I wrote this just after I completed a four-day fast. Of course, this makes me an expert. Not!

Fasting is a very serious undertaking. Complete fasting with just water should only be done after some good research and the right mental, emotional, and intellectual preparation. That type of fast is not recommended for beginners.

The kind of fasting that I do has the purpose of cleansing. Lately, I have been having allergy symptoms with cough, post nasal drainage, and nasal congestion. It seems to be food related rather than environmental, so I wanted to rest my immune system and digestive tract for one to four days. Then, I will slowly start adding food back into my diet to see if something is increasing the allergy load and causing the respiratory symptoms.

This kind of fasting is sometimes called a juice fast. Usually one would use vegetable juices. If you have a juicer, use carrot, celery, bok choy, spinach, and so on. Because I did not care to mess with the juicer, I used Green Zone by NSP, which is green vegetable powder. The drink consists of one liter of water, one scoop of Green Zone, one tbsp. flaxseed oil, one tbsp. honey, and 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper. The Green Zone gives two to five servings worth of green vegetable fiber and nutrients. The flaxseed oil adds the necessary plant fats that provide some nutrient. The honey gives the mixture carbohy¬drates to prevent low blood sugar. And the cayenne helps the body stay warm. Drinking one liter of this mixture three times per day along with three liters of water provides a good cleansing of the digestive system and urinary tract while hydrating the body to release toxins that are trapped in the lymphatic fluids. Protein powder or amino acids can be added for nutrients.

For me, fasting also gives a chance to explore the feeling of hunger. Most of us never really have this feeling because we just keep feeding our faces at such a rapid rate that we never really experience hunger as a sensation in our body. Hunger is actually a healthy experience because it’s designed to alert us to the fact that we need fuel. It does not mean immediately. Natural hunger is a good feeling, so we should not just jump up and get some food with every little twinge. When doing a fast, it is important to actually feel the hunger.

Most of the time when we get hungry, we begin converting stored glycogen and body fat into usable energy. Unfortunately, sometimes that system does not work and this conversion does not take place. When this happens, people begin to store food energy as fat instead of burning it. If there is no muscle added by doing exercises, then the body becomes more efficient because fat requires less maintenance energy than does muscle, and we begin to gain weight. Doing a fast can restart that normal conversion process.

For some people, doing a short fast of one or two days once per month is a good idea. However, you should check with your doctor before fasting, especially if you have any health issues. Begin by skipping one meal once in a while to see how that feels. Next, do a vegetable juice fast for one full day. Then try a little longer. At the beginning, I would suggest not fasting longer than four days. Do that a few times.

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