Gaining Weight in Ramadan? The Common Iftar Reasons and Fixes

Short answer: gaining weight in Ramadan usually comes down to four things at iftar and after it: fried food, sugary sharbat, a second dinner late at night, and far less walking than usual. Fasting all day doesn’t cancel them out, because the body only counts what goes in across the full 24 hours.

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Thirty days of fasting, and the scale says two kilos more. It feels unfair. Many people expect Ramadan to slim them down, and instead the dupatta or the kurta button tells a different story by the third week. So why does this happen, and which of the usual reasons is yours? Here’s the plain version, then fixes that fit a real iftar table with a real family around it.

Why can you gain weight while fasting all day?

Think of your body as a bank account for energy. Fasting from sehri to iftar feels like a huge saving, but if the deposits you make between sunset and dawn are larger than everything you spend over the whole day, including the hours you sat at a desk or napped through the afternoon, the balance still grows. No extra credit for hunger.

A long fast also makes you very hungry by maghrib, and that hunger pushes people towards fast, rich, oily food at exactly the moment when the stomach is slowest to report back, since it takes about 20 minutes to tell the brain “enough”. A plate of pakoras vanishes in less.

Did you know? Your body burns slightly less energy when it expects long gaps without food and when you move less. So a Ramadan day can use less fuel than a normal working day, even though it feels harder.

The common iftar reasons, one by one

1. The fried plate

Pakoras, samosas, spring rolls, kachori. Frying soaks oil into batter and pastry, and because oil is the most energy-dense thing in the kitchen, a few pakoras plus one samosa can easily match a whole light meal before the actual dinner has even reached the table. Nobody counts them. They feel like a snack.

2. Sharbat, juice and sweet drinks

A glass of Rooh Afza with sugar, a packet juice, a sweet lassi, a fizzy drink. Liquid sugar slips down without filling you up, so two or three glasses every evening, each one feeling like nothing more than a way to beat the thirst, quietly add up across 30 days. If this is your weak spot, our piece on Rooh Afza sugar per glass shows how the numbers stack.

3. The second dinner

Iftar at sunset, then a full dinner after taraweeh, then maybe chai and biscuits, then sehri a few hours later. That’s three or four eating sessions squeezed into a short night, and because late, heavy meals also disturb sleep, the tired body wakes up craving quick sugar and fat the next evening, which starts the whole cycle again.

4. Less walking, more sitting

Offices close early, errands shrink, afternoons turn into naps, and many people’s daily step count drops sharply in Ramadan without them noticing at all. Taraweeh helps a little. Not enough.

5. Sweets become a habit

Jalebi from the corner shop, fruit chaat with sugar and cream, kheer after dinner, dates by the handful. Each one is small. The daily habit isn’t.

6. Salt and water shifts

Salty iftar food makes the body hold water, which shows on the scale the next morning as a sudden jump that isn’t fat at all and settles once the salt drops, yet it makes people panic and sometimes give up on the whole effort. Don’t.

How to tell which reason is yours

Run this three-evening check. No apps needed.

1. Write down every item from iftar to sehri for 3 evenings, including drinks, chai and the “just one” pakora.
2. Count the fried pieces. More than 3 or 4 fried pieces most evenings points to the fried plate.
3. Count sweet glasses. More than 1 glass of sharbat, juice or soft drink a night points to liquid sugar.
4. Count eating sessions. Four or more separate meals between sunset and dawn points to the second dinner.
5. Check steps. If your phone counts steps, compare a Ramadan day with a normal day from last month.
6. Weigh once a week, same morning, same scale, and ignore daily swings of 1 kg or so.

Fixes that work at a family iftar

You don’t have to leave the dastarkhwan or refuse the pakoras your family made. Small, steady changes, the kind you can repeat on day 25 when everyone is tired and the table is fuller than ever, beat a dramatic plan you drop on day five.

• Open simply: 1 to 3 dates and a full glass of water, then pray maghrib. The pause lets hunger settle before the fried plate arrives.
• Give fried food a limit: pick 2 pieces you truly love, put them on your plate, and stop there. Air-fried or baked pakoras on some nights help too.
• Swap the drink: plain water, nimbu pani with little sugar, or thin salted lassi. Keep sharbat for weekends or as half a glass.
• Merge iftar and dinner: one proper meal of salan, daal, roti or rice, salad and dahi, rather than a snack feast plus a second dinner.
• Keep sweets to one small portion a day, or on alternate days.
• Walk 20 to 30 minutes after iftar or after taraweeh, at an easy pace. For timing, see the best time to exercise in Ramadan.
• Build a steady sehri with protein and fibre (eggs, dahi, daal, whole-wheat roti), so you’re less ravenous at iftar.

For full plates and a sample week, our guides on weight loss in Ramadan with sehri and iftar plates and the 7-day Ramadan diet plan go further. This page is about spotting the reason first.

Myth: you can’t gain weight when you only eat twice a day

You can. Meal count doesn’t decide weight; the total does, and two very heavy meals can easily hold more than three moderate ones. The belief sticks because fasting feels like hard work, so it seems obvious that the body must be losing something, but hunger is a signal about timing and habit rather than a meter of how much energy you’ve actually spent.

Many more fasting topics, from sehri to Eid, sit in our Ramzan Health section.

Common questions about weight gain in Ramadan