Benefits of Fasting (And How to Do It)

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. I'm your host, Dr. Axe. And each and every week on the show, we cover the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, and spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. On today's episode, I'll be talking about the spiritual and physical benefits of fasting and how it could help you experience a breakthrough in your life.

If you're a person saying, hey, I want to lose weight, I want to rev up my metabolism, I want to help build muscle, I want to have clear level of thinking, I want to have better energy, I want to have better sleep, I want to have better energy levels, I want to have better I want to reverse a medical condition, or I want a spiritual breakthrough in my life, in my relationships, in my work life.

Fasting might be your secret weapon to experiencing that breakthrough that you've been waiting for. And I'll dive deep into how fasting works. And by the way, I'm probably gonna surprise you. I almost guarantee with most of you, I'm gonna surprise you with some of my takes on fasting, because here's the reality. It is for some people and it's not for others.

And also, I'll be talking about should you fast every day or only periodically? I'll be answering those questions and whether you should or shouldn't fast on this show. I'm also gonna cover topics like what are the different types of fasts you can do, how fasting affects your bodies. I'll get into the biblical principles around fasting and the dos and don'ts of fasting.

Before I dive into all this information though, make sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the notification bell so you don't miss a single episode. Also know I want to hear from you. I oftentimes answer questions on my shows and do a Q&A. And so make sure to run over to Instagram @DrJoshAxe, follow my stories, and post your questions there. You can also send in a voicemail anytime I do Q&As.

And also know every time that you are sharing this, liking this episode, leaving a good review, you're helping the show grow, which is allowing us to reach more and more people Changing the world. So thank you so much for all of you who are a part of the show. So for starters, what is fasting? Well, it's very simple. Fasting means going without food for a certain period of time.

And people fast for health reasons, for religious reasons, for personal reasons. There are many reasons to fast, and there are some reasons not to fast, which I'll talk about here. But fasting is refraining typically from food.

Now, I will say that fasting can also be refraining from Things like social media or certain types of technology or things that just generally you need a break from in order to get healthier in an area of your life. But as we dive in here, we're going to talk mostly about fasting from food. Now, I want to walk you through some of the potential.

And again, I'm using the word here potential because these benefits aren't for everyone. And if you don't fast correctly for your own bio-individualities or your own uniqueness, then you're not going to see these these benefits, but through clinical studies and through history, we have seen fasting has the following benefits.

It benefits your body through cellular repair and autophagy, which can fight cancer. It improves insulin sensitivity and can help reverse diabetes. It supports weight loss and metabolic health.

It reduces inflammation, improves heart health, improves neurological health and brain function, improves hormone levels like human growth hormone, reduces the risk of chronic diseases, improves longevity, and supports spiritual growth and breakthroughs. Those are some of the incredible benefits of fasting when it's done correctly.

Now, let's talk about what actually happens in your body when you start to fast. Well, the first thing happens is your blood sugar levels can start to drop. In most cases to a normal ideal level. And then your glycogen— so your body runs out of, of sugar in the bloodstream to utilize for energy.

So your body then starts breaking down glycogen, which are carbohydrates that are stored in the liver, which then your body uses those up for energy. And then about 12 hours to sometimes 24 hours later, your body enters ketosis, where your body then starts burning fat for energy.

This then leads to an increase in the production of certain hormones like human growth hormone, which helps you age more slowly and can actually even build more muscle in certain cases. And then after 48 hours of fasting, that's when autophagy begins, where your cells start repairing themselves and start recycling out unhealthy proteins or inflammatory dead cells like senescent cells.

So your body is really able to detoxify and cleanse And then it starts to reduce inflammation and improve immune function. And, and by the way, it's not just 48 hours after. If you fast on and off on occasion, your body will start getting into autophagy even quicker. If you do fast, let's say even 1 or 2 days a week, it doesn't have to be a 48-hour period.

Your body will get into things like autophagy, clearing out these zombie cells, which supports longevity and increasing your lifespan. Yeah, and I think that's a really important point. So let's talk now about some of the studies that show the benefits of fasting. And then I want to get into biblical fasting and some studies that show you shouldn't fast and that fasting isn't for everybody.

So first here is it supports weight loss and metabolism. This is a study done on intermittent fasting. A study done on 100 participants over 12 weeks found that those people that did intermittent fasting lost an average of 8 to 12 pounds compared to the control group, which lost only 2 to 4 pounds.

