What? You’re going to starve yourself? I could never do that. This is the typical response that I have been getting since I decided to fast for 10 days. Or it has been, What are you going to eat? You can’t live 10 days without eating? How soon we forget.
The tradition of fasting is ancient and has been practiced safely for thousands of years. Besides, not-eating isn’t the problem, eating 21st century processed food is. Time to hit the reset button and start over.
Fasting – Old & Why
Fasting is usually thought of as something people do as a form of protest or a way to observe a religious belief. But did you know that it has also been used for medical reasons, a fact dating back to the fifth century BCE when Hippocrates recommended the abstinence of food during periods of illness?
History aside, I’m not ill. Not in the terms of a cold or the flu. But I am sick. Sick and tired of not feeling 100 percent while slowly descending down a path of harmful eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle.
So that’s it. Starting on Monday, the week before one of the greatest eating & drinking Sundays of the year (The Super Bowl), I am going to embark on a 10 day journey to take back my life. I am recording my experiences in a daily journal, contents posted here.
Fasting – How & Who
There are many different ways to fast from water only fasts to intermittent fasting. I have decided to follow a juice fast method also known as the Master Cleanse. A phrase introduced by Stanley Burroughs with his book The Master Cleanser and later brought more into mainstream by Peter Glickman who wrote Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days.
I absolutely love how controversial this particular fast is. It’s a wonderful example of confirmation bias and opposing opinions where know-it-alls lob fact-bombs back and forth at each other.
Comments like this isn’t a healthy diet really make me laugh. (Ugh, your right…but so you know this isn’t a diet. It’s a fast). Of course, the same people say fasting isn’t healthy too, so there you go.
The best way to understand this fast is to read the two books linked above. There are a lot of kits and tricks floating around the web that may add their own spin to the process and aren’t necessarily true to the original message. Perhaps the fact that there is a bit of disinformation on the interwebs is one reason there are strong and opposing views.
Thanks for reading!
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