Asking for practical advice on fasting

[Claire_from_DE]

This is a spin-off from the Comments Please thread, please look at it first.

I’m inspired by Ultima Ratio’s writings about the benefits of fasting, so how about some suggestions on how to do it by those who do. I’d like to try it but I really like to eat and I’m not sure I can do it. But I’m assuming this should be possible for anyone who is fairly healthy (not diabetic, anorexic, or with low blood sugar problems). I also assume we’re not talking about 40 days without food or water!
Some questions I have are:

Why do you fast?

Do you pray about it first?

Those of you who fast, how long is the fast? Several days in a row or one day a week? How do you determine when to begin and end it?

Do you ok it with your confessor or spiritual director?

What do you eat?

Do you drink a lot of water during the fast? (I once read that warm drinks are better for a person who is fasting.)

Do you change your pattern of prayer during this time?

Do you get really hungry? Is fasting harder or easier than dieting? Do you have a problem with thinking about food?

What do you do during the time you usually have meals? I don’t have a family so this might be easier for me than for someone who has to cook or eat with a family.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[bpbasilphx]

Why?

According to Jesus, the only two weapons we have against the devil is prayer and fasting.

What other weapon do we have against a given weakeness except to make an effort to deliberately practice the opposite virtue?

As far as a regimen of fasting, do not go beyond the practice of the Church without definite spiritual guidance. Fasting is ambiguous. Remember, the demons never eat at all.

 

[ljubim]

For me, I’ll fast for a day at a time, like once I fasted a Friday before we went to pray outside an abortion clinic.

Keep it very prayerful and full of purpose. When you’re just fasting for your own sake/vanity, you will fail and easily become agitated (my problem ). But when you keep it joyful and prayerful, the day will fly by and you’ll be shocked how easy fasting is with God’s help.

My suggestion is keeping a water bottle on your person, and rather than eating a sandwich for lunch, just eat the bread (a smaller piece of course). Then during dinner you can eat a little bowl full of something (the blander the better!). The church’s suggestion for fasting (the one full meal and two mini-meals) is just a baseline idea, you can and should try to push your own limits. (like for me the full meal and two little meals would be really close to normal!)

The results of fasting are immensely great! Please give it a shot. You know how sometimes if you eat a massive meal, afterwards your stomach begins to hurt and your thoughts stray from God, and you cannot hear His voice as clearly any more? Fasting undo’s this, and helps you hear Him even better. Try it out with more frequent confession and receive the Eucharist more frequently, and your fasting will go well and your prayers/intentions will become more sincere and are far more likely to be answered.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

I’m inspired by Ultima Ratio’s writings about the benefits of fasting, so how about some suggestions on how to do it by those who do. I’d like to try it

Yippee, good choice!!!

but I really like to eat and I’m not sure I can do it.

Pray for strength and start small . It can be a one day fast or you can start as small as a one or two meal fast. These things are quite doable, and as you practice them, you might feel more capable of moving on to greater things as you feel the desire.

Why do you fast?

The flesh has powerful controls on us. Just imagine how painful it would be to lose contact with loved ones, or to go without some of our favorite luxuries or pleasure activities. Just imagining it is painful. That is because these things of the world have a hold on us, and we are bound to them like slaves through our pleasure-attachments. Gradually, God can set us free of these attachments. The more we are free, the more we can love what truly matters and find deeper and deeper joy in life. Our choosing freedom from attachments of the world gives God freedom to reign sovereignly and completely in our lives.

This freedom isn’t something we are expected to have all at once. It grows in us as we become more and more fully in love with God over the course of our lives. As we love God more, we put Him increasingly first and lose taste for material pleasures. This is to a large extent a natural process for a soul seeking God, because His Spirit living in us causes a lot of this to happen through grace. As we cooperate more and more with His grace, we become more free from worldly attachments and more given over to life in Him.

Do you pray about it first?

Yes. When I’m planning something that feels big to me, I talk to my spiritual director first. Otherwise I just follow the desire in my heart after I pray.

2 Corinthians 9:7, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Those of you who fast, how long is the fast? Several days in a row or one day a week? How do you determine when to begin and end it?

For me, that varies enormously depending on what the desire in my heart is. Sometimes I fast from one meal, sometimes for a day, sometimes two, three, or more. My longest so far in abstaining from food was approximately two weeks.

Sometimes my fasts are open-ended, such as the fast from deserts on weekdays that I started at the beginning of January and don’t know when I’ll stop. I felt very passionate about that one and I think I’ll soon be intensifying it as I’m actually losing my taste for many of my old pleasures through this. They’re just increasingly uninteresting and I find myself sometimes going through the motions when I do them rather than actually desiring such things. I feel there has to be something better to do with my time. That’s something to pray about.

Fasts can be open-ended or can have set periods of time depending on what you want in the start. I do believe in doing what the heart desires and no more and no less.

Song of Songs 2:7, “Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”

Do you ok it with your confessor or spiritual director?

When it’s big.

Claire:

What do you eat?

Nothing.

Claire:

Do you drink a lot of water during the fast? (I once read that warm drinks are better for a person who is fasting.)

I think I largely drink however much I want to drink, like usual. I guess I’m not all that structured.

Claire:

Do you change your pattern of prayer during this time?