So on average, you might lose 10 more pounds over a 3-month period doing intermittent fasting if you are focusing on getting healthy versus not. So we've seen, and this is one study of many showing intermittent fasting and fasting of any type supports weight loss.

There's another study here from 2015 that found that alternate-day fasting, so where you're not fasting every day, where you fast intermittently every other day, you can lose up to 7% body, uh, 7% of your body weight, um, while whole-day fasting was reduced by 9%.

So all that being said, this study shows in terms of efficiency, doing a partial fast where you're not fasting all day, maybe you're skipping breakfast, you lost more weight than if you were— or you lost almost as much weight as if you were fasting for the entire day. In this study, this was done at the University of Southern California, they discovered when 71 adults were placed on a 5-day fast.

That was eating around 1,000 calories a day over 3 months. They lost an average of 6 pounds. They reduced inflammation, their waistlines shrunk down, and they also lost total body fat without sacrificing muscle mass. So if you want to lose weight, lose belly fat, fasting even irregularly could be the key. And this is one thing that, again, where I'm going to surprise people later on.

The form of fasting that I most recommend for people is not fasting every day. It's not intermittent fasting, and it's not doing long fasts where you don't eat food. It's doing a partial fast 1 to 2 days a week on average. That, I believe, is actually the most effective way to fast. In fact, it's also the way that, uh, the early church fasted, which I'll get into in a minute.

All right, here's some other benefits of fasting. Improved blood sugar control. There was a study done on insulin sensitivity on 80 people, and it showed that people with prediabetes, which is an incredibly large amount of people— nearly 100 million people in the U.S. are insulin resistant or prediabetic— it showed a 20% improvement in insulin sensitivity after 8 weeks of intermittent fasting.

So if you're a person, your blood sugar is imbalanced, you're kind of— your energy's up and down all day, and you know that your insulin levels aren't ideal, fasting of some sort, whether it's intermittent or fasting a day or 2 a week intermittently, could be a key to helping you experience a breakthrough there. Heart health.

A study found— actually, this was a meta-review on 10 studies involving 1,000 participants. They found that fasting reduced LDL cholesterol by 10%, or an average of 6 points. And here's another big one: human growth hormone Human growth hormone is one of your anti-aging hormones. It allows you to stay younger. It's connected with testosterone in men, longevity in women.

And a study showed that 24-hour fast increased your human growth hormone by 210.3%. It also decreased your blood sugar. Now, this was a 5-day overview. So between day 1 and day 5, decreased serum blood sugar by 34.6%. 7%, And it increased the fat— the fatty acid that you're burning in your body by 260.5%. This is called the free fatty acid ratio in your blood.

So your body starts releasing body fat for your body to break down because it needs to break down fat for energy. That goes up by 260% when you start doing fasting. And so lots and lots of benefits there can be hormonally or for your body burning actually body fat by doing this form of intermittent fasting. Now, there are also emotional benefits of fasting.

A study done on 60 people found that after 4 weeks of intermittent fasting, participants reported a 25% increase in mental clarity and focus. Also, we've seen a reduction in stress by about 15% over a 6-week period of time. And so there are lots of benefits physically, lots of benefits emotionally when it comes to fasting specifically. We're also touching a lot here on Intermittent fasting.

Now, I want to mention that fasting has been done for thousands of years. We know that Jews fasted. We know that Christians fast and still fast today. We know that Muslims fasted. We know that many of the world's religions practiced fasting as a way to grow closer to God and become more dependent upon Him.

This is something that I've personally done and my wife Chelsea and my family to where we will fast at certain points in order to grow closer to God. And we do this as a token of saying our source isn't the material. Our source of life isn't food. Our source is God. You know, Jesus says, you know, during the Last Supper, he breaks this bread and he said, eat this in remembrance of me.

This is my body broken for you. This is also why people take communion, is remembering that God is our bread of life. Jesus is our bread of life. And so remembering that as well and saying, okay, my God isn't food. My God is God. And in doing that is a powerful spiritual practice. I know that I've experienced spiritual breakthroughs in my life via fasting.

I'll share some of those instances, but one of them was recently, 2 weeks ago, we were having some really major roadblocks, which we believe were partly spiritual in our business. We were coming up against many, many roadblocks in a business I'm in. And myself and 2 other families, one of them was Jordan Rubin, another Colt Morton.

