7 Steps to Get Started Fasting

[00:00:01] Fasting is an essential part of the Christian life. But most modern Christians are terrible at fasting. Is it because we're weak or because we don't know how to do it? Today, we'll break down the practical steps to get started fasting. [00:00:31] So it's almost Lent. You might be watching it. Lent, my avari started. [00:00:36] And so that means it's a time for prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. So what I want to talk about is the one that is the hardest for all of us, the one that's the biggest challenge, the one that most of us struggle with and a lot of us ignore, and that's fasting. [00:00:51] Lent is not just a time for giving up chocolate or giving up maybe creaming your coffee or something like that. [00:01:00] It's to engage in actual fasting. We need to be more serious about the importance of fasting in the Christian life. And Lent is a perfect time to do it. [00:01:14] But like I said, I found lots of people struggle with this. For many years, I struggle with it. [00:01:19] But fasting is essential, essential to the Christian life. It's not optional. [00:01:26] Yes, I do know that for medical reasons, particularly maybe a pregnant or nursing mother or other medical reasons, some people cannot do a true fast. [00:01:37] But I would argue that the number of people who can't fast is actually very small, a lot smaller than the people who think they can't fast. [00:01:49] And I say this from personal experience because for at least, I don't know, maybe 10, 15 years of my Catholic life, I thought that I couldn't fast. I thought fasting was something that I medically just couldn't do because I'm pre diabetic. I have high glucose levels, and so I didn't fast for many years. [00:02:15] But eventually I finally recognized and realized that I could fast and that most people can fast. In fact, one of the books I'm going to show two books today, one of the books that really helped me to understand this was this book by Dr. Jason Fung. You might have heard of it, the Complete Guide to Fasting. [00:02:36] This book really transformed my understanding of the physical aspects of fasting. Note Dr. Fung, I don't. I think he might be Christian. I don't think he's Catholic, but I don't really know. But this book is not religious in any nature. It just simply is talking about the physical aspect of fasting, why it's healthy and how to do it. [00:02:59] And so I finally started fasting. This was probably, I guess this is 2018, so about eight, almost eight years ago, is when I Finally started fasting regularly and realized it's something I physically can do. And then of course, I learned a lot about the spiritual aspects. So today what I want to do is I'm going to give you seven steps to help you get started fasting. This is. [00:03:28] It might be for people. This is going to be very helpful people who've never really fasted before. [00:03:33] I'm hoping it's also helpful for people who have maybe fast in the past but fell off the wagon, so to speak. I've done that. I said I started fasting regularly eight years ago. That does not mean I've always been good at it. I have fallen off the wagon and stopped fasting various times during that time. It's a continual struggle, continual thing that we need to learn how to do. [00:03:55] So I'm gonna give seven tips. But first, before I do that, I want to focus on what fasting is, why we fast, like the theological reasons why we fast and kind of the benefits of fasting. And then I'll give those. Those seven steps to get started fasting. [00:04:15] And so first I just want to define our terms. [00:04:19] Like, it might seem kind of silly to define term fasting, but I found a lot of people don't actually know or don't understand what I mean by fasting. It's not. I just saw recently Pope Leo said that during Lent we should fast from harmful words. Now, I want to be clear. That's a good idea. I don't think we should use harmful words. And I think in today's Internet social media age, a lot of us do. [00:04:48] And I. I'm not against that. [00:04:50] You also hear priests talk about fasting from what I mean, just things like I said, like the chocolate or the cream and coffee or fasting from being mean or, I don't know, something like that. [00:05:03] Okay, that's all fine. We shouldn't do those things. But honestly, that's not fasting. [00:05:09] Fasting isn't not doing something that's simple, like you don't fast from harmful words. You shouldn't say harmful words anyway. That's a sin. We should always be avoiding that, not just Lent. Now, it's okay during Lent to say, I'm going to really focus on that, that vice, and I'm going to really work on not saying harmful words. But that's not a fast. [00:05:33] A fast also, I mean, isn't