Meat: refuse or limit consumption?
If you widely celebrated Maslenitsa, abusing heavy products that are served in Russian cuisine for pancakes, then all the more you should enter Lent gradually and carefully. You can start by limiting the consumption of meat products.
To limit is not to exclude completely. For a person living in our strip, a sharp transition from protein food to vegetable food is fraught with trouble: apart from irritable bowel syndrome and dyspeptic disorders, he receives nothing from this.
Enzymes are produced strictly for a specific type of food. When new food begins to enter the body, there are not enough enzymes to break it down or simply not available. Vegetable proteins, for all their advantages, are too different from animals and will never replace them. Believe me, the church does not have the task of getting a humble flock with scurvy and chronic vitamin deficiency by the end of Lent, so you should not completely abandon meat products if they were previously an invariable part of the diet. It is better to minimize their consumption.
What to exclude from the diet?
During Lent, it is necessary to completely abandon fast food, sugary carbonated drinks, smoked and salty foods, and, of course, alcohol.
Detox-effect Fasting on the body
In winter, we often feel sleepy during the day, mild weakness. Lethargy and fatigue are mild symptoms of intoxication. You can get rid of them with the help of the so-called detoxification (detox diet). Fasting as a diet helps to cleanse the body of food decay products, which are unusual for us in the spring-summer period and have a toxic effect on the body.
What is beneficial to eat during Lent?
- Porridge on the water, seasoned with vegetable oil, is an excellent breakfast to start Lent.
- The second breakfast (snack) may contain vegetables, a handful of nuts, dried fruits. I also recommend a warm or hot drink containing ginger root with lemon and mint.
- For lunch, various soups with the addition of legumes or mushrooms are good. I advise you not to cook the soup a little if it contains vegetables, and use a blender to turn it into a puree soup (so it will have a lot of fiber). Puree is very logically embedded in the folds of the gastric mucosa, and for a longer time gives a feeling of satiety. On the second – various hodgepodge, vegetable cutlets or simply green and vegetable salads that cleanse the intestines.
- For a snack-afternoon snack, jelly, compotes and dried fruits are suitable.
- For dinner, legumes, vegetables, fruits, seafood, excluding fish are ideal.
Author’s tips in Post
- Don’t give up cereals. The health benefits of eating whole grains have been scientifically proven today, as they contain more dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals and other biologically active substances. In addition, it is still cold outside during the Fast, and a long chain of complex carbohydrates will feel warm and full.
- Do not forget the water: 30 g of water per 1 kg of your weight – this is exactly what you need to drink during the day. This is an important condition for cleansing the body of toxins. The main thing is to start drinking this amount of water gradually, replacing compotes, juices and fermented milk products with it.
- Keep in mind: It’s easy to overeat during Lent. Only one tablespoon of olive oil is needed for a daily meal, and no more!
It is important to remember!
Fasting cannot be viewed only from the standpoint of nutrition. This is a spiritual event, and the improvement of the well-being that believers feel, they themselves explain, first of all, by the beneficial effect of spiritual changes.