We got together with our wives and we fasted for the day up until night. We skipped breakfast and lunch, and we did eat dinner up until or right after this prayer call. But we got on a call and we all prayed together for an hour and we fasted for the day and asking God to come to our divine rescue and saying, God, we need you. We're desperate for you.

And that was just something where just a couple weeks ago where, again, myself and our together, we did fasting, praying for a spiritual supernatural breakthrough in this roadblock we were up against. And so this is something not only that I'm preaching, but I do practice, is doing some fasting. Now, fasting was done as well.

Again, when you read around the Jewish festivals, fasting was almost always practiced. One of the things I love about the rhythm that God created is when you read up on the Jewish festivals, whether it be Yom Kippur or Yeah. Sukkot or any of the festivals, there's this combination of fasting and feasting. Okay? The celebration of what's happening.

And the way it tends to work is they will go and they will fast in order to show their submissiveness to God.

There's fasting that's done to remember things like the Exodus out of Egypt, And to really just honor God and take that time where you would typically be eating food or doing something that's more materialistic and doing something that's spiritual, spending more time in prayer, spending more time in reading a Bible or connecting with community, being grateful, praise and worship.

So replacing that time of food with spiritual substances. And so, That's how fasting was done. And what you'll read about if you read the Old Testament or the Tanakh or Torah is you'll read about the Jews where they would spend time fasting and then they would have a feast. Okay?

And you can imagine when you're that hungry and you haven't eaten maybe for several days or less for several days, and then you really get to feast. And this was something then, the idea of fasting was carried on then if you were a Christian through the New Testament period, and then with the early church leaders and the early church fathers, you'll see this as well.

And what the early church did, if you're reading in things like Acts 2 in the Bible, and then beyond that, when you read about some of the early church fathers like St. Ignatius and Origen and many of the others, you'll see that they fasted. But here's the thing, they would tend to fast Over certain periods of time. It might be around Easter.

Lent was most common period of fasting, but also they would fast every week. Now, they didn't intermittent fast every day, and they didn't necessarily always do as long a fast as the Jews did. But what they would do is they would fast typically either 1 day a week or 2 days a week up until around 3 o'clock or until sunset. Okay.

Different groups in Christianity would fast at different times and different amounts of time, but they would typically either fast on Wednesdays or on Fridays or on both. And they would do it up until around 3 o'clock. They would do it up until 3 o'clock because it was believed that 3 o'clock was the moment when Jesus was crucified and died for our sins.

So they would fast up until that period during the day and eat after. And then others believed, no, it happened at sunset. Around anywhere between 4:30 and 7:00 PM. And so we were going to fast at that time. But again, either way it was done to where people would still eat that day, but it was a form of an intermittent fast, typically until around 3:00.

And people may eat at 3:00, may eat again around 7:00 in the evening, but they would do an intermittent fast 1 to 2 days a week. Now, Lent, along with doing prayer and almsgiving and fasting, is one of the— again, fasting is one of the 3 pillars of Lent.

And on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, fasting rules allow Catholics and other certain denominations in Christianity to eat only one full meal along with 2 smaller meals, which combined would not equal a single normal meal. Additionally, Catholics may not eat meat on those 2 days or on any Friday during the time of Lent.

So there are many spiritual benefits of fasting, including bringing us closer to God. Here's the biblical principle: fasting is a way for us to seek God's guidance and grow spiritually. Joel 2:12 says this, now therefore, says the Lord, turn to me with all of your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.

And we see here, this is where if we have something that we need in our life, we need to turn to God with fasting, with our emotions, and with even mourning. John 6:51 says this, fasting deepens our desire for this living bread, essentially.

That's what— I mean, this is a quote by Jesus, but a lot of theologians say that this is the reality here, is that fasting deepens our desire for this living bread. And if you ever go without food, you become aware that you are in need. And I think we can connect that need to food, but it also allows us to, in those times, be full of what God can give us, this living bread.

Number 2, you know, the spiritual benefits of fasting are it increases our self-discipline. This is important when it comes to running our best race. You know, fasting helps develop self-control and a greater reliance on God. You know, 1 Corinthians 9:27 essentially says, but I discipline my body and keep it under control.