what the church defines it to be. In my opinion, the Church defines fasting. So there's two days of fasting that are required, obligatory for all Catholics ages 18 to 59, I think it is. [00:05:48] There's Ash Wednesday and Good Friday on those two days we're required as Catholics to fast. Again, medical reasons might keep somebody from doing it, like a nursing or pregnant mother. [00:05:58] And so the definition is two small meals that don't add up to a full meal and one normal sized meal that's a fast. If you do that on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, you follow the church's obligations. So I don't want to make it, like I'm saying there's a, a higher obligation than that. I'm just saying that's not fasting. [00:06:19] Fasting means you're not eating any food. It doesn't mean you're eating a small amount of food. That might be a penance, by the way, to eat a small amount of food. I'm just saying it's not fasting. Fasting as I define it, and frankly, as it's been defined in every culture and every time in history until recently, fasting is when you simply don't eat and you don't take any calories in because you could have like juice drinks or something like that. You know, is the juice fast? It's not a fast. It might be good for you, might be healthy. I don't know. I haven't looked into those. But it's not a fast. A true fast is what I was often called a black fast, which means you just simply take in no calories. So you can drink water and you should drink water. We'll get to that in a minute. [00:07:03] You can also drink black coffee. [00:07:06] I personally don't drink coffee at all. So for me, I don't drink that. And, and you know, when my wife fast, I know she drinks some coffee. And you could argue whether or not that's in the spirit of a fast. [00:07:17] I'm not going to get into that debate because, you know, I understand. The point is drinking black coffee does not break a physical fast. [00:07:25] And I think there's certain types of tea as well that would fall into that category. But again, I don't really drink tea. I don't drink coffee. So I just have water when I, when I do a fast. And so that I want to make sure that's clear what we're talking about when we talk about fasting. [00:07:42] And so why is it that we fast? I want to talk for just a moment briefly about the history of fasting. Fasting, like I said, it's essential to the Christian life. [00:07:51] And Christians throughout the 2000 years of church history have understood this. In fact, it goes back even further because the ancient Israelites also fasted. Fasting has always been as part of the Christian life as prayer is. [00:08:08] And so we can't just throw it aside like we have in the modern world because it, you know, it's something that we've always done and it's always been very important. There's a great book which I believe is out of print. I, I highlighted it in my the 10 books that most Influenced Me. [00:08:24] It's by Albert de Vogue. It's called To Love Fasting. I'm pretty sure it's that print. I picked it up like I think I saw a copy of it not that long ago. It was like a couple hundred bucks or something, which is ridiculous. I found it though for pretty cheap years ago. [00:08:39] And it talks about the history of fasting in here. And it's a beautiful book because it says to love fasting gets you to appreciate fasting. But essentially fasting was part of ancient Israel. [00:08:50] It was something done in repentance to beg God's forgiveness, to call on God to intervene if there was maybe a crisis, attacking army or something like that, Often the people would fast. [00:09:04] And you can see kind of the connection there between fasting and prayer, because that's important. [00:09:12] Fasting is always connected to prayer in the Christian life. Other religions fast, but also non religious people have fasted. [00:09:20] Various philosophies and things have fasted. And people fast all the time today for just physical reasons, non religious reasons. But in the Christian tradition, fasting is always connected to prayer. And so for example, when, let's say an invading army is coming to ancient Israel, they would pray that God would deliver them, but they would supercharge that prayer with fasting. And that's really one of the key things that prayer that fasting does is it supercharges our prayer. [00:09:52] Now at the time of Christ during the. [00:09:56] He said, this is Matthew 9:15, I think. [00:10:00] And he, he actually, I think it's also in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ assumes that his followers were fast. [00:10:08] Like there's the passage Matthew 9:15, where it says when the bridegroom is taken away because they say, you know, your disciples don't fast. But John the Baptist disciple