Monsoon Essential Diet to Rejuvenate Your Body
Are you finding the monsoon showers soothing after the scorching summer heat yet troubled with the nagging thought of how to avoid falling prey to cold, flu, and other common monsoon health issues? Do you find it challenging to boost your immunity and maintain good health with a plethora of infections looming around in the rainy season? If that’s your concern, adopting certain healthy dietary practices in the monsoon can help you rejuvenate your body, strengthen your immune system, and help you stay healthy. So, you might be wondering what monsoon diet tips you should follow to boost your immunity to fend off various monsoon infections, aren’t you? Here is all about the monsoon diet that can pave your way to enjoy rain healthily and happily.
Monsoon Essential Diet Tips:
Monsoon essential diet comprises nutritious food and healthy eating habits. Here is all about healthy dietary practices that you should adopt to strengthen your immune system and enjoy good health in the rainy season..
Indulge in Healthy, Smart Snacking:
Prefer to eat healthy snacks in the rainy season. Often, rain and pleasant monsoon weather trigger your appetite making you resort to relish fried foods, such as pakoras. However, to keep your body healthy and your immune system strong, it is crucial to choose healthy snacks. Prefer to savour crunchy veggie sticks in a spicy dip in place of pakoras. Instead of fried namkeen food and chip, snack on crunchy almonds, walnuts, and peanuts. A bowl of fresh sprouts with chopped onions, peanuts, and a little salt added to it can be another healthy snack to devour. Making such healthy food choices for snacking can enable you to nourish your body with essential nutrients, keep monsoon infections at bay, and make your weight loss diet plan a success.
Drink Ample Healthy Fluids:
Often, we experience decreased thirst in the monsoon. So, we end up drinking less water and other healthy fluids. However, it’s crucial to keep our body hydrated in the rainy season as it helps flush out toxins from our bodies. Even if you hardly feel thirsty, be sure you drink an adequate quantity of water daily. Prefer to drink boiled water, as it is free from harmful microbes. Besides water, you can also savour delicious soups. Vegetable soups are often loaded with nutrients and quite easy to digest. So, include nutrient-dense soups in your diet chart for weight loss in the monsoon. Additionally, you can also enjoy herbal tea, green tea, kadhi, and other nutritious fluids that help regulate electrolyte balance in your body. These healthy fluids rehydrate you and strengthen your immune system effortlessly.
Fill Up on Antioxidant Food Sources:
A good intake of antioxidants helps boost your immunity largely. So, relish foods packed with antioxidants, such as berries, red grapes, broccoli, sprouts, citrus fruits, cabbage, apples, cranberry juice, and peppers. Also, include green tea in your daily diet as it has powerful antioxidant content. Consuming foods rich in quercetin helps boost your platelet count which aids in improving your immunity. Quercetin is found in common foods, such as onions, apples, parsley, citrus fruits, dark berries, dark cherries, grapes, and olive oil. So, enrich your monsoon diet with these healthy foods.
Eat Seasonal Fruits:
Seasonal fruits, such as cherries, pomegranates, plums, litchi, and others are great options to meet your body’s nutritional needs. They are loaded with vitamin A, vitamin C, fibre, and antioxidants that help boost your immunity. The renowned nutritionist Anjali Mukherjee recommends, “It is better to stick to seasonal fruits because non-seasonal ones tend to get infested with worms during the monsoons. Among fruits, stick to pomegranates, mangoes, bananas, apples, litchees and cherries.” You can also go for peaches which are rich in vitamins A, B, C and carotene, all of which help you keep monsoon infections at bay by strengthening your immune system.
Enrich Your Diet with Vegetables:
Dense in nutrients, fresh vegetables are excellent additions to the monsoon diet to boost your immunity. Regular intake of fresh vegetables, such as bottle gourd, cucumber, bitter gourd, tomatoes, lady finger, and broccoli, among others, helps you develop a robust immune system to ward off various monsoon-prevalent infections. For instance, spiny gourd offers you antioxidant, antihistamine, pain-relieving, and antibiotic effects. Rich in vitamin C, bitter gourd improves your immunity and the disease-fighting response of your immune system. Anthelmintic properties of vegetables help you fight harmful worms and parasites affecting your intestine in the monsoon. So, incorporate vegetables in your scrumptious monsoon recipes and Indian veg meals. The expert nutritionist Anjali Mukherjee suggests, “Wash vegetables with clean water and steam them well to kill germs. Avoid eating uncooked food and salads unless they are organic and cleaned well” to avoid the risk of catching gastrointestinal infections in the monsoon.