So we know that, again, discipline is so important for us to be successful in life. Discipline is related to personal responsibility, ownership, and self-control, one of the fruits of the Spirit there. So that's a benefit of fasting is it increases your discipline. Fasting also can be done in times of trouble. You know, Ezra 8:21-23, here's a summary of it.

When we don't know what to do for ourselves or our family members, but we know we need God's protection, we can fast and turn to God For His help and for His direction. Recently, I've been reading through the Bible and going through some Bible studies on Daniel and Nehemiah. And you see that these men constantly turning to God for His protection and for His aid.

And they're spending time prayer and fasting, prayer and fasting. We see those 2 things together of fasting plus prayer. Equals supernatural breakthrough in the lives of people. You know, also there's fasting for repentance. We live in a world today where there's a lot of guilt and shame. We live in a world today where I think there's a— people tend to get in a ditch one way or another.

People either feel like they don't need to be forgiven, hey, they can do whatever they want, and there's just no repentance in their life. And there are other people who just live with this sort of shame and guilt, and it's almost It's like they can never repent enough because they feel so guilty.

But I think we really need to find this place of realizing that, you know what, we can repent and we should repent saying, you know what, we're not perfect. We mess up. It's really, it's extreme humility. You're living in this very great state of humility. And we all love to be around humble people. Nobody likes to be around a prideful person, including God.

And so when we get in this place of absolute humility of realizing, you know what, I'm imperfect, I need God, I need others, I need made, and then repenting for the things we've done wrong and knowing that God hears our prayer and forgives us, and then we can just move on. That, that's how that should work.

But some people live in the state and they can never move on, and some people just never repent in the first place. And so we want to be able to repent wholeheartedly from the things we've done wrong and then, and then receive forgiveness and move on. There's another example in the Bible that I love.

If you're a person that loves personal growth and leadership and business, this is a really important one. It's in Nehemiah 1:4. Nehemiah prayed and fasted for many days and nights for God's people. And we see then that he was able to build a wall in just over 50 days. I mean, this massive wall that people would've said, this is impossible. They were able to do it.

And it was a form of business, of community building, of doing something significant. So I think sometimes people think fasting is this thing only for spiritual matters. Everything is spiritual. Your business is spiritual. Your marriage is spiritual. Your relationship to your kids. Everything is spiritual. Okay, so prayer and fasting can help all of those things.

And Nehemiah prayed for wisdom, understanding, favor, and the ability to build the wall, which he was able to do. We also see this in the Book of Jonah. It's throughout the Bible. We see it in the Book of Joel as well. Here, fasting and combining that with repentance. And then here's the thing, God loves a humble heart.

God loves that you're willing to sacrifice for Him and come humbling before Him. And when you do that, God will answer your request if it's in alignment with doing good in the world. Here's the other thing I love about fasting is fasting breaks strongholds. Lack of faith is a a major stronghold the enemy uses to bind us, keep us sick, keep us ill, keep us idle.

And we see in Matthew 17:21 and in Mark 9, we see what happens here with these breakthroughs. You know, there's a time in Matthew 17 where his disciples go to him and they pray for somebody who is demon possessed and they can't cast out the demon. And Jesus says, this This type of miracle requires prayer plus fasting. It requires both.

So we see here again, this combination of prayer and fasting together that are so powerful. We also see in Isaiah 58:6, fasting breaks strongholds, including addictions.

If you're a person that has an addiction to the internet, to sugar, to pornography, to doing something that's a vice in your life that's destroying you or others, Fasting can help you experience that breakthrough, especially when you're doing it in combination with prayer. If you are frequently turning to things instead of God, you are allowing that stronghold to hold power over you.

And a stronghold isn't always an addiction. It can also be depression or a crippling anxiety, for instance. And so fasting can help you experience breakthroughs in these areas. Another time I love to fast is for God's direction. We see this in Acts 13:2 and 14:23 when the apostles went into a time of fasting. Facet fasting, and they were blessed with heavenly wisdom, instruction, and power.

Uh, you know, I was able to see this, as I mentioned. Um, I've seen this in my business. Like, if I remember, this was probably about 9 years ago. Chelsea and I were early married. Actually, it was probably more like 10 years ago now.

And we had— I had exited my clinic and I started draxe.com, my website, and I had something happen where I invested in a business and it basically went under and I lost everything. So 10 years ago, Chelsea and I, we were lined up to where we could not pay the next month's rent. We had no money. We were living in this little apartment in Franklin, Tennessee.

