Why Fast?
Our body suffers permanent intoxication brought on by our industrialized way of life.
The environmental pollution (Toxics)
You soak up toxics whether you like it or not, breathing in an increasingly polluted air and drinking water that is often very unsuitable (toxic residues such as Chlorine, Chloramines, Mercury, Pharmaceuticals, Herbicides, Pesticides, etc.).
Your fatty tissues store non-eliminated drug or vaccine adjuvants, pesticide residues and herbicides contained in our supermarket foods, which disrupt your hormonal system (endocrine disruptors), carcinogenic nanoparticles, all metals such as mercury, cadmium and copper.
Other toxic encounters attack you more insidiously: those of plastic phthalates from juice and water bottles, those of metals contained in our dental amalgams, those of chemical deposits in your new clothes etc.
Fasting makes it possible to evacuate some of these toxic substances from the body, even when they have been stored for several years.
The body’s byproduct (Toxins)
Our second greatest enemy is toxins.
These are very harmful substances produced by our own body – when we have a bad metabolism – or they accumulate via a bad diet: too many carbohydrates, animal fats, dairy products.
With the accumulation of these toxins, the body often clogs up which can lead to two types of unfortunate consequences:
Acidity, demineralization, inflammation of the body (sometimes all three at the same time);
Deterioration of lymph (those 2 litres of liquid that remove our waste and preserve our white blood cells.
Your natural defenses weaken, you are vulnerable, this is the beginning of diseases.
Your lungs, intestines, liver and kidneys are affected, and get damaged in the long run. You are then easily prone to small “dis-eases” within your body (migraines, colds, gastroenteritis, erythemas ...).
After a while, these diseases allow more serious conditions to take hold: diabetes, cancer, heart disease, hypertension, osteoarthritis, neurodegenerative diseases.
More and more doctors believe that this toxic/toxin partnership is at the origin of the majority of contemporary diseases!
Fasting regularly slows down the onset of these conditions and can even alleviate them.
The different ways to fast
There are different ways of fasting: they are distinguished by their duration, and by the foods consumed during the fasting period.
The Intermittent fast
The intermittent fast consists of stopping all feeding for a short period of time, for example 12 hours or 24 hours. Carried out regularly (for example every 2 weeks), it allows to obtain very interesting results, incomparable with western ways of continuous feeding.
The Buchinger fast
The Buchinger fast is the fast with therapeutic virtue set up by Doctor Buchinger. The faster drinks water during the day (sometimes juice) and broth in the evening. In its therapeutic form, it can last several weeks but only with medical monitoring.
The Water fast
This is the best known and most obvious version of a fast: you drink only water for several days (but no more than a week as this then becomes a therapeutic fast and needs to be medically supervised). It has been somewhat forgotten in our modern society, but several centuries ago we did not eat every day.
The Monodiet
The monodiet consists of eating a single food (usually seasonal) for several meals and several times a day. It is a little more accessible than fasting. You should know that the quantities are substantial, and that one generally eat several kilos of fruits or vegetables per day in order to detoxify the body.
The different stages of a fast
Fasting over several days is generally carried out in 3 main stages.
Before fasting, the body must gradually be accustomed to going without food. If you have not fasted before, I recommend that you make the preparation and the re-eating phase the same duration as the fast. For example if you are fasting 7 days, your preparation must begin 7 days before. Once you are used to fasting you can reduce this preparation time.
1 - The preparation
You help your body gradually reduce its food consumption amount by reducing food intake in stages.
2 - The Fast
Depending on the type of fast, you eat a single food (monodiet), broth, or no food during this phase.
3 - The food reintroduction
You re-eat in small quantities and gradually increase food amount in the reverse order of the preparation phase.
Preparation tips for fasting several days.
1 - The preparation
The week before the fast: you should achieve a gradual descent in food by removing the most "toxic" foods first. Throughout this preparation, you should drink as much as possible poorly mineralized water. This will help relieve the kidneys during their work of elimination. You should know that the amount of water to drink gradually increases when you decrease the food intake to reach 2 to 3 liters per day! I advise you to follow the following schedule for 7 days of fasting. There is nothing drastic about doing it in a shorter period of time. However, it is imperative to respect this order:
D-7: eliminate tobacco, tea, coffee, alcohol, and all processed products (cakes, fast food, prepared meals, etc.). If you have some dependence with these items, you may experience side effects; in this case you can gradually reduce their doses over a couple of days rather than suddenly stopping them. For example if you drink 4 coffees a day, stopping the coffee suddenly will give you a hell of a headache from the 2nd day of preparation.
Warning: if you follow a medical treatment, please, please, please consult your doctor to find out if you can fast. When you stop eating, the effects of drugs may be severely disrupted! (check with your doctor, as I cannot advise you on the subject, but as an example, drugs like anti-inflammatories or antibiotics should be taken with foods as they may seriously damage gut lining and gut flora).
D-5: remove meat, eggs, dairy products. You no longer eat animal protein (tofu is allowed if you can’t do without proteins). From this point on, your diet becomes restricted: it is low in calories, and if you are not a happy vegetarian, you will find it unpleasant. Please persevere, it is well worth it!
