Step1
Expect to feel anxiety in the days prior to the fast. Your mind will try to talk you out of fasting with all sorts of excuses. Avoid the temptation to eat a big "last supper" before you fast. Instead, eat lightly on the days before the fast to help prepare your body.
Step2
Realize that fasting will teach you a lot about your relationship with food and meals. In the first days of your fast you will feel out of place at meal times. People around you will be eating, going to restaurants and having food-related fun. You may feel left out. Take note of these things and realize the huge role food plays in the daily routines of people.
Step3
Counter you feelings of being left out by becoming involved in your fast. There are lots of things to do: make teas, take baths, skin brush, stretch, meditate, do yoga, take internal baths. Realize that this is time you have set aside to clean and repair your body - take it seriously.
Step4
Expect to feel impatient and irritable in the first two or three days of your fast. This is your body adjusting from using the food in your digestive tract (which remains for about three days) to consuming stored fats. Just imagine how rarely your body has a chance to eliminate these stored fats with you dumping three meals a day down your throat.
Step5
Realize that by the third day your mind and body will be conspiring against the fast to get you to stop. You will smell food cooking five blocks away. Enjoy the smell, but do not eat.
Step6
Expect to stop feeling hungry after three days. By this time your digestive tract is empty and your body has adjusted. If you are fasting properly, you should not feel any physical hunger for many days to come.
Step7
Understand that you may experience aches in certain parts of your body. This usually means that elimination of fatty tissue is taking place in that area of your body, which is not harmful. Lower back pain can be a symptom of dehydration, so make sure to keep hydrated. Any extensive or severe pain should be examined immediately.
Step8
Anticipate headaches, stomachaches and discomfort as a result of salt, sugar and caffeine withdrawal. Avoid these discomforts by tapering off these addictions in the days prior to your fast.
Step9
Expect changes in your bowel functions. You will have to aid your bowels to keep moving.
Step10
Expect to lose weight, but also expect to put it back on after the fast.
Comments
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 When fasting, be moved into it by Heart - Spirit - Prayer - Discern. Drink water or juice as if you are chewing it before swallowing. Even if you don't feel thirsty. you may actually be thirsty. Urine gets darker when your not drinking enough clear water to get rid of waste products. I have been soaking dried cherries in a quart jar and adding juice sometimes to my water. You can barely taste the sugar in the cherries. Running the cherries through a blender would add pulp to the digestive tract, to keep it moving slightly. Continue night and day with good filtered water. Some distilled water is OK.
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 I am greatly enjoying a new idea. I am a stay-at-home mother of four and a wife, and I am very busy (but still house-bound). I noticed that I was pigging out all day, because my kids wouldn't stop me. I started doing a 5 hour carrot juice fast from 10 am until 3pm, which is perfect to suit the times that my older children are in school.
So far, having only done the 5 hour carrot juice fast once (and in the middle of another one), I have noticed the following improvements: I have a slight fever, which I know means that my body is heating up to rid itself of toxins and heal itself. Secondly, my bloated stomach is at least 2 inches smaller, and constipation is gone. The best benefit of this is that my energy is coming back. I had been so sluggish while I was breast feeding, but the carrot juice has really boosted my stamina and put a rosy glow on my face. God bless.
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 You must take an enema during a fast! It will flush out the toxic waste in your body and you will feel great immediately afterward. There are old caked up bowel movements in us all so an enema at least once a week will eliminate them.
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 The best advice I have ever recieved about fasting is to just enjoy it. Enjoy the sensations... even if some are negative. If you dont fight it you will find that you feel freer and ultimately cleaner once its over.
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 Try making homemade juice cocktails with carrots, celery, spinach, cucumber, grapefruit, and pears. Warm vegetable broths and hot teas can help cure cravings for a 'hot dinner.'