7 MUST-HAVE ESSENTIALS FOR FAST

7 Fast-friendly Snacks for Upvas and More!

Here’s a detailed take on all the snacks you can incorporate into festival fasting and how you can ideally keep your fasts for festival-ready fitness. 

What Can Be Eaten During Your fast?

Upvas fasting rules are an interesting set of rules for people observing an upvas. Fasts are usually observed for the fulfillment of religious demands. Generally, non-vegetarian dishes, onion, garlic, regular salt, alcohol, grains, and legumes are not eaten during a traditional fast. Excluding these food items from your meal plan ensures detoxification of your body. Additionally, a light diet sans animal proteins confers seasonal advantages, especially when the fasts are observed during the days of Navratri.

Thus, an ideal Indian fast combines health with tradition. This fusion is further enforced by the super-lengthy, super-healthy list of foods that can and must be eaten during upvas. Moreover, intake of fasting foods cut short the gaps between meals to make the fasting experience nutritious.

In practice, regular salt is replaced by unprocessed rock salt during a Navratri fast. Similarly, grains such as wheat and rice are replaced by makhana, buckwheat, and sabudana. Dry fruits, potatoes, fruits, and milk-based products also constitute an essential part of upvas snacks. 

What Snacks to Eat during Fasts?

An extensive list of snacks can be devoured during upvas to curb your hunger.

Typically, whole grains such as rice and wheat are forbidden during a fast. However, they are replaced by grains such as buckwheat, water chestnut flour, and rajgira or amaranth flour. You also have seeds such as barnyard millet, flaxseed, makhana, fox nut, or lotus seeds.

Snacks including dry fruits such as almonds, cashews, walnuts, and peanuts are allowed. Poha and chiwda bring the desi zing and tang to breakfast plates. Fruits and other cold-pressed juices enhance the inventory of upvas snacks. The focus should also be on increasing the consumption of milk and milk products.

Types of Fasts in India

A keto diet promotes a healthy intake of protein and fats and lowers the intake of carbs during the eating period. Additionally, intermittent fasting is rapidly growing as a method to lose weight and gain a healthy body. Its rules are simple: periods of fasting interspersed with periods of eating. So, such fasts can be observed traditionally—for example, during Navratri—but you may also practice it without an occasion.

1. 5:2 Fasting

In this type of fasting, individuals can eat any foods of their choice five days a week but regulate their caloric intake and monitor their fasting snacks during the remaining days of the week.

2. Time-restricted Fasting

Intermittent fasting rules are designed based on the time that a person selects particular hours to eat. They stop eating entirely during other hours of the day.

3. Overnight Fasting

As the word explains, overnight fasting is simply to avoid eating anything during the nighttime.

4. Water Fasting

Water fasting has recently emerged as a new fad. The rules are pretty simple. For the entire day, the person consumes nothing but water. Water fasting is also observed traditionally in certain Hindu celebrations, such as Teej.

5. Whole-day or Alternate-day Fasting

intermittent fasting rules for alternate-day fasting involve fasting every other day. For whole-day fasting, however, you are allowed to eat once in 24 hours. Such fasting rules are observed during Ramadan.

Top 7 Snacks for Fast

1. Makhana

Makhana is a famous fasting snack, even endorsed by celebrities. You can devour it in various ways. For example, you can cook it with dry fruits and milk to make fast-friendly kheer. Makhana, in this case, replaces rice. Roasted makhanas and aloo makhana are also top fasting choices.

2. Flaxseeds

Seeds such as flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, and chia seeds are considered highly energizing. You can add these seeds to smoothies or salads. Flaxseeds can also be crushed into flour or added to sandwiches and cookies.

3. Potato Chips with Rock Salt

According to the Navratri fasting rules, you must not use regular salt. Instead, replace it with rock salt. Cut potatoes into thin slices, fry them and consume them alongside curd. Add rock salt to these chips to add tang to the dish.

4. Dry Fruits

A range of dry fruits such as almonds, peanuts, walnuts, and cashews provide an essential nutrition source during fasts. Dry fruits are added primarily to laddoos. Peanuts are available in the market in the form of Farali biscuits. You can mix walnuts with bananas to make tasty smoothies.

5. Poha

Poha is one of the most heavily consumed breakfast items in India. Its popularity remains untouched even during Navratri. If you replace salt and oil with the items allowed during an upvas, you can easily consume poha during your Navratri fast.

6. Buckwheat

Buckwheat is a highly nutritious snack suitable for Navratri. Buckwheat flour, popularly called kuttu ka atta, can be rolled into parathas or puri and even modified into sweet preparations such as peda or barfi. Kuttu ka dosa is also famous among buckwheat lovers. Jaggery can be used instead of sugar while preparing sweet dishes.

7. Paneer

Paneer alongside milk-based products such as cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, ghee, and butter are allowed during a keto fast. There are numerous ways to eat paneer during a keto fast, for example, sabzi and pakoras. In addition, you can include other milk-based products to ensure your meals are well-balanced.

Bonus Fasting Snacks for You

Many more eatables are suitable for an upvas, which have not been mentioned above.

a) The first addition to this list is fruits. You can eat fruits during a fast as they are not in violation of the upvas fasting rules. Fruits can be eaten fresh or as dried preparations, such as kiwi and apricots. Fruit juices fall under the tastier alternatives. Kiwi and buckthorn are popularly available as cold-pressed juices.

b) Water chestnuts are also an excellent alternative for Navratri snacks. For example, you can use water chestnut flour to make bread or eat them raw as fruits.

c) It is also advisable to consume buttermilk twice a day to maintain calcium and potassium in your body.

d) water can be soothing during fasts.

Conclusion

While intermittent fasting rules may stop you from eating many everyday food items, it poses a seasonal and physical advantage to your body. There is a long list of snacks that you can eat during an upvas. You can prevent monotony and boredom by reinventing these dishes in your style. Mainly, people observing fasts should refrain from non-vegetarian items, grains, legumes, alcohol, onion, and garlic.

Intermittent fasting can be made more entertaining by following the above guidelines for upvas snacks. You can easily buy the ingredients on our website and reap exceptional intermittent fasting benefits.