Fasting:
More with Less
Last Update: 15 October, 2022
What is this Issue Concerning?
It is about restricting your food intake for self-improvement and some benefit to the community and environment also.
Why You Should Care
Althoguh not the easiest way to do good, it's one of the cheapest and most available.
Required Background Understanding
The human body requires very little food to survive, typically far less than it asks (hungers) for. The human body is designed to work temporarily without food. That is what the whole fat storage system is for. There is an important difference between fasting and starvation. Even though the process is similar, and might feel the same, fasting ends when the body runs out of superfluous calorie stores, while starvation begins when the body starts burning tissue it needs for emergency fuel to live. It's like the difference between a cozy fire being fueled with extra wood you have outside, or with the furniture you need to live. This site recommends fasting, but also the avoidance of starvation. Diabetes doesn't necessarily mean you can't fast. Maybe there is something wrong with your body's insulin system (which is supposed to manage high blood sugar healthily), but as long as your body's glucagon system (which is supposed to boost blood sugar while fasting) is working properly, and you fast wisely (see below), and you don't take insulin while fasting (which would be an act of suicide), fasting should not harm diabetics.
Kinds of Fasting:
Absolute Fasting: This is where you consume absolutely nothing (not even water). It is extremely dangerous since the rule of thumb (depending on various factors) is that humans can only survive without water for 3 days. This type of fasting does't have any obvious benefits over water fasting, with much more danger, so it's rarely done by sane people. Water Fasting: This is where you only consume water for the duration of the fast. In conventional theory, a health person with significant fat reserves should be able to survive for weeks on water and no food. In practice, however, you will probably die trying that as the water gradually dilutes your blood electrolytes through your urine and kills you when the blood electrolyte levels drop too low. Water+Salt Fasting: This is where you consume no calories, but just water to maintain your hydration and a little salt to maintain your electrolytes. This is the one that can actually work for weeks without harm, but eventually has limits as your fat stores are depleted.
Sea salt is recommended over table salt for a wider array of electrolytes than pure sodium chloride. Juice Fasting: This is where you only consume juice, which is usually raw. Although not a true 'fast', as there is no limit to the calories you are injesting, it can be extremely healthy, comparable to water+salt fasting, especialy with organic raw juices in variety of kinds. It has no clear time limit on when it must be stopped, although added fiber might be necessary to maintain colon health if done for a long time.
Benefits of this Fasting:
Decreases fat which is usually a benefit for most people, unless you are already too thin. Increases energy Attacks most disease: the body's incentive is to destroy pathogens, diseased cells, and overaccumulated biochemical gunk first to generate energy, which means you become more purified. For example, your body might start stripping unhealthy fat accumulation off your artery walls, which normally it doesn't bother to do. Saves time & effort: when you fast you tend to get more work done, and you tend to realize just how much time & effort is spent in supplying, preparing, eating, and cleaning up after food consumption. Saves money: when you stop buying food all that money is saved. This economic reason may be why fasting has been so little encouraged in our society. Makes it easier to store food: if you keep shopping for (non-perishable) food but stop eating it, you will accumulate it without making any new effort to do so. This is good for preparedness. Improves spirituality: the less food you eat, the less tied you are to the physical world, and the closer your consciousness leans towards the spirit world. May be a spiritually useful kind of offering to God: fasting is considered a kind of prayer by sacrifice, and can be 'offered up' for various intentions. Improves discipline: when you can resist hunger, you build willpower for resisting many other kinds of life stresses. Makes it easier to share: once you realize you don't need your next meal, it becomes very easy to share it with someone else who does need it. Encourages compassion for the hungry of the world: once you experience the suffering of being without food, you gain an appreciation of those who are chronically without it. Helps the environment: With rising concern for the environment, it's disappointing that deliberate and healthy fasting hasn't received more attention as an aid. Industrial food production tends to consume tremendous amount of land (usually previously forested), fresh water, and energy, as well as generate significant pollution, and this is all saved if you suspend your eating.
