Fasting is a transformative practice. Occasionally along the way and during the process, different events may take place to derail you from your fast and desired results. In order for you to take full advantage of the detoxification, healing and cleansing processes, you need to stay focused.
The information presented here is to help you maintain your fast and keep hold of the required mental tenacity needed to complete your healing and regeneration. This way you can complete your time of fasting without regret from failure, mental stress or the anxiety often caused by a lack of focus. Applied correctly these tips can help you stay fasting.
Now let’s get to the first fasting tip.
A Few Words about Sharing with Others that You are Fasting
For beginners, when you first start utilizing fasting as a method of cleansing (juice fast, water fast, spiritual fast, dry fast or otherwise), you may have the tendency to want to share with others. However, unless those in your peer group understand, accept and consider fasting as a viable, credible and beneficial solution to the numerous maladies that affect the human condition on both the spiritual and physical planes, you can expect severe contention, apprehension and sometimes contempt.
These types of responses often prove far too laborious mentally for newcomers to fasting and frequently results in the abandonment of the detoxification and healing process. This is especially true for new practitioners who select water fasting as a method of cleansing. As modern society holds decadence and excessive consumption in high regard, the mere thought of withholding food or restraint of any kind other than what society deems appropriate gets met with extreme resistance.
Before you share or openly express that you are fasting be sure that the people you share with will support and not deride your decision. Otherwise, limit your expression because the negative energy is debilitating and actively looks to interrupt the process. The list of opposing reasons presented to you are too numerous to name, but know that potentially a litany of conversations regarding faith, health and food in variation and combination often occur and are better avoided while fasting.
While your body is healing, cleansing and processing the mental strain presented by these types of conversations is often too much to bear. It is especially important that if you are just beginning fasting that wherever possible you look to avoid confrontations. People are afraid of what they do not know and understand and many are willfully ignorant. It is not your duty to educate them about fasting.
Let them be.
This is an occasion where the old saying, “Silence is Golden”, fits perfectly.
Although directed primarily towards beginners, this particular fasting tip is for any person who does a detox diet program, juice fast or embarks on any type of cleansing practice, spiritual or otherwise. Any person fasting would do well to avoid confrontations and only sharing if required, their intent to fast with those people that they know will provide a supportive environment, positive and encouraging conversation and any help needed to keep focused and on course. Adopting this habit in general can provide you great benefits, less stressful relationships and the aid of a supportive social group are just two of them.
The next tips for fasting deals with mostly with your body.
Physical Exercise, Manual Labor and Rest
In general, these are two things to avoid and one you must get enough of in order to complete your fast. Physical exercise and other manual labor taxes your body for energy and will result in you wanting to eat, which is something you obviously want to avoid in order to maintain your fast. Unless of course you are doing a spiritual fast of some kind and restraining from foods is not required.
Put aside your gym visits until after the fast.
I say this wholeheartedly even though in the past, on certain occasions during a fasting period I still went to the fitness center.
However, I did not do rigorous exercise. The adaptive motion machine and the treadmill were the pieces of equipment I used. Also, I went to continue my support of another person who struggles with their weight and most importantly, I know my limitations. The other reason is that I like going to the gym and not going at all during the fast at that time bothered me. Now it does not affect me so much and if I am fasting, I attend the gym based on what I hear after listening to my body and how I feel.
In general, you should put off working out, aerobic and anaerobic exercises, spin classes, zumba, weight lifting and other physical exercises until after you fast. Your body is detoxifying and when you exert tremendous energy such as what occurs through physical exercise your body will attempt to restore the used energy with whatever you have stored in your system. During a fast, that is mostly poison on the way to elimination and the essential reserves of energy that are maintaining your life and body functions.Two things you don’t want to tamper with.
Although the temptation to clean and refresh everything can seem appealing while you are fasting, do not decide to rearrange your furniture while fasting. Helping a friend move into a new apartment or house is not a good thing to do either. If your employment requires physical labor attempt to get a different assignment during the fasting period or if permissible take the time off work to allow your body to heal, cleanse and rest.
Allowing your body and mind the proper amount of rest is essential for fasting to create an environment for healing, wellness and transformation. This is because your bodily reactions to whatever your are abstaining from will cause your mind to create ideas that appear as valid reasons to stop fasting. Conversely, this increases the urges in your body creating a loop pattern and a vicious anti-fasting cycle that often is hard to escape. Having a stress free environment and proper rest helps you in resisting these temptations, calming your mind and finishing your fasting period successfully. Rest and relaxation are restorative processes that allow your body to maximize and concert all efforts towards healing. Any activities you participate in retard this process. Resting is good for you and not laziness. There is a difference. Know that and be at peace.
Avoiding the Noise and Controlling Your Environment
Instead of watching television, which only has the purpose of selling you some product or idea, with entertainment interspersed in-between the programming (and even the entertainment is selling something), find comfort with yourself. You may have talents that remain untapped or lie dormant from lack of use. Use your fasting time to remove the clutter of the outside world from your mind so you can clear your thoughts and either discover or further draw out from within the true you.
You can become so accustomed to the outside world and influence of it that you can think the messages sent to you through television, gossip and entertainment websites or the news are your thoughts, when they are not. The fasting process cleans your body and with that cleaning, the brain draws from the purer blood and fresher oxygen in your system to help promote better function, which affects your thoughts and ultimately your mind. Use the time of fasting to assist your body with the process by not polluting it mentally with the best of the worst TV, movies and media the world has to offer, but instead with productive time and doing things that are to your benefit.
Part of this means that you need to place yourself only in environments that will allow you to fast unbothered. Avoid social gatherings and events where people expect you to eat or require lots of energy. Relaxing at the park and going to the beach are great. Skiing or mountain climbing, probably not so great. Fasting does not require you to go in a cave. It is just that in the cave, metaphorically speaking, you are not constantly bludgeoned with people attacking your beliefs looking to find faults in what you do and there are no multi-billion dollar industries vying for your attention, emotions or money in an effort to get you to consume something. These temptations are sometimes difficult for people who fast frequently, so as a tip for someone fasting for the first time, it is definitely best to avoid temptation just as much as confrontation.
With time and more fasting, you will build up proper resistance to outside influences.
Prepare a Plan
Most of the situations and potential conflicts presented in these fasting tips you can avoid if you plan and prepare for your fast before you start. Planning doesn’t require as much effort as it does sticking to it once you’ve created it. However, once you have made a plan, fasting provides you a framework of what to do and serves as a guidepost to keep you on track. Having a prepared plan serves as a helpful tool and reduces the opportunity for random situations to cause you to break your fast too soon.
If you have prior engagements, proper planning allows you to take the appropriate steps to ensure that you stay fasting by either rescheduling the events, skipping them completely or making sure that your attendance or participation doesn’t interfere with your fasting period. Planning also helps to create a steady pace so that you do not become overwhelmed (or the opposite) with the day’s activities.
Depending on your nature and level of fasting experience, you may need to busy yourself either with activities while fasting, to place it towards the back of your mind or set distinct times of quiet to avoid falling to temptation. Whatever your disposition, creating a plan can assist you in being better prepared for the mental and physical challenges that come while fasting.
An adage that promotes good planning if I recall correctly goes something like, “Poor planning results in poor performance.”
Plan your fast well and look to perform the same.
Finally
Thank you for reading these fasting tips. I hope that I have provided enough insight into why they are beneficial and that you are able to use them to stay fasting until your fasting period is over. You can apply these tips to stay fasting for religious fasting, juice fasting, detox diets, water fasting and essentially any other related cleansing, spiritual or otherwise so you that may get the beneficial results that you hope for and are taking action towards to receive.
