Fasting and Intermittant Fasting
This month is National Fasting February. I’m so glad that they have a month for this now. It is being celebrated in conjunction with American Heart Health month.
How I Learned About Fasting
I learned about fasting back in 2002. I heard about it in two places about the same time. One was a group for Christian wives and the other was a preacher who explained that in the New Testament it said when you fast not if you fast (Matt 6:16). The assumption that Jesus made was that you were going to fast. So I started fasting 2 days a week, sometimes more when there was a prayer focus.
What it Did For Me
I Lost Weight
I had some other things going on in my life at that time and I changed my diet also, but the fasting helped me to have more control over what I ate. It seemed like once I got used to the fasting I was able to say no to foods whereas before that I couldn’t. I also was introduced to coconut oil from Tropical Traditions at that time and added a quarter cup of that to my diet every day. Between everything that was going on I very quickly lost 85 pounds.
Physical Ailments were Healing
When you lose that kind of weight there’s always the risk that your heart will become weaker. Anorexics often die from heart failure because they don’t get enough protein to feed their heart and keep it strong. What my doctor noticed, though, is that I was getting healthier as I was losing the weight even though I was losing weight at an incredible rate. Later I learned that fasting actually puts your body in a repair mode. So by fasting my body was repairing my organs and other things that were wrong prior to fasting. Additionally, as I said I changed my diet it was a high-protein high-fat and very few carbs. I wasn’t doing Atkins and Keto wasn’t even a word yet, but it was what my body desired once I went on the coconut oil. So I went with it.
PBS Program on Fasting
Many years later I saw on PBS a program about fasting done by Michael Mosley, a British medical journalist. It was a fascinating program. He went around the world talking to researchers about fasting. He said that it didn’t matter which mode of fasting you chose, the benefits seem to be pretty much the same. When he talked about the benefits of fasting, I noticed that they were exactly what I had experienced in my own life. I had been fasting 2 days a week about 10 years at the time I saw that program.
After watching the program I did go out and buy several copies of his book call The Fast Diet. I have given away a couple of them already. And I see that not only has the book been revised and updated but the PBS show has also been revised and updated.
More Information
Because the information was so thorough and good, at this point I’m going to send you over to National Day Calendar’s site for the information on intermittent fasting. They also have links there for a site called Life Apps and a free intermittent fasting app which helps you achieve your goals. Both of the sites have very good and recent information and I do hope that you’ll go out there and look at them. It makes no sense for me to restate what they have already very clearly and concisely stated on their sites.
National Day Calendar Article about fasting
Life App – with even more information on the benefits of fasting and how to fast.
Who is ready to start intermittent fasting??