says, you disciples don't fast, but we do. And he says when the bridegroom is taken away, then you will fast. And he also says in the Sermon on the Mount, when you fast, do this. [00:10:27] He doesn't say if you fast, he says when you fast. [00:10:31] And so it's assumed that Christians will regularly fast. [00:10:36] And the Early Christians took this very seriously. They fasted every Wednesday and Friday, Wednesdays and Fridays were set aside. And they specifically said, I think it was like the Jews fast on Tuesdays and Saturdays, something like that. We fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. In fact, that eventually became the practice of Ember days, which are four times a year now, and it's on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. [00:11:00] But this fasting on Wednesday and Friday became the norm. And then, of course, the catechumens, they would fast in the 40 days leading up to Easter, because Easter was when they were going to be receiving the church and say they. They would do regular fasting for the 40 days in imitation of Christ, fasting in the desert for 40 days. Now, I think they would eat once a day or something like that, but the point is, they would restrict their eating. [00:11:27] That, of course, became Lent. It became the practice of all Catholics, all Christians, not just the catechumens. [00:11:36] And then the monks, of course, they continued the fast. They would do fast year round. In fact, the regular fast of a monk for centuries was one meal a day. That's what monks ate. That's how much monks ate. They'd eat once a day. [00:11:53] Now, what happened, though, is that over time, they started to move up. When they ate earlier and earlier, then they would add a second meal, and then eventually they added a third meal in modern times, like maybe last 100, 150 years. [00:12:06] So monks typically eat. Typically eat three times a day, just like us, but it was normal for them to eat only once a day. Now, one thing to note is most people until recent times did not eat breakfast. Breakfast is a modern phenomenon, and it was really pushed by, like, the cereal makers and people like that in the 20th century. But it was uncommon for people to eat three meals a day. It was more common that they would eat two meals a day and the monks would then eat one meal a day. [00:12:36] But again, we've lessened all that and now it's become the point where very few people take fasting seriously. Very few people, excuse me, actually fast. [00:12:49] So. But what is the theology of fasting? Why has fasting been part and parcel of the Christian life for 2000 years until recently? Why is it that we fast? [00:12:59] Well, the first thing is, is that if you look at the ancient desert fathers, they would often say that gluttony is the first sin to overcome that if you. If you want to overcome your sinful lifestyle, gluttony is where you start. [00:13:16] And I think that's because everybody has to eat every day. [00:13:21] Food is something we all experience there are people who don't really have a temptation towards maybe other sins of the flesh or something like that. But everybody has to eat. And so gluttony, if you control your eating and so you don't succumb to gluttony, what happens is you are better equipped to control your other vices. So the day the Desert Fathers would say, you start with gluttony. And so obviously, what's the practice that goes against gluttony the most? Fasting. And this is one of the reasons why Christians fast, because you're controlling your physical desires, you're controlling the body, you're letting the spirit control the body. [00:14:03] And that will give you then practice in doing that so that you can control it in other ways so that you don't fall into other vices. [00:14:14] Often fasting is called the prayer of the body. When we pray, we're doing it in our head. We might be speaking or something like that. But it's a spiritual activity really. [00:14:24] Fasting is physical prayer. In a sense, it's a prayer of the body. [00:14:29] And so again, it's always this interconnection between prayer and fasting. It supercharges our prayer. [00:14:36] Another thing fasting does is it really makes very clear our dependence upon God, that we are frail human creations. We literally would not exist for even an instant if God did not keep us in existence. But we forget that sometimes. We particularly forget that in modern times, we have all the comforts of the world that can basically make us feel like we can take care of ourselves. We're in control. [00:15:05] What fasting does is it reminds us, you know something, if you were without food for very long, you'd be in big trouble. [00:15:12] You feel it. [00:15:14] And so it does remind us. It demonstrates our. Our dependence