Re: My first fast ever, plus a Q about fasting for a sick relative

Fasting is a wonderful rediscovery for us. Well done on both discovering it and making a very impressive beginning with it.

Fasting is more than just refraining from eating to lose weight. It does a fantastic job of that, and is likely the most efficient way of losing weight possible, but it is only a small part of the healthful benefits of fasting. Along the way to losing that weight the body rebalances our systems, it digests from it's own stores all the nutrients required for living and healing of damaged organs etc and provides for our body's for the duration of the fast a state of perfect nutrition.

But.. It is up to us to do our best to continue to feed it as perfectly as we can do after the fast itself. In the immediate period post fast, which we refer to as refeeding or recovery, the type of foods we put back into the body is of utmost importance. If we eat too much or the wrong foods we could actually damage the body refeeding after a long fast, and if we eat too much the body is quite capable of putting the weight back on at the same rate that it has been lost.

So it is vital as part of the fasting process to learn what our nutritional requirements are and the food we need to be eating to satisfy those requirements. Raw foods are the best foods for breaking a fast for many reasons, just one being their nutritional content. Learning about Natural Hygiene can help learn this very important part of the fasting process. So in answer to your question about whether to fast to completion or to pause it so to speak over christmas, I would say that whether you are able to fast over christmas is of less importance than whether you are able to continue the process of recovering your health over that time. If you continue to fast then you will certainly continue to get the benefits of that fast. If you break the fast then consider that if you break it correctly and continue to eat mostly raw foods with a little indulgence over festive days you would really rather partake of, then there will be little difference in reaching your goal.

I was perhaps 60 kilos overweight and have lost half of that in the last 3 months. 6 weeks of that time I have been fasting and 6 weeks I have been eating mostly raw foods and am now as healthy as I have been in many years, also physically fitter as well in spite of still having another 30 kilos to lose still.

I would suggest that treating your relative requires a medical opinion. I would think that fasting combined with Natural Hygiene principals could well improve his situation incredibly, but being in the hands of medical practitioners already you will need to find a Natural Hygiene doctor or similar who is prepared to offer fasting as a treatment. Ask a 'normal' doctor and you will have to be very lucky to find one that is receptive to this method. So my advice is to look for another doctor first and get their advice before confronting the current MD's about it.

He definitely needs another medical opinion to decide whether fasting itself would be of benefit to him. There are some medical conditions where fasting needs proper medical supervision or it can be dangerous to undertake. So I advise you to consider finding an experienced 'Fasting' Doctor and getting their advice.

Here is a list of Natural Hygiene Doctors:


http://naturalhygienesociety.org/doctors.html


It might also be worth doing a search for Fasting Retreats, these are places which should also have experienced practitioners that would be worth talking to at least about your relative.

Andrew.