Sometimes, depending on what my heart desires. Sometimes I’ll pray the Rosary very systematically during these periods, other times not.

Claire:

Do you get really hungry? Is fasting harder or easier than dieting?

You get hungry, but I think after the first couple days it gets somewhat easier. Your body starts adjusting.

Claire:

Do you have a problem with thinking about food?

Not really. It’s not that bad. There is some suffering from having family members around eating delicious food, but it isn’t actually that bad, to me.

Claire:

What do you do during the time you usually have meals? I don’t have a family so this might be easier for me than for someone who has to cook or eat with a family.

This Lent I’m planning to try to fast each Friday from food. I’m planning to pray the Passion Rosary over lunch hour.

Claire:

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Just do what you desire to do, no pressure, no shame. We grow from infants to adults over the course of many years in our natural lives. In the spiritual life, it’s just the same, we grow from infants to adults and it takes years. We grow bit by bit. We start small. Some of the fasts I’ve been doing or attempting in the last couple years, I would never have desired enough to act five or six years ago, because I’m a weak human being. When I started, I would once or twice every few years fast for one day to three days. I definitely started very small. But as we keep seeking God, things change. We grow. So now I’m doing better, but I know I still have a VERY VERY long way to go . . . the spiritual world is so vast and I am very weak and entirely in need of God’s strength and guidance.

Matthew 6:33, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.”

 

[Claire_from_DE]

Why?

According to Jesus, the only two weapons we have against the devil is prayer and fasting. So it would seem that fasting isn’t only for those already greatly advanced in holiness.

What other weapon do we have against a given weakeness except to make an effort to deliberately practice the opposite virtue? Wouldn’t that mean that one would only fast to overcome gluttony?

As far as a regimen of fasting, do not go beyond the practice of the Church without definite spiritual guidance. Fasting is ambiguous. Remember, the demons never eat at all. But the church only requires fasting a couple days a year and it’s a very minimal fast, one average meal and two very small ones, which is the way I eat if I’m trying to drop a couple pounds.

 

[Claire_from_DE]

Thanks everyone, lots of good suggestions. Now that I have an idea of how and why to fast, I’ll run it by my spiritual director to see if it would be OK for me to try. She knows me pretty well.

 

[Hannah12]

I believe fasting is also a useful tool for disciplining the body, mind and spirit. There are many ways to fast. If you think a food fast will be difficult for you, consider fasting by another means first to learn the discipline. You might fast from make-up, jewelry or patterned or brightly colored clothing. Besides developing the discipline of fasting, these fasts can help increase the virtue of poverty and humility. Always discuss a fast with a spiritual director before beginning to reduce the risk of temptation to pride for excellence in fasting. May God bless and enrich you for your desire and assist you in the accomplishment of His will.

 

[aspirant]

Pope Benedict’s Message for Lent 2009 was about fasting.

 

[vacanebrake]

Just picked up a small booklet -Fasting A Positive Approach by Mark Neilsen, published by Liguori Press. Good little book w/ a bunch of info

Peace and all good:yyeess:

 

[Ultima_Ratio]

There’s some great replies in this thread.

The first thing I recommend is to pray and ask God for help. When I’ve prayed for help first, the fast has always gone much smoother. When I didn’t pray first, it often did not go well.

There’s been a few times that I did a three day fast of no food at all, and then ate everything in the house on the fourth day. That’s not good. When you end the fast, make sure that you focus on temperance for a few days following.

I usually don’t go more than 3 to 5 days with no food at all (or very little food). The general rules the Church sets down for fasting is one full size meal and two very small meals. The two small meals together should not exceed the quantity of the one full meal. This is fine for a long period of time, such as Lent, but for a short fast of 1-5 days try to go with no food. I get much more out of a complete fast than I do with a limited fast.

Watch out for the devil. Sometimes when he sees you performing good spiritual exercises, he will tempt you. There’s a few pitfalls to watch for. First, if you start fasting every now and them, and then begin to feel guilty for not fasting, this is the devil. It is one of the tricks he uses. He used it on me when I first converted. He tries to push you too far so that you give up. Another danger that spiritual writer mention is that when you fast, your flesh becomes weak and you are subject to temptations. I don’t recall this every being a problem personally, but it is something the saints have written about. I have found that when I fast, my lower nature is under control and I haven’t suffered any serious temptations, except the temptation to false guilt I mentioned above.

The good part: The benefits are excellent. Fasting is like a spiritual exercise. Just as lifting weights (resistance) strengthens the muscles, so too resisting the desires of the lower nature strengthens the will, and trains the body to obey. In addition, I am often extremely alert, yet tranquil, with many consolations. A general “sweetness” is usually present, and when reading the Bible I often have deeper insights than I would if I weren’t fasting.

 

[Claire_from_DE]

The part about eating everything in the house after you end the fast sounds like something I’d do. Good warning.

I guess fasting in order to get the consolations would be a poor motive.

The part about temptations increasing sounds a little scary but it’s best to know it could happen.

 

[aspirant]

The part about eating everything in the house after you end the fast sounds like something I’d do. Good warning.

One should be very careful breaking a fast if it is a fast from all (or almost all) food.

 

[LAGwen]

Thank you for posting this question, especially with Lent coming up. Fasting is always difficult for me, and I appreciate the good advice that has been offered!
Gwen