Why we have all been doing the Fast Diet wrong
Since fruit and vegetables are the easiest food to digest, my plan centres mostly around these foods.
What you need to know:
- Traditionally, fasting means going without any sort of food, and that is something I’m really not in favour of
- Essentially you have created an artificial “emergency” situation and your body goes into survival mode
One thing I tell my patients is that their sick body is a lot like a car that’s been driven around quite roughly and then badly maintained. After a number of years, that car needs a considerable amount of work, most likely an overhaul.
So assuming you have the overhaul, what should you do be doing to maintain your body so that it doesn’t break down again? It’s not original, and it’s certainly not ground-breaking, but it is new to me. It’s fasting.
Traditionally, fasting means going without any sort of food, and that is something I’m really not in favour of. By depriving your body of food, your brain will sense “stress” and will releases the stress hormones adrenalin and cortisol. Essentially you have created an artificial “emergency” situation and your body goes into survival mode: adrenalin will release enough sugar from the liver to keep you going, while cortisol will cause you to slow down the rate at with you burn any fat stores. That’s why you tend to weigh the same and sometimes even more after you come off a fast.
So, assuming you’re fasting for health reasons, you’d be better off eating a very healthy diet: more raw and fresh fruit and vegetables, reducing your dairy and meat intake, eating more whole grains, drinking more water etc.
So why is what I’m embarking on any different? Because it’s not a total fast and I’m doing it at a very specific time (on the days of the new moon and full moon).
I’ll start with the “when”. Why are the days of the new and full moons superior to others when fasting? It appears that the body’s capacity for detoxification is at its highest at the new moon. The day of the full moon is when our bodies absorb all kinds of substances very well including the countless additives that turn up in our food. This makes it another good day for a fast.
So what exactly am I advocating? I guess you could say that it’s a bit like a mini-detox. It’s about taking the pressure off the digestive organs, so that the body can engage in cleansing and repair. And since fruit and vegetables are the easiest food to digest, my plan centres mostly around these foods (soups are great for mealtimes).
The more toxic your body is, the worse you’ll feel during this time. Over time, this “healing crisis” may not even exist, depending on how clean-living you are in between the full and new moons.
(The next full moon is on 26th May and is also a lunar eclipse).
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