upon God. [00:15:19] Another thing fasting does is it. It focuses the mind. [00:15:24] This is, this is going to be. Seem a little counterintuitive. [00:15:27] Fasting focuses the mind off the physical to the spiritual. Now you might think, wait a minute, if you're sitting there hungry, aren't you going to be thinking about the physical? But what I found is, and what most people find when they fast is it allows you to focus on because you're thinking about your dependence upon God. You're thinking about the fact that, yeah, I'm hungry, I need food to live. [00:15:45] I'm a dependent creature, therefore I need God. And so it lifts your mind to the spiritual. [00:15:51] Another thing fasting does is it unites us to the sufferings of Christ, unites us to the Sufferings of Christ. Fasting is not fun. Now I'm going to say that fasting can be done in a way that isn't as difficult. Not because we're trying to get off easy, but because we're making it possible to do it, because there's ways. The problem is with our modern diet, and we'll get into this in a moment, all the ways fasting can be more difficult than it needs to be. But fasting is always going to be hard. You're not going to like the hunger pains. [00:16:21] And so what it does is we can unite that to the sufferings of Christ. Now, of course, a lot of people fast for physical reasons or non religious reasons. And so that wouldn't really apply to them. But when you're suffering, you can think about Christ on the cross, you can think about Christ in the desert and the temptations in the desert, something like that. You can unite yourself to the sufferings of Christ. [00:16:43] Another thing fasting does is very practical. [00:16:45] When you fast, you eat less. If you eat less, that means you spend less on food. You spend less on food. That means you have more money to give away to the poor. [00:16:55] You're uniting yourself in a way to the poor who don't have the ready access to food we have. There might be times in which they just don't eat lunch because they don't have money to eat lunch. [00:17:05] And what. So that uniting to them is good, but also it allows, it frees up more money. So during Lent, if you decide to skip a meal, for example, every day, once a day, something like that, use the money you would have spent on that food and give it to some organization that helps the poor. [00:17:26] Another thing that fasting does is it frees us from a lifestyle that's obsessed with food. This is a modern phenomenon. I mean, there's a certain sense that in the ancient days people were obsessed with food because they were trying to get it, you know, they didn't have ready access to it. But in our day we have such ready access to food. Literally, I walk upstairs and I will see a refrigerator and I'll see a bunch of food in it. I'll see cabinets full of food. I drive down the street, I will see multiple restaurants, I will see the grocery store. Food is everywhere. We're surrounded by it. And so the problem is we can give very unhealthy attachment to food. [00:18:03] We can have and, and it becomes a. [00:18:06] And Lent is all about detaching ourselves from material things, from the things of this world. So we can attach ourselves more deeply to God. [00:18:17] And so fasting allows us to detach ourselves from this obsession to food that we're not always thinking about food. [00:18:25] I also think fasting is very good because it gives us a spirit of moderation which we really do need today. [00:18:33] We do not have a spirit of moderation in our culture today. I mean, just go on social media, people say the most extreme things. People all, you know, when they're speaking, when they're, when they're, Everything we do, it's always the extreme. And you see this like in workout videos on, on YouTube or something like that. I mean everything's always the extremely extreme screen extreme. As, as Catholics we're called to be moderate. Now I'm not saying moderate in the political sense. [00:18:58] I'm not saying moderate in the sense of all we look aside at sin. What I'm saying is moderation in our lifestyle, that we're not going to these crazy extremes that are unhealthy for our spirit or our mind. And so fasting teaches us moderation. So we live a more moderate life, which is a good. [00:19:19] Okay, so that's the theology of benefits of. Now I do know there are. [00:19:28] I, I want to be this, I'm, I act like fasting, everything, it's all great, the devil, any good we do on earth and can. [00:19:39] We're preachers. [00:19:41] And this is true of fasting as well. The first thing is fasting. If you do it wrong or you do it too extreme, you can harm the body. It can be physically unhealthy. Now to be clear, you can fast a lot more than you think you can. If you've never