And Chelsea and I both got on our hands and knees and we prayed and we fasted and we said, God, would you just, you know, work a miracle for our finances and for our business? And, you know, a few weeks later, I launched this program called the Secret Detox Program. And then I launched a program called the Healing Leaky Gut Program.

And it was able to transform a lot of lives and provide for our family in the process and eventually grow into Axe Wellness and Ancient Nutrition and other businesses in the future that have both had a great positive impact in the world, but also provided for our family financially. And that was via prayer and fasting together. And so we see fasting has so many benefits spiritually.

Now, I want to walk you through different types of fasts. And ones that you may consider doing at different times. One is an absolute fast. This is no food, only water. Okay? An example of this is when Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights, as we read about in Matthew 4. And so that's an absolute fast. There's partial fasting. This is like restricting certain foods.

We see this with a Daniel fast where Daniel ate only Yeah. You know, probably vegetables, plants, and water. That's what we read about in Daniel 1. Intermittent fasting. This is something we see most of the science about today in Western medicine. We see all basically doing like a 16:8 fast where you only eat in an 8-hour window a day. We see juice fasts.

This has been done via treating cancer via the Gerson therapy. This is consuming consuming only vegetables and fruit juices for a certain period of time. There was a very large meta-review on juice fasting.

This analyzed 12 studies on 500 people, and the study found that the participants showed a 25% increase in antioxidant capacity and a 20% reduction in stress markers as well, in helping people reverse disease via juice fasts. Uh, and then again, we, we also see— by the way, one other thing with a juice fast is people who did a juice fast for 7 days lost an average of 5 to 7 pounds.

So there are benefits there of doing juice fasts for also lowering cholesterol and other health benefits. Now, a Daniel Fast, as I mentioned, I want to mention one study done on a Daniel Fast.

A study was conducted over a 21-day period of time with 43 people, and they found people that did a Daniel Fast over 21 days had a 10 to 15% reduction in LDL cholesterol and a 5 to 10% reduction in blood pressure. Also, we saw it helped lose weight. People that did a Daniel Fast for 21 days lost an average of 5 to 10 pounds.

And I want to mention, I did a Daniel Fast about 10 years ago as well for 21 days, and I only ate— I didn't eat grains. I only ate vegetables, fruit, and some sprouted nuts. That was the only thing I ate. And I lost 14 pounds in 21 days. Okay. Now, I didn't have the weight to lose really much, but we did. And I gained the weight back and it was good.

And we really saw some, some great spiritual breakthroughs there in our life. I felt so, so close to God and really helped me grow spiritually. But I've done Daniel fasts and seen just amazing fruit in my life from it as well. But again, it's great. As you can see here, the studies for weight loss. Daniel fasts have also been shown to increase insulin sensitivity by 20 to 30%. Wow.

So loads of benefits there. I also want to mention there's something called the Ezra Fast, and this is fasting for God's help in solving problems for protection against the evil one and even Satan. Ezra said that they prayed and fasted and God answered their request. So we see a time where Ezra fasted as well.

So as we can see, fasting has numerous benefits for health, For spiritual growth and for breakthrough in your life. And I think one of the things that I see with fasting is it's very intimidating for most people. I remember the first time that I ever did a fast. Can I tell you, it was unbelievably hard? I remember I was in my early 20s and I fasted and I just, it's like it was in my head.

I thought like, I was so hungry all day long and I intended to do a 3-day fast and I ended up breaking. After just doing a 1-day fast, day 2, I said, you know what? I broke. I actually didn't finish the fast. This was in my early 20s. Now, when I fasted after that, it's been easier. I think just there was something about that first time.

I think also when you're dipping into fasting, start small, right? And I think God really recognizes that we're weak, we're tempted. But even going and doing, starting small and working your way up to bigger fasts is what you wanna do. I think God really recognizes the desire of our hearts and meets us where we're at. Remember that. God will meet you where you're at.

If you have, let's say you're part of a church and they're gonna do a 21-day fast and you feel like that's overwhelming for you, start with a 3-day fast. And, you know, again, start small. Or maybe somebody's doing an all-day fast and maybe you just fast breakfast. Again, I think God will meet us where we're at.

