5 Practical Tips to Enjoy Healthily During CNY
- Tea-based beverages are your best friend
We know that flavoured drinks (alcohol or not) are one of the musts when it comes to CNY gathering. Compared to soft drinks and alcohol, tea-based drinks such as green tea and chrysanthemum tea offer a SLIGHTLY lower sugar content than their counterparts.
This is especially true they have a red coloured, “Healthier Choice” logo stamped on the front. Bear in mind though, that packaged drinks do come with sugar no matter how healthy they can be.
Hence, an even healthier option would be freshly brewed tea, coffee or plain water!
- Pair up your “bakgua”/dried meat with whole grain bread!
We know that dried meat/bakgua is a must during CNY! Of course, we all know, it is not the healthiest food in the world. Whilst it is a calorie bomb that is best avoided, we ought to share how you can minimise the damage if you are keen to eat it!
DO NOT eat it on its own. Dried meat on its own, provide very little satiety if any, in combination with its palatable taste, will easily cause overconsumption – the real killer (two is NOT better than one in this case!).
Hence, be sure to eat it with bread – with wholegrain/wholemeal bread being the best choice. This is because bread offers the additional fullness for your stomach and it is more likely that you will stop at 1 or 2 slices (hopefully!).
- Eat some groundnuts and drink a lot water FIRST!
It goes without saying that various snacks are served on the table where families gather and reunite after a long year. Whilst there are a vast variety of snack choices, we recommend that you start it off with something else first.
Groundnuts, or just about any kinds of nuts, provide a good amount of fibre and nutrients compared to other kinds of snacks. Getting 1-2 handfuls of them first with some water ensure that you pre-fill your stomach before munching too much on those calorie bombs afterwards!
Pro tip: Make an effort to bring a long a water bottle! Leave no excuse!
- Choose a smaller plate to serve food!
This is a simple psychological trick that you can play around with! When a same amount of food is served on the plate, visual effect of the food on a compact plate will psychologically “trick” the mind into thinking that you are eating enough!
Lesson of the day? Don’t take snacks out from the container! Make it a point to serve it on a plate!
- Talk and Play More!
Sometimes we eat too much simply because we didn’t stop and do something else.
The signal to feel full take some time to reach the brain, this is how we ended up eating too much! We simply didn’t stop when we’re ACTUALLY full because the signal hasn’t reached our brain.
After eating, be sure to talk, play around with your friends for some time! Soon you will find yourself not craving for the food you would have otherwise binged on! Magic!