fasted before. [00:19:59] It's very healthy to fast. In fact, your body uses up so much energy and kind of by digestion, it's good to give it a break by fasting. That being said, if you go crazy, you can harm yourself. And so you don't want to do that. I mean, you want to make sure particularly you want to build up. That's probably the key thing is you don't want to start like if you've never fasted before, you don't want to start with a 40 hour fast. [00:20:29] And so it can be unhealthy and obviously it can be unhealthy in certain very specific medical conditions. You don't want to fast if you're a pregnant mom, if you're, if you're nursing mom. [00:20:40] There are some medical conditions as well where you'd want to check with your doctor before you fast, especially if you're on insulin. Something like that, then you want to. And again, there's no medical advice here. I'm not giving you medical advice. Don't you know, don't blame me if you do something dumb. [00:20:56] But in general, fasting is very healthy, but it can be unhealthy in certain situations. [00:21:02] Another danger of fasting is simply the problem of being. Becoming hangry when you. When you fast, if you become hangry and irritable, you are now committing vices against other people. You're being uncharitable towards others. And so that's a real danger of fasting. I remember. [00:21:20] So when I became Catholic, I've told this story about on the podcast before, I think. So I decided to become Catholic In February of 1992, a week before Lent started. [00:21:30] And I decided for Lent. I was super enthusiastic about being Catholic. Now I was going to fast from food for Lent. I was literally going to eat like bread and have bread and water for dinner, and that's it every day except Sundays during Lent. I had never fasted before. I had a modern American diet up to then. [00:21:49] Well, very quickly I became a jerk, or at least more of a jerk than I normally am, I guess, because I was hungry all the time. I was irritable. And by Sunday, I realized I can't do this. I stopped, which was the smart thing to do, frankly. [00:22:05] And so you got to make sure, you know, you don't accept. You don't take on penances that are penance to others. I think that St. Jose Maria Escriva said that you don't take on penances. There are penances to others. So be aware of that. Now, some of it just don't get cranky. I mean, you know, if you're hungry, don't get cranky at others. But that's a danger of fasting. The last danger of fasting, I would say, is pride. Is pride. If you spend. [00:22:31] If you start fasting regularly. The devil loves it whenever we start doing something good for God, if he can use it against us, because he just finds a different way of attack. So if we start fasting, the Satan will attack us, particularly attack us to be proud of it. Hey, look how I fast and how these people don't. I mean, it's the Pharisee and the publican. Don't be the Pharisee. [00:22:56] And so if you do start fasting, don't look down on others. I mean, there's a lot of re. I mean, like, I know that, like I said, I spent 15 years thinking I couldn't fast. And I think a lot of that was excuse making on my part. [00:23:09] I'm not above anybody. I know how bad I've been for many years. And so don't let pride creep into your spiritual life when you start fasting. [00:23:21] Okay, so now what I want to do, I want to talk about specifically getting started with fasting and I want to give seven practical steps to get you started. This is if you've never fasted before or if you've only fasted maybe four, maybe you've skipped like breakfast and that's it a few times or you haven't fasted in a while. [00:23:42] I want to give seven tips, seven steps to start fasting. Okay, step number one, pray regularly. [00:23:51] Fasting is not beneficial to the spirit without prayer. It can be beneficial to your body, but it's not beneficial to the spirit if you are not praying. [00:24:01] I would also say prayer is a baseline of prayer is necessary for the strength to fast. [00:24:08] Because really we're weak human beings. We need God's help. We need God to give us the graces and the strength to do something like this prayer. Also a prayer, a solid prayer life also reminds us and allows us to offer up our fasting, our sufferings that we entail in fasting for someone or for something. [00:24:30] And so we want to make sure we have a regular prayer life. Don't start fasting if you don't regularly pray. And if you don't regularly pray, you really need to do that. I don't think I need to create a video on that. You need to pray every day, ideally for an hour a day at least. But if you don't pray that long, just do what you can and get started and increase over time so you're an hour a day. So step one