And so again, I think we want to, hey, start small, build up to big over time with fasting. Right now I want to talk about who should fast and who shouldn't fast. The first is people that are overweight. Whether you are 5 pounds overweight or 100 pounds overweight, fasting can help with weight loss. And so I would say people that need to lose weight can benefit from fasting in many cases.

But typically, I think think people that are considered obese, okay, if you are in that group, that's where it benefits the most. People with type 2 diabetes— a study done on 70 participants showed a drop in fasting blood sugar levels. And so we know that intermittent fasting specifically can help with type 2 diabetes.

Studies show it can help cardiovascular disease, inflammatory conditions, also neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease. There's a decreased risk when you do intermittent fasting. So there are great benefits, as we see, with fasting. Now, I do want to mention that fasting isn't for everybody.

Several studies have linked skipping breakfast with increased cardiometabolic risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, unfavorable lipid profiles, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. In fact, there was a study done, a large-scale study, on those who skip breakfast. This was a comprehensive view of all-cause mortality, and here's what they found.

Um, this was a study done on nearly 200,000 people aged 40 and above, and this was done on about over a 17-year period of time. So this is a long, a, a long-term study done on a large group of people.

And here's what they found, that people who skipped breakfast, who did a form of fasting, essentially had a 21% increased risk of cardiovascular disease and a 32% risk in all-cause mortality compared to those who didn't eat breakfast. Now, here is what I think we need to be conscious of.

At the end of the day, what matters is that according to a, a nutritionist, uh, got into this, but what her belief was, her name is Carrie Gahn. She said, at the end of the day, what matters is that an individual can meet their their daily nutritional requirements for optimal health. So here's what you need to know when you really dive into the research.

Are people just skipping breakfast because they're busy, or— and, and they're, you know, it's not because they're focused on health, it's because they're just, they're busy? Or are you skipping breakfast because you were intermittent fasting?

Here's the other thing I think that this shows is if you are going to intermittent fast You should be eating healthy for those other meals a day, for that 8-hour window or however long you're eating. You should be eating a lot of vegetables, a lot of fruits, a lot of wild organic meat, a lot of nutrient-dense real foods.

Okay, because if you're going to fast and you're going to eat garbage, there's really not as much of a point in fasting. I think it's still going to hurt your health in that case. So I think that's one of the things to consider. I also believe this is that if you intermittent fast for a really long period of time, like, let's say just daily forever, I think that a lot of this is bioindividual.

I think for some people— and by the way, I noticed this in taking care of tens of thousands of people in practice, okay, in my medical practice. I saw that, again, this is just— I'm giving you generalizations, but I found that oftentimes men Mm-hmm. Did slightly better than women when it came to fasting results, the results in their body.

And I think that has to do with women, their hormones fluctuate more greatly and they need a little bit more stability in their diet. Um, and, and so I think that that was one of the reasons why I saw that. I found that people that are very stressed out, they shouldn't be intermittent fasting because fasting is a form of stress. It, it's actually a form of rest and a form of stress.

It's more stressful to your hormonal system, uh, insulin and blood sugar. It's more, uh, it's, it's, it's less stress on your digestive system. Okay? So it's a form of rest and stress at the same time when you're fasting. And so depending upon where you need the rest is really dependent upon if fasting is going to work for you.

Now, here's how I believe fasting should be done, is I think we should be modeling the early church and the Jewish community in how to fast.

I think it should be done regularly, one day a week, maybe 2, and not as an all-day fast, as an intermittent fast where you're skipping breakfast and maybe eating again 3 o'clock or 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock in the evening and about a 4 to 6-hour window there, just one day a week. And I think about that like cold plunging or or, or sauna, but a little bit more extreme.

It's something called hormesis, to where your body has to adapt to that. But even if you just do it 1 day a week, that's 52 times a year. That really gets your body more metabolically flexible if you do it 1. And if you did it 2 days a week, that's 100 days a year.

So I think for most people, they will get the equal benefits of intermittent fasting if they did it just 1 to 2, let's say 2 days a week versus every single day.

And then let's say you fast 1 day But then also you do some fasting over Lent and some fasting and maybe a couple other days a year for spiritual breakthrough, for deeper connection to God, for certain reasons, then you're adding in more days of fasting as well.

