The Lunar New Year holiday is the biggest hurdle for dieting. During holidays, people tend to eat more greasy foods and drink more alcohol than usual. Learn how to enjoy holiday foods deliciously while still maintaining your diet.

◇ Please just taste the holiday snacks.

Snacks enjoyed during holidays are a cause of weight gain during the holiday period. Typical examples include rice cakes and fruits. Rice cakes are mainly made from wheat flour and sugar, and are deep-fried. One rice cake contains about 135 calories, so eating two rice cakes is equivalent to consuming a bowl of rice (about 300 calories). Festive treats like sikhye (sweet rice drink) or yukwa (fried rice snack) that contain a lot of sugar, jocheong (grain syrup), honey, or are deep-fried are also high-calorie foods. During weight management, such foods should be avoided. Dried persimmons and traditional Korean sweets (hangwa) are also foods with high calorie density.

◇ Do not fill your stomach with fruit

Because of the perception that fruits are healthy foods, people often eat them excessively, but this is also a wrong behavior. Fruits contain a large amount of carbohydrates, and excessive consumption of fruits can lead to surplus carbohydrates being stored as fat. Eating fruits when hungry can actually stimulate appetite. For weight management, it is advisable to eat only one or two pieces after a meal.

◇ Knowing the calories of rice cake soup rice cakes is helpful

It is best to eat tteokguk, the representative dish of Lunar New Year, in accordance with the calories of the rice you usually consume. One ladle of tteokguk (12 rice cakes, 100 kcal) has the same calories as one-third of a bowl of rice (100 kcal). If you usually eat one-third of a bowl of rice to control your weight, then you only need to eat one ladle of tteokguk. If you have eaten two-thirds of a bowl, then you should eat two ladles of tteokguk.

Reducing oil when cooking

In addition to simply avoiding high-calorie foods, minimizing the use of oil during cooking can help with dieting. When preparing meat, remove excess fat or skin, and use lean cuts such as sirloin or tenderloin whenever possible to reduce calories. The more flour that is coated on the food, the more eggs and oil are absorbed during cooking, so it is best to use as little flour as possible.

It is better to choose boiling, steaming, grilling, or braising methods over frying or stir-frying. If necessary, it is recommended to cook quickly over high heat. When making jeon (pancakes), heating the oil before use can reduce oil absorption.

Meanwhile, the sudden weight gain during the holiday period should be lost within two weeks. The rapid weight gain is not actual fat but an increase in a type of polysaccharide called 'glycogen.' Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles after excess glucose intake remains in the body, and it turns into fat after two weeks. When glycogen is converted into fat and accumulates in the body, losing weight becomes even more difficult.

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Looking at this, I think I could easily gain 3-4 kilograms already.

Two pieces of medicine are equivalent to a bowl of rice, that's amazing lol

It's the same with rice cake soup, but haha, what are you going to do about songpyeon...

The rice cakes called Songpyeon are so delicious, haha.

The sweet rice drink you call a digestive aid is also a lump of heat..

Continuous indulgence during the holidays... weight management

I'm already getting nervous.