So we are looking at the 30 days Ramadan, in regards to fitness, eating properly, potential muscle growth and maintenance of current muscle. Making some adjustments into what foods you are having during the dark hours and how much of certain things will make your daylight fasting hours much more bearable, training will still be manageable inside a set of constraints. We can also play it smart in what we break out fast with which is going to 1 benefit our body towards training after this meal, as well as things that are digestible enough to digest quickly in the next few hours to have a final meal before going to sleep.
Focusing on picking foods that you are more likely to eat is going to be helpful as well, If I was going to pick best bang for your buck, I would stick with your fattier meats, particularly red meats(ground beef, London broil, skirt steak), they will hold you longer, have a stronger nutrient profile per oz, and can usually be consumed in larger amounts than most other protein sources as well without too much belly bloating etc, which is a big focus when we have a truncated eating and drinking window. For your carbs, This can be depending on if you are training or not, if you are training, you are most likely going to be training after dark once you have Iftar, this Iftar meal needs to contain the things you need for training but also be very digestible and fast digesting over the next two hours, so you in fact can eat again after training. I would see Greek Yogurt, fruits and honey to be a good pre meal here to get in the things you need fast, be appetizing to you, and will digest while you train.
Realistically you are doing your best to cram as close to 4-5 meals worth of food into 2 meals and a glorified snack, but also making sure to leave enough leeway for water and mineral consumption. So food choices now become a little more important or 1. training will totally fall off, 2. body composition progress falls off, or 3. all the above and you are starving, thirsty and miserable trying to work all day.
Training during Ramadan, your food consumption is going to be very important and your time training will also be important, you most likely wont be able to bang out like you usually can for 1.5-3 hours. Workouts will be best to be truncated during this time, short sessions, good intensity, super setting movements, giant sets, and circuit work will be your best bang for your buck here, as well as keeping the workouts to 40-50 mins. Get the important things done hard, go focus on your last meal, as much fluids as you can stomach before bed, and get ready it starts again for another 29 days. Staying on point with fitness goals during Ramadan Will take some active eating and planning.
Ramadan is a good time to work on composing a leaner body composition, naturally its going to be an easier task than trying to gain during a restricted eating window. But the things we can do are play smart on calories and nutrients to hit our marks, maintain some training intensity from lifting, plus a little smart conditioning which will keep us on track.
So what we have is some foods to focus on
-Fattier meats/red meats
-Quick digesting carbs pre training
-Easier to digest foods to allow for eating volume
-Focus on meats first
-Make a plan
-Keep training 40-50 mins and intense
-Keep conditioning under 15 mins
-Drink whenever you can
-Add some Pink salt to your water
Focus on some of these things and you may in fact come out of Ramadan this year in a better spot than you entered it with some smart work.
- The Meatball
Comments