But I think fasting is done most ideally in modeling the Jewish community in the early church where it's done around certain holidays and seasons. Yeah. And it's done maybe a day a week or 2 days a week. The moral of the story is this: listen to your body when it comes to fasting.

Fast, especially if you are morally convicted and spiritually convicted, you know, okay, you need to be fasting 1 to 2 days a week, or you need to be fasting at certain times of the year, you know, doing a Daniel Fast with your church, for instance, or some sort of fast. Do it. Absolutely. Okay.

But also know that there are a lot of influencers out there and even scientists that say everyone should fast all the time, or everyone should always be intermittent fasting. I don't think the research shows that. In fact, when you look at Chinese medicine, they did not recommend fasting the way we do today. And I think it's one of the most effective forms of medicine.

I think, again, the way that the Bible recommends fasting, which is, you know, we see the early church doing this, maybe it's a day a week you're devoting to God. And then it's doing, you know, seasonal fasting, you know, certain times of the year, With your church or with your, you know, your community or synagogue, that's the way that you should be fasting.

Now, who should probably definitely not fast for at least a period of time? People with eating disorders. If somebody has anorexia or bulimia, you really want to consult with your healthcare provider before doing a fast. Women that are pregnant or breastfeeding, I don't believe should be fasting at all either. You need to be listening to your body when you're hungry and eating.

If you're breastfeeding or pregnant, Also, people with certain medical conditions, especially those who can lead to dangerously low blood sugar levels, people with heart conditions where blood pressure can drop too much. And again, always consult your physician if you have a medical condition and you're going to consider doing some fasting there as well.

And again, as I mentioned earlier, you know, I think the best way to think about fasting is to think about what you Yeah. And then, you know, picking the day that you think your body's going to do the best with. It could, maybe it's intermittent fasting, maybe it's alternate day fasting.

But generally speaking, I think for most people, picking one day a week where you honor God that day, that, you know, early part of that day, spending more time with him is a great way to just get in a regularly, a regular fasting rhythm. And then doing it as part of your church or your worship community of whatever religion you're a part of. Stay hydrated and drink lots of water.

Also, start with shorter fasts and gradually increase over time. Also, around fasting, remember, fill yourself with something. Don't just sit, you know, sit there. Spend time with prayer, connecting with community. Those are some dos with fasting. So some don'ts around fasting. Don't avoid all movement around fasting. Again, you want to get out Yeah.

You could do some light cardio, you could do some light weights, but you don't want to absolutely exert yourself. But also, you don't want to do nothing either. I think walking is the ideal thing to do. Walking about an hour or more that day is perfect to do while fasting. And also, don't overeat when breaking your fast, okay? So sometimes people just gorge themselves. Don't do that.

Just eat a regular-sized meal after you do your fast for the most part. Kind of giving your system time to adapt to the food it hasn't had in a while. So again, remember this, fasting can have incredible benefits for spiritual breakthroughs, mental and emotional breakthroughs, for physical breakthroughs, everything from weight loss to fighting cancer to longevity.

But also fasting needs to be done in a way that's bio-individual, that is customized for you. And you're better off typically starting off Yeah. And so I would start off doing it where you're doing it 1 day a week and then maybe even 2 days a week. But some people can do fine every day. But remember, that's not for everybody according to the studies.

Hey, I hope you've enjoyed this episode on fasting. I know it probably surprised some people because I have talked about the benefits of fasting, which there are benefits. But again, remember, it's all about your individual unique biochemistry you need to take care of.

And I think modeling the Bible and modeling the early church fathers and how fasting was done is the best place to go for the truth. Remember, each and every week on the show, I'm diving deep into topics about how to grow in body, mind, spirit. And I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. By the way, thank you so much for subscribing, liking, and sharing this.

And again, I, I am so grateful every time I see all of you sharing this podcast. I think more people need to know the truth about fasting, about the bio-individuality, about the spiritual benefits. So do me a favor. Again, thank you for sharing this episode, whether you're texting it to a friend or you're posting it on Facebook or Instagram. Thank you, all of you.

And let me know, maybe on your post on Instagram, you say, this surprised me about fasting. Maybe there was something you learned that surprised you. And let me know too, if you're on YouTube, hey, go to, you know, comment. Have you fasted before? What were the benefits you saw? Or have you ever noticed that maybe you don't do that well fasting?

So maybe what's something surprised you about this episode? I'd love to hear from you. Hey, thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.