To a healthy Diwali

Distribute festive blessings with good health wishes and treats that leave you feeling light!

- CHEF RAJI GUPTA

Diwali is called the ‘Festival of Lights’. But I call it the ‘Festival of Calories!’

While the skies are exploding with starry fireworks, our collective weights are dangerously rocketing upwards too. While the diyas are glittering with their oil-soaked wicks, plates of gleaming mithai are calling out to you in their ghee-filled splendour. And after all the festivities have settled down, we ruefully examine the additional weight that’s settled on our hips and waistlines... and we rush towards the gym.

It’s so easy to give in to the sweet temptations that are in abundance everywhere during Diwali. We tell ourselves that it’s just a once-a-year thing but is it really fine? All that sugar and ghee has to go somewhere. And it does. It goes straight to your abdominal cavity as body fat or visceral fat. This is stored around several important internal organs such as the liver, pancreas and intestines. The simplest way to determine the level of visceral fat is to measure your waist.