D-3: remove grains, starches, legumes. You only have cooked or raw vegetables and fruits left to eat. To enhance your satiety, I can suggest you add a steamed organic potato with sckin to your meals.
D-1: consume only homemade or lacto-fermented organic fruit and vegetable juices. Be careful not to take over ripen fruits as they will contain excess sugar! If you are depressed about this very limited diet, take an apple o chew that you can peel beforehand.
2 - The Fast
D-Day: first day of fasting
In the morning, you have to hydrate yourself well when you wake up. I advise you to put the juice of half a lemon in your bottle of water. Lemon has many detox properties including stimulating bile production. It will make the work of your liver easier.
If you feel a little off (it can happen that day or on one of the following days); the best thing to do is to do gentle exercises: relaxation therapy, small movements to relax, some stretching, yoga. The heart rate should remain moderate so don’t exert yourself unnecessarily.
You will feel that your stomach is quite empty, but since the exercise was done gradually, the feeling of hunger will be much lower than if you had skipped a meal.
There is still something not very glamorous to do: rid your colon of what is still in it. Purists perform a colonic enema. If like me you are sceptical or fearful on the subject, I suggest you do a Magnesium Chloride purge. It tastes awful and goes down best cold and with lemon; you may feel like you are drinking seawater. Be brave, you need to drink half a litre of it.
Note that this purge is not mandatory for a short fast. But for a 7-day-fast it is quite risky not to do so (the waste products from the intestine do not stay there indefinitely and toxins tend to get reabsorbed into the bloodstream through the colon walls after a few days, which as you can imagining is not ideal….).
Purge principle: in the middle of the day dilute 2 tablespoons of Nigari or Epsom salts in half a litre of water, stir, add lemon juice and refrigerate. Drink it at the end of the day when you are home and relaxed.
Normally, you should start using the toilet within an hour of drinking the solution or at the latest a few hours later. Depending on the individual it may also only happen till the next day.
Normally the feeling of hunger disappears after the purge (there is no longer a call for food intake from the intestines).
A typical fasting day
It is good to do some moderate exercise to help the body with elimination.
During our retreats we include hiking or rather gentle nature walks. Rest assured, we only do a maximum of 10km during the day, so it's still very doable even without eating.
If you are fasting at home or at work, I advise you to maximize the time you devote to physical activity, while limiting the efforts:
in the morning, favour walking to work or if taking public transports get off at an earlier stops for example)
at noon, take advantage of your break to go out for a walk (you don't eat but you still have the right to your break!)
at the end of the day, do a little more walking
These little recommendations will allow you to easily do 1h30 or 2h of exercise daily.
In any case, you should avoid sitting at home, or even sleeping too much during the day. This will slow down your metabolism and your elimination will be less efficient.
Drink plenty throughout the day by having at least 1.5 litre bottle next to you at all times; you will find that it empties quickly.
In the evening
As discussed above, there are different methods of fasting.
In the so-called "Buchinger" fast, named after the German physician known for popularizing "therapeutic" fasting in Western Europe, you drink a vegetable broth every night. This helps provide minerals to your body, without adding calories. Fasting is thus easier.
Be careful, this is not about taking a soup, so here is a recipe for the broth:
Choose organic vegetables whenever possible. Remember you are detoxing. As much as possible, you should use seasonal and local vegetables too. The quantity must be substantial (around 1 to 2 kg of vegs). For the choice of vegs, it is above all a question of preference, but here is an example of my typical broth anyway:
an onion,
a couple of carrots,
turnips,
one or two leeks,
a potato or 2,
possibly some fennel or cabbage,
some dried or fresh aromatic herbs such as parsley or coriander,
garlic, etc.
and about 2 litres of water.
For cooking, it's pretty simple: Put all the ingredients together in a large saucepan. Boil and simmer covered for about 30 to 45 minutes. Filter the broth through a colander because – sorry - the vegetables will not be eaten during the fast.
If you live with your family, you can give your children the vegetables to eat although they won’t have much vitamins or minerals left in them!
You can have one or two bowls of broth each evening. This will allow you to maintain a certain sociability at the dinner table.
I won't describe the other fasting variants in detail, but they are similar:
Water fast: you replace the broth with water
Monodiet: you eat the one food you have chosen at your usual meals time.
During the night
Gradually, the body will begin to eliminate a lot of toxins during the day, and to burn fat and proteins to ensure its proper metabolism.
The cleaning phenomenon is increased tenfold at night. After a few days (often 3, but in my case 1 or 2, it varies greatly depending on the person), you may have a “keto flu” attack: headache, sweating, etc.
A little trick to reduce it strongly: sleep with a hot water bottle on the liver (the liver is on the right).
The first time I thought it had a "granny" effect and I didn't use a hot water bottle…. I bitterly regretted it. Since then I sleep with the hot water bottle or have a nap with it, which helps me go through this phase almost without feeling anything in particular.
You should know that the heat makes your liver run at full speed, and that this greatly promotes the elimination of waste in the body.
If you found this blog interesting, you might want to read part 2 of “Why Fast” where I will discuss the “Effects of Fasting”.
