I wanted to share some information about what
happens to your body during fasting, since I
started
The Master Cleanse last week and I'm going
through a fast right now. You may think
it's weird if you've never gone through a fast or
had a good fasting experience, but I actually
enjoy fasting and this book can explain why.
As I explained to you all last week, fasting was the best thing I ever did for myself. Because it made my transition to raw vegan foods a lot easier after the cleanse. Cravings and food addictions disappeared and my body changed in many ways. After the cleanse, I wasn't able to digest meat or many cooked foods, therefore it was natural that I changed to eating only raw vegan foods, which were the foods that made my body feel the greatest. Reading this free online book made fasting more clear to me and I wanted to share it with you.
As always before you start a fast, make sure you do your research and learn what is the best way for you to do a fast and consult your primary care physician, especially if you're under any medications or suffer of any conditions/illnesses. Not all fasts are for everyone. Once I heard from someone that you should not do a fast like The Master Cleanse, unless you're completely healthy.
Mr. Bronner's book "Quick Fasting" talks about fasting on the most strict sense. Fasting with just water. Not everyone can do this type of fast, as it is the most difficult way to fast. However, the book talks about what happens during fasting and it helped me understand it a lot better. I read this book before I started my first Master Cleanse.
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From the book "Quick Fasting"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne Bronner, Jr.
We may talk about sex being the strongest fleshly drive, but it is not. We may think ego is the strongest of the fleshly impulses, but it is not. From the day we are born, the desire for food reigns dominant.
We eat too much. Gluttony, the lack of discipline of the appetite, causes us to look old prematurely, to feel old before we get old and to suffer many different diseases.
All the major killer diseases of today, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, kidney failure, prematurely kill the majority of Americans and their sources are traceable to our lifestyles and diets. Science has found that it's just as important that we don't overeat, as it is that we eat properly.
The digestion of food, especially the typical American diet, takes a tremendous amount of energy. That is why after a big meal you feel sleepy. It can take several days for the typical meal to pass through your body. It takes all of your energy trying to digest that big meal. The body works overtime.
Fasting allows us to gain control of the appetite. When you can develop the discipline to fast, you automatically develop the discipline not to overeat. When you can control your strongest carnal appetite (the desire for food), you can then gain control of the other carnal appetites.
When the body stops taking in food, it starts to eliminate the filth and the toxins. ENERGY INCREASES AFTER THEY HAVE GOTTEN THE BULK OF THE M.E.S.S. (Multiple Emissions of Systemic Sanitation) OUT.
When FAST FLUSH happens, stuff we never even knew was in our bodies starts to be flushed out. We start to FLUSH out drugs (legal and illegal), nicotine, caffeine, pesticides, preservatives, etc. These chemicals can lie stored in our tissues for longer than we would dare imagine. Many of these toxins have been in our bodies since childhood. None of this M.E.S.S. looks or smells good coming out. It's a blessing that we are getting it out of our bodies before it makes us sick or sicker.
As unpleasant as the body odor and bad breath may sound, that is not the difficult part. "What is worse than that?" I hear you screaming.
How the M.E.S.S. makes you feel is worse than that As the M.E.S.S. toxins impact your bloodstream and flood from your tissues, they can make you feel terrible. You will feel drained, you may be weak, tired, listless, rundown, beat down, and only fit to lie down.
YOU MUST UNDERSTAND WHY!
It is still because of FAST FLUSH.
Your body is going through a massive cleansing. You now have more FREED M.E.S.S. toxins floating in your bloodstream than ever before. Your body is now diverting all available energy to cleansing your system. Yes, you may feel tired. The more toxic your system, the more exhausted you will feel. It is NOT LACK OF FOOD that has you weak and exhausted, it is the toxins.
The minute you eat the cleaning process will stop. The M.E.S.S. toxins will stop pouring out. Your breath and body odor will clear up, and things will go back to the toxic condition that you were in before. When this happens people mistakenly believe that "THE FOOD" gave them energy and the fast was draining their energy due to no nourishment. Long term fasters will tell you that the energy usually increases after the 15th day to beyond what it was before the fast began. ENERGY INCREASES AFTER THEY HAVE GOTTEN THE BULK OF THE M.E.S.S. OUT.
The temptation to eat due to the effects of M.E.S.S. coming out is great. Eating will eliminate the negative feeling, but enduring to the end of the fast will have a greater positive impact on your health.
