the recommended maximum daily allowance! If you drink even one can of soda a day during Ramadan — or half a can for that matter — you can forget about losing any significant weight. Hopefully this news is not surprising to anyone in 2017. But, what a lot of people don’t realize is that juices (yes, even fresh squeezed juices and smoothies) usually contain immense amounts of sugar as well. When we eat fruit, the natural sugars inside them are wrapped in fiber, but when we drink fruit juice we introduce an intense blast of sugar to our system. If you want to lose weight, skip the fruit juices. Skip the smoothies too unless they are predominantly veggies without a whole lot of fruit.
All in all, the easiest step to lose weight this Ramadan (and beyond) is to just cut out all sugary beverages altogether. Many people find that they lose significant weight by following this step alone. Stick to water (flat and sparkling), tea and coffee (without adding sugar obviously) and you will quickly find that you don’t miss your sugary drinks at all. Make juice a rare treat and you will come to appreciate it more. And if you care about your body at all, proceed as if soda is haram for you.
3. You’re Eating Too Many Things That Turn to Sugar
A lot of people cut out sugar and then are surprised that it doesn’t give them the desired results, or they lose a bit of weight but then they reach a weight loss plateau. Even with all my interest in health and nutrition, it took me until my early 30s to fully understand the way that grains also turn to sugar in the body. Bread, rice, and other carbohydrates are converted to glucose in the body. The liver secretes insulin when you eat them. For some people this is no problem. For people who are insulin resistant (if you are overweight this almost certainly includes you) it wreaks havoc on the body. As David Ludwig, MD, PhD, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Children’s Hospital Boston states clearly, “refined carbohydrates, including refined grain products, are the single most harmful influence in the American diet today.” If you are eating bread, rice, cereal, etc, you are spiking insulin and thus storing fat instead of burning it. If your goal is weight loss, you have to cut down on carbs.
4. You Aren’t Eating Enough Probiotic/Prebiotic Foods.
Modern science has confirmed what Hippocrates said 2,000 years ago, “all disease begins in the gut.” We now know that there is more bacteria in us and on us than there are human cells in our entire body! Walt Whitman was right, “[We] contain multitudes.” There are trillions of microbes in your stomach that help you digest food and protect you from harmful bacteria, fungi, and viruses. These microbes also deeply influence one’s propensity to gain weight. Studies have shown that mice with imbalanced gut microbes become obese even when they are fed the same diets (with exactly the same caloric intake) as mice with healthy gut bacteria. Furthermore, when bacteria from the healthy mice is put in the stomach of the obese mice, the obese mice loses weight even when their diet is not changed at all. The field of study on the human microbiome is a hot topic in scientific and medical circles and is expanding rapidly. A lot of this science is still less than a decade old and has not yet filtered down to common popular knowledge outside of health conscious circles. But it is important to understand that we are in the middle of a revolution in the fields of medicine and nutrition due to recent findings about the human microbiome. So how does one attain a healthy gut? For starters, the worst thing you can do for your gut is to eat a high sugar, high carbohydrate diet (are you seeing the trend here?).
Some of the best foods for a healthy gut are as follows:
- Fresh Vegetables
- Herbs, Spices, Teas (Turmeric, Basil, Oregano, Thyme, Green Tea, Coffee)
- Probiotic foods (Yogurt, Kefir, Kimchi, Kombucha, Sauerkraut)
- Garlic, Onions
- Raw Apple Cider Vinegar
- Coconut Oil
- Bone Broth
5. You Still Think Fat is Bad
Fat does not make you fat! Sugar does. I personally lost 20 plus pounds in 5 months by cutting sugar and grains, while eating as much fat as I cared to consume. Two great forms of fat are coconut oil and avocados. Try a spoonful of coconut oil for iftar and for suhoor (it is also great for the microbiome). Avocados are the perfect suhoor. Eggs (yolks and all) and meat (especially organ meat) are also good sources of fat and are incredibly nutrient dense. Seeds and nuts are a great source of fat and serve as the perfect snack for that midnight hunger between taraweeh and suhoor. Fat is also slow burning so it keeps you going throughout the day during long fasts. Butter is excellent and delicious. Cut out all the “low-fat” garbage. These are usually laced with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or other frankenfoods not fit for human consumption. Fat is not bad. And it does not make you fat. Sugar does.
6. You Aren’t Moving Enough
While body composition is 80% what you eat. It is also 20% how you move. The body gets weak if the body doesn’t move. During Ramadan we have less energy during the day and consequently going to the gym or keeping up with workouts can be difficult. However, simply adding in some walks throughout the day and some bodyweight exercises can go a long way. Instead of being sedentary for 23 hours and then running for an hour on a treadmill, try incorporating movement into your daily schedule. Walk to work, or take the train/bus and walk to and from that. Do you talk on the phone for work? Go on a walk while you talk. Cycle to the grocery store or to your friend’s house for iftar. Take an invigorating walk around your neighborhood after ‘Asr as the sun is going down and you are getting ready to break fast. It is not true that you need to workout really intensely to burn calories. Engaging in low level aerobic activity throughout the day (walking, hiking, gardening, yoga, swimming) does wonders.
Set some goals for simple, yet extremely effective bodyweight exercises and calisthenics. Four of the most tried and true bodyweight exercises are 1) Pushups 2) Squats 3)Pull ups and 4) Planks. If you are able to: do 100 push ups and non-weighted squats a day. If you find that easy after a few days try 150. See if you can make your way up to 200 by the end of the month. Do 60 second planks. Do as many pull ups as you can. If you can’t do any then just hang there as long as you can. Set goals that push you but are not impossible. Don’t worry if you are weak at first. Start off with 5 sets of 10 push ups if that’s all you can do. Do them from your knees if that is too difficult. You will see rapid increase if you just remain consistent and push yourself. Don’t forget to have fun. Play games or sports with your friends and family. Run, jump, do handstands and somersaults, feel the joy of being in your body. You will find it easier to be consistent if you enjoy your exercise.
7. You’re Too Stressed Out
Stress causes your body to release cortisol which tells your body to replenish energy even when you haven’t expended very much or burned many calories. And your body keeps pumping cortisol as long as the stress continues! Also, in situations of stress we aren’t likely to reach for broccoli and kale. As Elissa Epel, a researcher on stress eating at the University of California, San Francisco remarks, “ [When we are stressed] we crave sweet, salty, and high-fat foods because they stimulate the brain to release pleasure chemicals that reduce tension.” This soothing effect becomes addicting so that you start to crave fattening foods every time you feel stressed. The good news is that if you have a daily exercise regimen you will naturally feel less stressed out. The benefits of eating well and exercising regularly for me are about mental health just as much as, if not more than, physical health.
The cool thing about diet and exercise is that you don’t have to take anybody’s word for it. There are a lot of varying opinions out there and it can be confusing. But you don’t have to take anything on faith. You can try it for yourself and see how your body responds. I am not a health professional, just an individual who, like the majority of Americans was on the path to imbalance, dis-ease, and health issues. I changed a few things and found incredible results immediately.
So don’t take my word for it; try implementing these 7 things for a month, test the hypotheses in the laboratory of your body and see if the results are beneficial. Let me know how it goes. May all of us find health, balance, and wellness in our minds, bodies, and souls. Ramadan Mubarak.
