Healthy Ganesh Chaturthi
1. Eat Prasadam as a Prasad and not a sweet. Take a small modak or a small spoon of sheera as prasad instead of a big modak or big bowl of sheera
2. Make/buy limited quantity of Prasad. If you are 5 members in the family, make/buy 6 modaks. One for Lord Ganesha a and 1 each for each member of family
3. Lord Ganesha would love fruits as much as he loves sweets. Of the two times you do aarti at home, one time choose a FRUIT as Prasadam (preferably for evening aarti) and at another time SWEET (preferably for morning aarti). You could also use dry fruits like figs or raisins or apricots as Prasadam
4. Stock on or make low fat snacks at home like low fat baked khakra, roasted bhel, chana chats, sprouts chats and fruits as snacks to offer your guests who visit you for Ganpati darshan. Everyone is calorie and weight conscious and trust us, they would be pleasantly be happy and glad when you serve them low calorie snack items in comparison to fried snacks
5. When you go visit a friend for Ganpati darshan and want to take a Prasadam, take fruits or sugar free sweets or prepare the sweet at home with less sugar or dry fruits like figs or raisins or apricots
6. Take the stairs. You may not be able to find time to go to the gym, but you can still continue your workout. When visiting someone for Ganpati darshan, taken the stair instead of elevator
7. Park your car a km or half away from the relative/ friend’s place and walk up to his house and back to help burn the extra calories
8. Visit your friend or relative post lunch or after dinner for Ganpati darshan. When offered snacks, saying you just had lunch or dinner before coming for darshan, is the easiest and most acceptable excuse to avoid eating anything extra or friend. If they are still insistent, tell them you would have a fruit or fruit juice
9. And the last 2 fun ones. Go visit Sarvajanik Ganpati Mandals every day and in different localities. Walk from one mandal to another. Make it a point that you enjoy the decoration at each Ganpati mandal not just in your locality but your friends and relatives locality too. Exercise those leg muscles which you haven’t used in ages. Drag a friend along. You will get a company in walking, spend lots of time with your friend and you will enjoy the lovely Ganpati decorations
10. During Ganpati Visarjan, go walking from your house to the lake/river/ sea-side for Visarjan or dance a lot during visarjan when you accompany friend for visarjan of Ganpati at his place or just step out of the house on the day of visarjan and walk on the streets along with 100’s of other strangers and enjoy the lovely procession of visarjan and don’t get back home before 4-5 hours (word of caution.. don’t start enjoying the wada-pavs distributed during the visarjan, carry some fruit and lots of water along) more