Cautions for Fasting:
Fast at your Own Risk. Fasting is inherently dangerous, not only because of restriction of calories, but restriction of everything else which goes with food. Take personal responsibility. You are hereby notified that this page is not written by a physician and is not intended to consistute 'medical advice' which you should gamble your life on. Make your own medical decisions at your own risk (the same way you already do with vaccines for example). Either fast medically supervised or with Intent Listening to your Body: If you have medical professionals monitoring your status in detail while you fast, maybe you don't have to think. However if you are doing it on your own, without lab tests for example, you need to listen intently to your body to how this is affecting your health. Not for the underweight: The idea of fasting is to burn your fat reserves instead of eating. If you don't have adeqaute fat reserves, you definitely shouldn't be fasting. Find some other way to improve yourself and your life. Beware any diabetic drugs while fasting: these drugs are normally designed to help your body reduce blood sugar after a meal. To take them before or while fasting could disrupt the ability of the body's glucagon system (which raises low blood sugar) to function and thereby kill you. If you are diabetic, you'd better be medically supervised and/or know what you're doing (at your own responsibility) before fasting. It's also not obvious if your diabetic medication dosage should be lessened on your first meal back after fasting. Yield at Crisis Points: Although it's true that the human body requies vastly less food to survive, and even to be healthy, than it typically asks (hungers) for, deafly denying it sustainance, ie. without any listening to your body, is dangers and could potentially kill you. The human body has a way of telling you it wants food, by stimulating your hunger, and to a lesser extent thirst, but it doesn't have such a clear way of alerting you to any other biochemical need, even though those needs are many. Sometimes your body will express a need in hunger which isn't actually for sugar, starch, or even protein. You might also feel strange in a way which you feel danger. It's one thing to deny hunger while you feel otherwise fine, but if you feel your health starting to fall apart in any way, it's safer to eat, and hopefully identify the problem, and come back to fasting when you feel better, rather than just press on fasting ignoring all signals from your body. It's just too dangerous to risk missing any input your body actually needs, and far better to break your fast to build your experience with what you need, than deafly stick to a much longer fast than you've done before because your pride won't allow you to break it. Water:. Your body doesn't need anywhere near as much food as it usually asks (hungers) for, and can usually survive weeks without any of it, but that's not true of water. A rule of thumb is that you can only expect to live a few days without water, making it always more urgent to find than food. Of course, if you plan to fast more than 3 days you absolutely must include water ingestion in your regimen. Salt: This is a hidden factor which is extremely important, especially if the water you are drinking during your fast is distilled or without much solute. If you have no food coming in, and pure or nearly pure water coming in, and uring going out, that's going to deplete your body of electrolytes, the most important of which is sodium chloride ('salt'). Your blood is high in sodium, similar to seawater, and your body is designed to protect it being at a constant level despite outside variance, which it cannot do for long if you're ingesting pure water and nothing else. Furthermore your body has no clear way to ask for salt, the need for which may simply show up as hunger, if it shows up at all.
Even if your body doesn't need calories, and has enough water, if you let your electrolytes drop too low you die.
Plan to consume a certain amount of salt with your water, preferably sea salt. Try to see how much your body is asking for. You might find the ideal mix is a slightly salty water to fast on. Chromium: This minderal tends to help the body manage low blood sugar levels better, such that taking a chromium supplement is a great thing to do with your last meal before your fast. Molasses: This is a great natural product full of minerals and potassium. If you feel very bad, are searching for what your body needs, and salt doesn't help you, and sugar doesn't either, maybe this will. It is sweet, so represents a breaking of your fast, but if you feel bad you should be breaking your fast anyway. First meal back: your first meal after fast of more than 24 hours should be small and as easy to digest as you have available. Yes, you may phychologically be ready for a large meal, which you've obviously been looking forward to, but what's not obvious is that your digestive system may have been (almost) shut down by your body and not ready with the enzymes and bile it needs to handle more than a tiny amount of food. Far better to start with a small meal, let the body reboot its digestive system, and then you should feel a big hunger 1-4 hours later at which time your body is indicating that it is ready to receive a larger meal.
Furthermore the size of your stomach may have shrunk and surprise you with how much less food you need to feel full, at least for the first meal back.
Most importantly, DO NOT plan your first meal back from a fast longer than 24 hours as an all-you-can-eat overload. Your body will almost certainly NOT be ready for that amount of food.
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