It is August 2026 and the festival season has begun. It normally starts with Varamahalakshmi, Ganesha Chaturti, Dussera and Deepavali. These are some of the biggest Hindu festivals lined up ahead and can be a speed bump to your eating habits and of course exercise.

So, this is what you do.

Firstly remember that all festivals regardless of religion are meant of celebration. This means you are not going to follow a calorie deficit or be strict with yourself on those days. This is fine. This is how you should be on the day of the festivals. You must indulge on the day of the festival.

Let me guide you regarding how you can have a good time and yet not lose any progress. You need to first see your health journey from a long term point of view. Meaning, see it from a 365 days point of view from whenever you started. For the sake of convenience, let us say you started on Jan 1st. From Jan 1st to Dec 31st there are about 20 Hindu festivals. Let us say you celebrate all these festivals.

Secondly, let us add other days where you might celebrate. These are your birthday, your spouse and your child’s birthday. Let’s also add your anniversary and your parent’s anniversary into the mix. And finally another 12 weddings or get together where you might tend to over eat.

That is a total of 20+17=37 days in the year where you might over eat. You know what, let us make it a bigger number by adding a buffer of 45 days. You are over eating for sure on 45 days in the entire year.

Over eating 45 out 365 days in a year means you are going off track for just 12% of the year! That is insignificant for fat loss. But here is how you ensure you stay on track during the rest of the year.

1. Celebrate festivals but do not exceed more than one day celebrations. Growing up in a Tamil Brahmin household I would see that delicacies were prepared in excess for almost every festival. Krishna Janmastami would be celebrated for an entire week during that time where sweets and namkeen were consumed daily. I am quite sure Lord Krishna did not have concepts like birthday week or birthday month.
2. Don’t use Saturdays and Sundays as an excuse to celebrate or indulge. Doing so means that you are over eating another 52 days of the year. This means you are going off track for nearly 25% of the year assuming you are going off track for the other 45 days mentioned. This will hurt your progress.
3. Don’t use trivial reasons as a reason to celebrate. I’ve seen instances where clients binge eat because they won a friendly badminton match, a colleague left the company and they had a party, HR conducted an event and so on. Celebrating small insignificant moments will derail your progress.

So remember, the last thing you need to worry about is the next big Hindu festival. Focus more on avoiding the weekend binges, random eating out occasions and your progress won’t take a hit.