Each person's reaction to M.E.S.S. coming out may be different. I tasted metallic chemicals in my mouth for five days during my last fast. I knew what it was. I was tasting chemicals which had been stored in my body for ages. Even though I have never taken any quantity of medicines or drugs in my life, I had untold poisonous pesticide and pollution residues in my tissues. This was because of the environment and contaminated food I had consumed all my life.
If you have a history of heavy pharmaceutical use, the cleansing could be drastic. If your body is extremely toxic, the outpouring M.E.S.S. can cause serious harm.
FASTING CAN ACTUALLY MAKE YOU FATTER
The power of fasting is not in losing weight during the fast, but in gaining control of your appetite, which is the REAL problem.
During a fast, the body burns its own fat. As the body burns its fat there is a release of chemical compounds called "ketones". Medical science claims this is the source of "bad breath." That is partially true. I am familiar with the smell of ketones from my chemistry training. When ketones are released, I did smell them, but the other stuff that was on my breath was NOT KETONES. The stuff that came out in the enema was NOT KETONES, it was M.E.S.S.
As the body burns fat, eliminates M.E.S.S. and cleanses itself, two things happen that can make you fatter.
First, after several days, your metabolism slows down. If your body were being described as a car, metabolism would be all of the engine and battery processes. The body slows its metabolism approximately 20% after several days on a fast. Medical science describes this as a survival mechanism.
If the body is not getting food, then it slows down so that it needs less food, that makes plenty sense. This way, you can live much longer with no food if your body slows down.
Second, your digestive system is cleaner. The villi in the intestines are cleaner, the stomach lining is cleaner, the colon is cleaner.
When a car engine gets dirty, it uses more gas per mile. If the spark plugs are dirty, the carburetor or fuel injectors clogged, the wires corroded, and the air filter is clogged, the engine does not run efficiently.
Clean up the car engine and your gas mileage will improve. You can go farther from the same gallon of gas. The same is true of your body.
If the lungs are clogged, the intestines coated with filth, the colon stopped up, the blood thick and sluggish, fat surrounding the heart and in the arteries, the body is running inefficiently. Clean up the body, and you will get more miles to the gallon.
A fast cleans up the body.
A fast slows the metabolism.
When you combine those two elements, a cleaner more efficient body with a slower metabolism, you need less food for the same level of activity. Food is absorbed and utilized better in a clean digestive system. It does not take a research team to spend years testing, analyzing, taking surveys and doing clinical trials to prove that. That is common sense.
If it takes less food to do the same thing, it means one of three things:
1. You need to cut down on the food you were eating before the fast since you do not need as much food for the same level of activity.
2. If you eat the same amount of food after the fast as before, you need more physical activity to use the extra efficiency and slowed metabolism.
3. If you eat the same, and have the same activity level, you may get fatter!
I am trying to tell you the truth as I understand it. I will not lie or make fasting sound like something it is not. Fasting can make you fatter if you don't change after the fast.
Fasting will allow you to gain control of your appetite. There comes a power of self-control after you have completed a long fast that is like nothing else. You may not get the self-control that you seek on your first fast. But, do you master anything else on your first try?
Fasting on a periodic basis allows a person to gradually gain control over their appetite. Do not gorge before or after the fast! Learning to control your desire for food as you break your fast is a great aid in controlling it daily.
You will find that you are not hungry when you end your fast (after three days, hunger usually abates). You are not hungry, but the desire to eat is there. There is a big difference between actual hunger and desire for food.
Learn to control the desire, learn to eat only when you are physically hungry. This is the ONLY way any type of permanent weight loss becomes effective. You must have a change of thought pattern and a change of lifestyle.
A diet is always viewed as a punishment. We don't like punishment. I don't care who you are, eventually you will move away from punishment to that which is rewarding.
The only way to successfully lose weight is to CHANGE what we view as rewarding. As long as stuffing yourself with food, eating three or more clogging meals per day and sweets and fattening foods are your idea of reward, you will remain either fat or on a constant weight yo-yo.
Read the entire Free Ebook "Quick Fasting" by Nathaniel Hawthorne Bronner, Jr. Online on his website http://www.quickfasting.com
Mr. Bronner's book is truly unique and easily digest-able. I'm on day five of a pure water fast and have found his words to be very very inspiring.Thanks for highlighting it. nameste.
Posted by: nathaniel | September 04, 2008 at 03:03 PM