Relish Probiotics to Improve Gut Health:
Probiotics are a boon for improving gut health and strengthening your immune system. The good health of our immune system largely depends on the health of our gastrointestinal system. So, it is crucial to have a healthy gut while combating infections and health risks associated with monsoons. Develop a habit of eating a bowl of yoghurt daily. It will help restore your gut health and keep seasonal infections at bay. Include fermented foods, such as probiotic milk, buttermilk, homemade dahi, idli, appam, dhokla, and dosa, in your monsoon diet.
Don’t Miss Spices:
Flavour your monsoon recipes and Indian veg meals with spices, as they provide you with anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antifungal benefits that help you combat monsoon infections. Turmeric, cinnamon, pepper, and nutmeg are some of the spices that you can go for to boost your immunity. Spices such as ginger and garlic work wonders in treating chills and fever while strengthening your immune system. They have incredible anti-viral properties and help in soothing your throat pain and chest congestion.
Munch on Nuts:
Nuts are a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals that play a vital role in boosting your immunity. Nuts contain niacin, vitamin E, riboflavin, and omega-3 fatty acids that aid you in bolstering your immunity when dealing with monsoon ailments. Vitamin C acts as a powerful antioxidant that helps ensure the good health of your body cells. So, in your spare time, munch on almonds, cashews, walnuts, peanuts, and other crunchy nuts and give your immunity a boost.
Savour Mango Chutney:
Last but not least, include delicious mango chutney in your monsoon diet. It contains abundant pectin, which helps in blunting the swings of blood sugar and keeps your insulin in check. If you feel lethargic any time in the monsoon, savouring mango chutney will cheer you up. Also, adding it to your weight loss diet plan will help prevent and treat various gastrointestinal conditions, such as indigestion, diarrhoea, constipation, and chronic dyspepsia that are quite prevalent in the monsoon. Make it a habit to have it in your monsoon recipes and Indian veg meals daily.
5 Dietary Practices to Avoid in the Monsoons
While following such a nutritious diet, ensure that you avoid certain unhealthy practices that may hamper your digestive system, immunity, and overall health in the monsoons. Here’s a quick rundown of dietary practices to avoid in the rainy season.
Eating Junk and Street Food:
Bacteria and fungi find monsoon temperature ideal for breeding. Often, water is contaminated with harmful microbes in this season. So, it is ideal to avoid eating street food and junk food as they are highly vulnerable to being infected with monsoon-prevalent microbes. Prefer to make warm, delicious delicacies at home and relish them instead.
Savouring Fried Foods:
Digestive problems are quite common in the monsoons. Consuming excessive fried foods can make you prone to digestive discomforts, such as gas, cramping, vomiting, bloating, acidity, and abdominal pain. So, avoid eating fried foods. Choose to eat steamed vegetables and fresh, washed fruits.
Intake of Excessive Salt:
High intake of salt can lead to water retention and high blood pressure issues that may lead to additional issues in the monsoon.
Consuming Watery Foods:
Water is contaminated in the monsoons. Eating foods containing water in excess can increase the risk of getting water-borne infections, such as cholera. Excessive intake of watery foods in the monsoon can also cause swelling in your body. So, to avoid the development of water-borne diseases and unpleasant water retention, stay away from watery foods, such as lassi, street-side juices, and roadside chaat delicacies like pani puri.
Devouring Seafood Frequently:
Seafood, such as fish, is more likely to be infected with harmful microbes, and water pollution multiples in the monsoons. Often, marine life is contaminated in the rainy season and it is likely to make you prone to water-borne ailments, such as typhoid, cholera, and other health issues. So, one of the monsoon diet tips for maintaining good health is to avoid consuming a lot of seafood in the monsoon.
Now that you know how your monsoon essential diet should be, ensure that you incorporate the right dietary measures and avoid harmful dietary practices this monsoon to stay in the pink of health. Consulting certified nutritionists and dieticians, such as health experts at Health Total, will help you receive customised monsoon recipes and Indian veg meal plans to nourish your body with essential nutrients, rejuvenate your body, boost your immunity, and prevent potential health risks. So, be quick, reach out to us at Health Total and enjoy a healthy and happy monsoon with our personalized monsoon diet tips.
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