Healthy and Halal Choice

Healthy and Halal Choice introduces readers to a simple, consistent lifestyle that advocates the middle ground. It delves into the branches of food and hygiene in a holistic approach. It introduces the small steps one can take to living happy, healthy, and halal. Taking the essentials of life and making it a daily practice. In this book readers will delve into the world of healthy choice in terms of food, drink, exercise, and pampering oneself. It also encourages people to love themselves and become closer to their loved ones – eat together as a family, engage in fun family activity, pray to Almighty as a family. Living a balanced life and showing others how to live a balanced, consistent and disciplined lifestyle is what this book is all about.

This book provides readers with improvements and small adjustments to their daily lifestyle and finds something that they enjoy. In a balance d fashion, it focuses on their spiritual development as to their physical and intellectual development. It shows a lifestyle that may be different, but easily achievable.

Healthy and Halal Choice is not also about losing weight or dieting. It’s more about battling binary categories such as overweight and underweight versus the healthy weight, or happiness versus sadness, or relaxation versus stress. It is about investing in health and feeling good. Given this awareness, readers are provided with a suggested track to avoid negative lifestyle choices and make the transition into happy, healthy eating. Ali hopes that those of other faiths will also try her healthy and halal choice in food and for them to know the joy of following the footsteps of her beloved Prophet (PBUH) who is the leader of happiness and the adviser to success.

Growing up, I was blessed with the opportunity to experience much of what the world has to offer. Being born in Bangladesh, I grew up with a very strong, cultural upbringing that is a huge component of my life. Moving to the United States as a little girl gave me an insight into a different culture from my own. I married and moved to England which was again a different cultural experience. I have travelled to various places around the world and I am fascinated by culture, diversity and change.

From the perspective of having been exposed to different peoples and cultures, I have begun to question un-thought-through assumptions and have begun to challenge them in my lifestyle. My love for cooking swayed me to try new things and new cuisines. It took me out of my comfort zone.

Being a teenage wife and mother and having been blessed with these opportunities gave me my tools. I never allowed my age to stop me from fulfilling motherhood to the fullest. I was able to share my specialties with my family. When I was writing this book, I wondered, why stop at my family? Why not invite my respected brothers and sisters from other faiths and other ethnic backgrounds into my life and try my modern twist to healthy and halal living?

What I essentially want to convey in this healthy and halal book is that, this isn’t just a recipe book, or tips for crash diets. This isn’t a gimmick lifestyle. This is my life being put on paper and shared with you. My intention is to have a Sunnah friendly, healthy and halal lifestyle. I’d like to share with you that homemade healthy meals can be accomplished simply and affordably. I want to encourage you to try something new and hopefully enjoy it. My goal is to share the essence of my life with others and have them feel like one of the family.