is pray regularly. [00:24:56] Step two, getting started with fasting is change your overall diet. This is the biggest key. It was the biggest key for me and it's the biggest key for a lot of people. [00:25:08] If you have the modern American diet, which is very heavy on carbohydrates, very heavy on sugar, it will be much, much more difficult to fast because you're going to have crashes, your glucose level is going to spike and it's not going to be fun. This is why I thought I could never fast, is because I would get a real. [00:25:30] I would try to fast someday. I had regular modern diet and then I would have a huge crash, usually like around one o' clock in the afternoon if I'm trying to fast from the night before. [00:25:42] And it would just be Like I'd be weak, I'd be shaky. I mean, I just felt like I couldn't even stand up practically. And so I usually would be like, okay, I gotta eat. And I thought it was because of my body type, like my glucose levels, you know, maybe I'm pre diabetic, all that stuff. No, it's because of my diet. [00:26:01] When I stopped eating so many carbs and particularly stopped eating so much sugar. What it does is it moderates your glucose levels and you don't have that crazy crash. Now you will get hunger pains and we're going to talk about that in the next step. You will get hunger pains, but they're not the same and they're ones you can ride out. [00:26:20] So step two is change your overall diet. [00:26:23] Step three is understand hunger. [00:26:26] I don't think most of us understand hunger and how it, like what it is and how it works. [00:26:34] Hunger pains do not mean that your body needs food. [00:26:40] I'll say that again. Hunger pains do not mean that your body needs food. At least that's true for all anybody watching this. It might be not true for somebody who's truly starving, but if you have a regular diet and you eat and you know you probably have a few extra pounds on you like most of us do, hunger pains are not telling you your food. Your body needs food. What hunger pains are. It's your body saying, hey, I usually eat at this time, so let's do that. I'm used to eating at 8 o' clock in the morning. I'm used to eating at noon, I'm used to eating at 6 o', clock, so I want to do that. [00:27:15] So that's why you get hungry at 8 o' clock in the morning, at noon, and at 6 o' clock in the evening. [00:27:21] Because your body's just like, okay, I'm used to this, I'm telling you, I'm sending you signals that you need to eat now, I want you to eat now is more important. You don't need to eat though. [00:27:32] The hunger pains are just telling you this is your normal time to eat. It's not saying, oh my gosh, if you don't eat now, you're going to die or anything like that. [00:27:41] And hunger pains, they come in waves. [00:27:44] This is key as well to understanding hunger, is that they come in waves. It's mostly, honestly, it's mostly a mental exercise to overcome hunger pains. It's almost all mental. I found that in my own experience what will happen is you will get hungry at your normal time. [00:28:02] And I always suggest in that and I'll talk about this more in another step, but you drink something, drink water, maybe water with some salt in it. [00:28:10] The hunger pain will subside pretty quickly. [00:28:13] It will then come back, might be stronger the next time might be like the buy saying, wait, you normally eat at noon, it's 1 o' clock now, what are you doing? [00:28:22] And you'd ride that one out. If you just ride them out, what they do is they start to dissipate and they really are manageable. So understand what hunger is. Because a lot of people when they get hungry, they think, oh, it's unhealthy not to eat. Now that is not true. I gotta listen to my body. No, your body is got a lot of good things about it, but it does send some false signals a lot. [00:28:47] Okay, so step three is understand hunger. Step four is stop snacking. [00:28:52] Stop snacking before you even gonna start fasting. Stop snacking, don't eat between meals. [00:28:57] This gives your body like the, it trains your body not to be constantly eating. I mean there's another thing I did before I got into lifestyle fasting was I ate all day long. You'll hear some people say that's healthy for you. It's not. [00:29:14] Your body is working when it is doing digestion and if it's always doing that, it's actually harmful for your body. You don't want to be eating all the time. But particularly if you're going to start fasting, you need to stop snacking because again, what did I say about hunger? Your hunger pains are a signal from your body just saying, hey, I normally eat now. Well, if you normally eat all day, throughout the day, you're gonna have hunger pains throughout the day because your