<p>Has anybody ever gone on a fast? If so, what type and for how long? How did it work for you? Would you do it again? Btw, I’m not talking about religious fasting, just the purely health motivated type.</p>
<p>[Kripalu</a> - Detox to the Rescue: A Post-Holiday Remedy for the Five-Pound Bloat](<a href=“http://www.kripalu.org/article/596/]Kripalu”>http://www.kripalu.org/article/596/)</p>
<p>A great start. Good luck! (I can’t fast - hypoglycemia kicks in.)</p>
<p>A friend wanted to do the lemon juice/maple syrup/cayenne pepper one and it sounded wacky to me so I did it with her to see for myself. I actually felt great…maybe did it for around a week or so.</p>
<p>What health benefit do you expect to receive from it and even if that health benefit is legit, what good does it do if you just resume the normal diet as soon as the fast is over?</p>
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<p>What good is changing the oil and air filters on your car, if you’re going to just keep driving the thing, and fouling them up? I believe the idea with periodic fasts, is that they act to cleanse the body and reset the metabolism—though truthfully, I know next to nothing about it. That’s why I bought a book from B&N tonight. It appears that there are lots of different types of fasts, but the only one that can strictly be called a fast is the water fast. There’s also a fresh raw fruit and vegetable juice fast. I’d need a juicer to do that one apparently. Blenders won’t cut it.</p>
<p>I fasted once in college for Oxfam. I felt so ill I’ve never bothered to do it again. (That was a real fast - water only.)</p>
<p>My dad does juice fasts. He says he feels great but he looks like hell when he does it.</p>
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That’s not a very good comparison (and you’re talking to a car guy here) but I guess what you’re saying is that you believe fasting for a short period of time would somehow clean your system out and ‘purge it of toxins’ or something. I don’t really buy that idea and don’t see any lasting benefit if it unless a more permanent change is made.</p>
<p>However, if what you want to do is to go on a restricted diet, whether a fast or simply restricted of certain foods which probably makes more sense, such that you control things like certain sugars and other substances with the aim to reduce cravings and balance your metabolism with the long term goal of changing eating habits to be more healthy, then I think it makes sense. </p>
<p>I’m just saying it doesn’t make any logical sense to me that a very brief restriction, which a fast will be, followed by a return to former eating habits will have any real effect in the long term. But - I’m not a medical doctor (but then neither are many of the people pushing such things) so I guess my opinion could be wrong.</p>
<p>Just make sure you do it in a healthy way but consider what longer term changes you can make that would provide even more benefits. Have you fasted like this before and if so do you think there was any real value in it?</p>
<p>I agree with ucsd_dad. The whole ‘cleansing’ idea is a myth - your body, unless you have major medical issues, does a terrific job of cleaning itself via the liver, kidneys, and digestive system. There are not, contrary to a lot of websites’ claims, old bits of undigested food hanging out in your colon. </p>
<p>If you want to change the way you eat in general, you can do one of these sorts of fasts as a psychological way of starting fresh, but what really counts is how you eat afterwards.</p>
<p>Short periods (say one or two days) of fasting won’t cause any lasting damage. Your body is normally remarkably resilient and can fully recover from such stress. So go for it if you want to.</p>
<p>But on the flip side the body is also normally remarkably efficient at removing toxins from the system. It does so all day every day and doesn’t need help from “fasting.” And of course long term fasting (aka starvation) is very unhealthful and in fact quite dangerous.</p>
<p>Every now and then I just stop eating for a day or two - usually when DH is traveling so I don’t get scolded about it. I just drink lots of water and tea. I really do feel better from it. Just every now and then. I think we are hunters and gatherers and not necessarily supposed to eat three squares every day throughout our lives. Resting the stomach every now is really not that radical. Never beyond a day or two though.</p>
<p>Hmm, now that I think about it, I guess a colonoscopy prep is a cleanse and from the photos, everything looked clean and sparkly!</p>