It’s a fact accorded less importance than it deserves: After a month of fasting, the healthy way to ease yourself back into regular eating habits is to go slow and steady, giving your body and mind time to adjust to the changes. But the joy and excitement of Eid tends to goad many people into going over the top with food indulgences, which can have unpleasant consequences.
The principle of the cohesion of polarities underpins many things in life, including the transition from a period of fasting to a return to regular meals. Health is as much a state of mind as it is a condition of the body. The belief, subscribed to by many, that the body will automatically adjust to sudden changes driven by the exigencies of an occasion needs to be discarded once and for all. It must be replaced with a better understanding of how our eating habits can impact our health. Just as people are advised to prepare their mind and body for the approach of Ramadan and follow the correct dietary rules of observing the fast and breaking it, the initial period after Ramadan is also to be approached with a sharpened health sense. This deepens our understanding of how our body works and our commitment to help it function at its best.
This commitment is forged from patience, discipline, self-control and a sensible lifestyle, four factors that do us maximum good when we treat them as mandatory, rather than optional, virtues.