body's used to eating all day. So stop the snacking. [00:29:44] Just eat your meals at your regular times. This is before you start fasting, you want to stop snacking. And again, doing that, it's actually healthy. So you want to do that anyway. That's not even something you should, you should, should ever do. Honestly, you should never be sacking. I'm not to be clear, if you're at a party, you know, on a Saturday night and there's food there and you already had dinner, I'm not saying you never can have any food there or something like that. I'm just simply saying your norm should be no snacking between meals. Okay? And that's step four. Step five is, and this is now we're going to start really into actual fasting. So the first four steps are more pre fasting getting ready to fast. [00:30:24] Step 5 is the first one step in actual fasting that is simply delay your meals. [00:30:30] So let's say you normally eat breakfast at 8am, wait till 8:30 and then maybe do that for a week, then wait till nine, do that for a week, maybe wait till 10 o' clock and just gradually start to delay your meals. What this will do is it gives you, this is kind of a training for fasting in that, but it's also fasting itself because what you're doing is you're extending the time between your dinner the night before. Let's say you eat at six o' clock at night, you don't snack afterwards like I said, and you normally would eat at 8. Well that's 14 hours. [00:31:08] That's a 14 hour fast. Not very much, but it's not, you know, it's manageable, it's easy. Well now you go to 9 o', clock, now it's 15 hours, now you go to 10 o', clock, now you're at 16 hour fast. That's a real fast. Your body's actually starting to react to that and you keep delaying it until you're not eating until maybe noon and maybe just stop eating breakfast. By the way, the biggest propaganda ever told is the idea that you have to have breakfast. Healthy living. I haven't had breakfast in eight years. [00:31:37] You don't need breakfast to have energy throughout the day or anything like that. [00:31:41] That was literally the cereal companies that, that propaganda propagandized Americans to think breakfast was an essential, was the most important meal of the day. That's baloney. [00:31:51] So what you do though is you're just delaying your meal until you eventually skip it. Now you're fasting. [00:31:56] If you go from 6 o' clock at night to noon the next day, that's a real fast. That's an 18 hour fast. That's a good fast. [00:32:05] And what you do is you work your way up until you get to a 24 hour fast. To some people that might seem like I could never do that. But you can, you can do it. You work up gradually, you get to 24. And you know what another secret is? Once you get to 24, it's actually easy to skip up to 40. You know why? Because you're sleeping during two cycles now. You have two sleep cycles during it. So let's say Thursday evening you have dinner at 6, you finish dinner at 6pm, you go 24 hours till 6pm the next evening. Okay, that's a great 24 hour fast. That's awesome. You know, you're feeling that it's very good. But then you decide, I want to go till the next morning. [00:32:44] Well, if you just go until maybe 8 o' clock the next morning, that's 38 hours. So add two more hours to 4 to 10 o', clock, you have a 40 hour fast and 40 hour fast, I think, I think there's, you know, spiritual reasons why a 40 hour fast is a great thing. [00:33:00] It they've shown from research that really is a powerful thing for your body. [00:33:05] That going past that 24 hour to 40 hour mark of fasting really starts to have a lot of healthy things. It does, your body starts to do. [00:33:15] I just think though 40 hours is a biblical number and so 40 hour fast is great. Now don't start with a 40 hour fast. If you've never fast forward, don't start with that. Don't even start with a 24 hour fast. Just start with maybe the 18 hour fast or something like that from dinner until the next morning, a later breakfast, have breakfast at 10 o' clock or something like that. But eventually you'll find over time that you can build up to a 24 hour fast and you can just skip up to a 40 hour fast. You will wake up that second morning, that Saturday morning, let's say you start at Thursday evening, go to Saturday morning. You will wake up feeling funny, don't get me wrong. And you will be like, okay, this isn't, you know, maybe that great. But the point is, is that you can do it. It's not that big of a jump from 24 hours to 40 hours. If you want to go past 40 hours, that's up to you. I would just say make sure you're, you understand what you need to do to make that happen. Maybe read Fung's book, you know about fasting. I'm not, I'm not advising against it. I'm just saying that's, that's beyond the