Introduction: How to prepare for a fast.

Whether you’re fasting for the healing medicinal benefits of fasting, religious reasons or to lose weight it’s important that you prepare your body to abstain from food. It’s important to understand how to prepare for a fast. If you’re incorporating intermittent fasting, there isn’t much need to prepare aside from deciding the timeframes that work best for your schedule.

There are five key steps to take to successfully prepare for your fast. Those five steps are: having a clear understanding of why you’re fasting, consulting your primary care physician, removing sugar from your diet, removing meat and dairy from your diet, and removing salt from your diet. These five steps will help prepare your body as well as your mind to complete a fast.

The blog posts on fasting were derived from a free ebook that I prepared for you. This ebook goes into detail about what fasting is, the different types of fasting, how to successfully break your fast, and how to incorporate the Daniel fast to further detox your body! You can find that ebook here.

– Aiyaken Sarai <3

Know your why

It’s important to have a reason for fasting, otherwise, you’re simply starving yourself. Are you fasting because you want to make petitions to God? Fasting because you want to gain spiritual clarity? Fasting for weight loss? Take a moment to critique your reasoning behind undergoing such a feat. 

It’s also a good idea to have a time frame in mind for how long you’d like to undergo a fast. Do you want to test the waters and do a 24- 72 hour fast? Have you tried short-term fasting and now want to try a seven-day fast? Perhaps you want to undergo a more prolonged fast of 14-21 days. Keep in mind that unless you’re an obese person, prolonged fasts of over 40 days aren’t common, nor are they recommended. 

A general rule of thumb would be to take things day by day. You completed day one, great job! Let’s see how you feel tomorrow, the day after that, and the day after that. Taking things one day at a time does intelligently count towards setting a time frame. It can be better than aiming to hit a goal of a specific length. You’ll feel a sense of completion no matter how many days your fast lasts, as opposed to feeling defeated if you don’t hit your target of 21 days.

All is mental

Successfully completing a fast begins in the mind. When you have an understanding of why you’re fasting your mind will dictate the way your body feels. Oftentimes people feel weak and lightheaded, and get headaches when undergoing a fast without having a strong mindset. Individuals can draw strength from knowing the purpose of their fast. Having a purpose with significantly decrease your chances of having adverse reactions. This can be true even when individuals start a fast cold turkey. Mind over matter, and the body is matter.

 Consult your physician: this is one of the most important tips when preparing for a fast.

I’m not adding this simply as a legal disclaimer. If you’re going to do a prolonged fast it may very well be in your best interest to consult your physician before beginning your fast. The reason is that your physician has access to your medical records, and may be able to pinpoint a cause of concern for them. For example, your physician will more than likely discourage prolonged fasting if you’re someone with kidney disease. If you have kidney disease you don’t need to undergo a prolonged water fast or a dry fast where you abstain from eating food and drinking water. Hopefully, they’ll suggest that you try a fast that eliminates meat, dairy, salt, and sugar, such as the Daniel fast. You can find more information about the Daniel fast in the last chapter of the free ebook I prepared for you here. It goes into more depth of the six-week Daniel fast.

Your physician will be able to have blood drawn and sent off for review. It doesn’t take long for lab work to come back. If they see any abnormalities, they can let you know. They can also offer to further monitor you while on your fast. Most importantly, you’ll be able to compare your bloodwork before and after fasting to concretely see the benefits of fasting. Having your bloodwork drawn before and after fasting will be proof for yourself, your physician, and your family and friends of the benefits of fasting in addition to refeeding your body properly. If you’re interested, there is a blog post here that goes into detail on how to successfully break your fast.

Don’t assume that your physician is against fasting for healing. Many medical professionals have been studying and incorporating fasting for health and weight loss for years. If you’re interested in fasting for weight loss, I would recommend intermittent fasting as opposed to total fasting to reduce the chance of distorted thoughts surrounding food consumption and eating patterns. One could argue that these thoughts inevitably arise if you’re fasting solely to lose weight. 

Remove sugar from your diet

Set a date for when you’d like to begin your fast and slowly work your way up to it. 

