The razor thin line between fasting and starving yourself.

Something that was more apparent to me earlier on in my fasting journey is the absolute razor thin line between fasting and starving, and the line is so thin that it can be easily disagreed upon. When I started fasting, my main priority was my health and longevity. It still is. Weight loss was a secondary concern. Much like most of you, I have tried many diets and supplements and methods and plans to try to lose weight over the years. The only thing that worked before was unsustainable, harmful, self-hating practices, and I knew that unless I found peace and acceptance with my body, I wouldn’t achieve sustainable results.

I have heard of fasting in the past but it didn’t jump out to me as a lifestyle choice until the last half of last year. I am a very skeptical person and I need a lot of evidence to support any new beliefs or ideas before I implement them into my life. I was trying to reduce inflammation originally and heal my back injury naturally and without surgical intervention, so I was searching for evidence to support the claim that fasting could improve these conditions. In my search, I obviously found this group and in these last few months I have learned so much. I wanted to share some of what I have learned here.

Fasting is not just a diet. Fasting is like sleeping for your digestive system. We need sleep, that isn’t something people can argue, because our brains need a break. So do our digestive systems! This seems easy enough to understand. With that said, we need sleep but we cannot sleep all day, at least not often. We occasionally need more or less sleep depending on a variety of factors, but we cannot sleep forever. We must get up. We must use our brains. Do you see the picture I am painting?

Fasting is like sleeping. Every day, you should fast long enough for your digestive system to rest. For me, this is 16/18 hours out of 24 hours, and that is what works for me. This daily practice, with the intention of being a life long practice, can change your body exponentially. Just like you prep your body for sleep by turning off devices or lying in the dark, you can prep your body for fasting with healthy Whole Foods and plenty of water. This is especially important if you wish to fast for longe periods of time.

Fasting is a missing piece of a lot of people’s lives and they find great healing and recovery in it. Just like sleeping, fasting can be used irresponsibly and without critical thought as a way to punish ourselves or ignore our bodies needs. It is our individual responsibility to use fasting for the benefit of our health and longevity, not to abuse and hurt ourselves out of some kind of spite. We cannot punish ourselves into the perfect version of ourselves. We cannot bully ourselves skinny. I mean, we can but obviously that doesn’t work! When we aren’t sustainable in our thinking, we don’t achieve sustainable results and any weight loss or healing is fleeting, quickly undone by guilt, shame, or carelessness.

TLDR: Fasting is like sleeping, good for your body but easy to abuse. Sustainable thinking leads to sustainable results. Fasting is a tool and it works depending on how you use it.