Fasting

Fasting

Warning:

Fasting equates to “restricting” which leads to “binging” for some people.
If that is honestly true for you, then don’t use the following ideas.
Take responsibility for yourself and find professional help or a 12 step program that shares your vision for yourself around food, body image and exercise.

The two best spiritual sources that I know of, around fasting, are Gandhi and the ancient Jewish texts.

From Gandhi I took “Fasting is as necessary as selection and restriction in diet.”

And, “Those who make light of dietetic restrictions and fasting are as much in error as those who stake their all on them.”

From the ancient Jews I took:

“Declare a holy fast”
Joel 1:14


“I humbled myself with fasting”
 Psalm 35:10

“But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.” “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.
 Daniel 1:8-17


“The food you eat will be eight ounces a day by weight, to be consumed daily at regular intervals. 
Ezekiel 4:10

 From the Twelve-Steppers I took:

1. Most of us have been unwilling to admit we really had an eating disorder.
2. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows.
3. Therefore, it is not surprising that our eating careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could eat like other people.
4. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his eating is the great obsession of every disordered eater.
5. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.
6. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
7. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we had an eating disorder.
8. This is the first step in recovery.
9. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
10. We eating disordered are men and women who have lost the ability to control our eating.
11. We know that no disordered eater ever recovers control.
12. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals – usually brief – were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
13. We are convinced to a man that eating disordered people of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.

And finally I threw in a grouchy old saint:
“A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts”
Saint Jerome (347-420AD)