Have you ever had sugar withdrawal? It’s no fun. Your body can start to feel sluggish and you may feel pain in your head and other areas of your body. When you begin a prolonged fast cold turkey you’re eliminating all sugar including refined and processed sugar from your diet and it can make your body scream, “HEY WHERE IS MY SUGAR FIX” at you. Sugar is essentially crack. Cutting it out cold turkey gives the body the same symptoms one would have if they stopped taking illegal drugs cold turkey. 

When you gradually eliminate sugar from your diet, you give your body time to process not consuming as much sugar. Since you didn’t cut out sugar outright, your body is still getting sugar from carbohydrates. This way your body isn’t going into a frenzy. Little by little eliminate bread, pasta, and potatoes as well. 

I would say it is good to prepare your mind for a fast several weeks in advance. This not only gives your mind time to prepare but your body time to prepare as well. A minimum of a month should you begin eliminating sugar when undergoing a prolonged fast. Be sure to turn the products around when grocery shopping so you can see the ingredients! Many products in the stores have a LOT of hidden sugar.

Remove meat and dairy from your diet

 Again, It isn’t recommended that you begin a prolonged fast cold turkey. Symptoms such as headaches and body aches have been noted to arise. I’ve done prolonged water fasts cold turkey and never had a single headache, but I still say proceed with caution. 

A minimum of two weeks before beginning your fast you should eliminate all meat and dairy from your diet. More than likely your digestion system is already overworked trying to eliminate hard-to-digest foods. Give your body the added boost by stopping the consumption of toxins one week at a time. By eliminating meat and dairy you’re preparing your body to not crave heavy foods for the duration of your fast. 

This is also the perfect time to implement intermittent fasting to prepare your body for restricted calorie intake. Try eating one or two meals a day during the time frames of 12 pm- 5 pm. Feel free to adjust the timing to suit your needs. The timeframe itself should remain a small window. Aim to only be eating one meal a day the week leading into your fast.

Remove salt from your diet

Salt makes the body retain excess water. This is why many people have additional weight that their body is holding onto. While fasting, the body undergoes natriuresis which is where sodium is excreted through the urine. Without the additional sodium, the body will easily and quickly drop water weight. This is why people drop 1-2 pounds per day during the beginning of their fasts. It isn’t until the body reaches autophagy, which can be after seven days of fasting, that the body is burning fat and diseased cells. Salt restriction before fasting can help decrease detoxing symptoms that often occur during the beginning phase of fasting.

Be sure to look at the labels of the food you’re buying when you’re eliminating salt. Just like with sugar, many of the products purchased on the shelves in the store are filled with sodium. How these yummy foods can have too much salt and us not be able to taste the saltiness is beyond me. Buyer beware!

Summary

It is up to you to decide how long you need to fast for weight loss. If weight loss is your goal, you need to have an additional reason for losing weight other than thinking you’re overweight. Again, I recommend intermittent fasting for weight loss. Having a reason for, ‘losing weight to lower my blood pressure.’ or ‘losing weight for lower back pain.’ or even ‘losing weight to reverse diabetes.’ are better reasons for losing weight to be more attractive. It isn’t the number on the scale that determines your attractiveness, it’s the confidence that you exclude. If you feel beautiful before losing the weight, you’ll continue to feel beautiful after the weight.

While you can complete a fast cold turkey, it would be in your best interest to mentally and physically prepare your body for restricting food. It also would behoove you to determine what type of fast you’d like to complete. If you need help deciding which fast is right for you at this moment, I’ve written a blog post for you that goes into more detail on the different types of fasts you could complete.

It’s also IMPERATIVE that you break your fast properly. The refeeding phase is the most important phase of fasting. I’ve written a blog post that you can read here that goes into detail on how to properly break a fast. You want to be able to maintain the weight you’ve lost in addition to the health benefits you’ve seen.

May you now have a better understanding of how to prepare for a fast so you can complete it safely. Remember, all things are possible, they are! The best is yet to come, and the odds are always in your favor! Take care!

-Aiyaken Sarai<3

This blog post was written without the assistance of AI