Lessons From Fasting
Have you ever fasted before? My fasting experiences have always been surreal.
I’ve been engaging in various forms of fasting for 8 plus years, and I always come away feeling a little more enlightened.
Below are some of the lessons, in no particular order, that I’ve gleaned from fasting.
Cravings are conditional. Prior to ever fasting there were things I just assumed were innate to the human condition. Take the many sensations we associate with “being hungry”... the growling, grumbling, or even aches of the stomach, the irritability, the headaches, the saliva, the never-ending thoughts of food. I assumed these were inevitable symptoms of hunger, until I realized they weren’t. I was midway through Day 4 of a water only fast, and boom, all of those sensations I was struggling to ignore had vanished. This wasn’t an out of sight, out of mind experience. I was standing in the kitchen, looking in the pantry, preparing a meal for my kids and I was good. This runs counter to any rational explanation. If those sensations were truly associated with “being hungry” they should have only intensified as time went on but they didn’t. They vanished. That’s because those sensations are more about conditioned cravings than hunger. Why do you think the food and beverage industries spend almost $10 Billion dollars annually?
Discern between external noise and internal signal. Tell someone you’re going to fast for multiple days or weeks in a row and they'll absolutely look at you like you’re crazy. They’ll express rational concerns, both psychological and physiological. That can’t be healthy, they'll proclaim. I agree that fasting is a socially extreme construct. However, there is growing evidence demonstrating we’re biologically built for fasting. With some evidence suggesting fasting can enhance some of the internal processes that are designed to support our health and well-being. This is just one of the many examples where external social pressures might run contrary to our internal feelings and intuitions. The point is, socially acceptable, cannot be the standard we use to lead and live well.
Start from abundance. When we’re constantly consuming it is easy to convince ourselves that we need more. More calories, more money, more followers, more achievement, more business. It’s easy to unconsciously drift to a place of scarcity. Where every action is rooted in this “I need more” narrative. When we start from a place of abundance we no longer need to act compulsively, because we’re good. We don’t act because we need this or have to prove that. We act freely because we want to.
In my experiences, fasting isn’t really about “abstaining” or “not doing”. It’s about creating the space to find the clarity about what matters most.
Fasting from anything will give you more time. How will you spend this time?
Will you spend the majority of the newly found time wanting to “not want” the thing(s) that you’re fasting from?
Or will you commit that time to engaging in the things you really want to do?
The freedom fasting grants us can only be fully realized if we use it to fully engage in a life we want to live.
You don’t “have” to do anything.
When you live life on purpose, everything you do is ultimately because you want to.