scope of what I'm talking about here. So number five, step five was delay meals until they become fast. That's really what you're doing. You're just delaying a meal until you finally skip it. Now it's a fast. [00:34:22] Step six is drink plenty of water. This is essential for during a fast. I know there's such thing as a fast where you don't drink water. I do not recommend it. I do not, I've never done it. I don't ever want to do it. [00:34:36] I would just say drink plenty of water. And here's the secret. Here's a little secret of it too. [00:34:42] Put some salt into it. Put some salt into your water when you're fasting. It's amazing what it does. It takes away the headaches, it takes away the hunger pains a lot better and it takes away the jitters or anything like that. [00:34:57] So drink plenty of water while you are fasting. Now when I say plenty of water, I'm not saying you're drinking water the entire time. You don't have to have your water bottle attached to your lips or anything like that. But you just need to have, you know, every hour maybe drink a glass of water. And you don't have to put salt in every single time either. What I usually do is I'll put salt in my, my morning like a, a big glass of water at 8 o' clock in the morning, I'll put salt in it and I'll maybe do it in the afternoon as well. Maybe one or two and that's it and I'm fine. You know, it's not like you have to have salt in every single glass that you drink. So step six is drink plenty of water. It will reduce your cravings and it will also reduce headaches and things like that. Nature. Okay, the final step, Step seven, Keep busy. [00:35:40] What do I mean by that? If you're sitting around doing your fast, you know what you're going to be thinking about? You're going to think about fasting, you're going to think about hunger, you're going to think about your body. It is very difficult to fast when you're bored. So I would say keep busy because it will take your mind off your fast. Now here's something that's also counterintuitive. [00:35:57] I would say try to do physical things, not just like sitting at the computer or reading. I find that it's better to do physical things because here's a thing that people don't realize. [00:36:09] You actually get more energy when you're fasting. Often on a 40 hour fast. I can't sleep that second night. I can't get to sleep because I have so much energy. I'm like, you know, just like. Because what's happening is, I don't get into details but your body is basically burning energy differently and so it ends up giving you a lot of energy. It's a different type of energy. And so keep busy. Ride into that, that the, the, the, the, the, the, the extra energy you have because it will keep you from getting bored. What will happen is, let's say you have a project around the house, you do all of a sudden it took you two hours to do and you're like, I'm two hours further into my fast. I didn't think about food during that whole time. [00:36:49] So that's my final step, is to get started. Keep busy while you're fasting. So those are my seven steps to get you started in fasting. And I hope that this lent you would start again. Be prudent, be reasonable, be moderate, don't jump into 40 hour fast. You've never done it before. [00:37:08] But if you have fasted, maybe you've only fasted maybe for 18 hours for maybe try to get to a 24 hour fast. [00:37:15] If you've done 24 hours, maybe do that, jump to 40 hours and remember all the spiritual reasons you're doing it. We're not just doing it for health reasons. It is very healthy. But we're doing it for reasons beyond just the spirit. And that's the thing I want to leave you with. Fasting is good for body, mind and spirit. It really is. We were made to fast. We were made and we're supposed to be fasting. We're not supposed to be eating like cows at a trough like all day, every day. [00:37:44] We need to give our body a break from eating, from digestion. All that it can be, it really is. When you start to do it and if you do it regularly, it can be a life changing process. Now you will have ups and downs. I've had ups and downs. Everybody does. [00:37:57] It's very sad though, it's a forgotten practice because it really does change your life for the better. So I would just say make sure you are fasting this lent on some level that is acceptable to you. Again, pregnant moms, nursing moms, you are the lifeblood of the world and we need you more than anything. So you do not have to fast and you shouldn't. But for the rest of us, unless there's a real extreme situation, embrace some level of fasting this lint and hopefully these seven steps will help you to get started. [00:38:32] Okay, that's it for now. Until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember the poor.