Day 3
Fasting – A Discipline of Detachment
When I started fasting I wanted
to understand it. I couldn’t wrap my
head around how not eating could bring me closer to God. As I have fasted I know it does bring me
closer to Him and I am more focused on what He wants even though I don’t know
why. However, over the last couple of
years He has answered my prayer for understanding in a way. One thing I believe is that He made our
bodies to fast and this comes from two secular sources. The first is a book filled with research
called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and the second is from a video documentary
called “Eat, Fast and Live Longer with Mike Mosley”.
Here is what research has found
out according to the book The Power of
Habit by Charles Duhigg…In 2006, two Australian researchers tried to see if
we could strengthen our willpower like we strengthen our muscles. In their first experiment, they put 24 people
(self-proclaimed couch potatoes) through a physical exercise program that
lasted 2 months and got increasingly difficult.
The subjects didn’t know the true reason for the study. They forced themselves to exercise day after
day using more and more willpower each time they worked out. At the end of the
experiment, the researchers looked at their lives to see if they had more
willpower at home. They were obviously
in better shape but also smoked less, drank less alcohol and caffeine, ate less
junk food and spent less time watching TV and more time on homework.
The researchers wanted to see if
the increased willpower had everything to do with exercise or was it something
else. So they did two more experiments –
one with a money management program and one with an academic improvement
program. The same thing happened! “Again, as their willpower muscles
strengthened, good habits seemed to spill over into other parts of their
lives.”
This is what I found when I
fasted. Before I started fasting I
really wanted to get up early to walk outside and pray, but as much as I tried
and prayed, I couldn’t ever do it. I was
so weak! Then after I started fasting at
the beginning of every month I was able to get up every day very early to walk outside
and pray even in winter. When I stopped
fasting every month, I was once again unable to get up that early, even though
I really wanted to.
The other reason I think God made
our bodies to fast is very interesting.
In the video documentary, “Eat, Fast and Live Longer”, Mike Mosley was
getting older, was slightly overweight and didn’t have the great health he
wanted. He didn’t want to begin taking
pills for everything so he went on a quest to find out if changing his diet
would affect his health and lower his risk of diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular
disease, stroke and heart failure. I
think what he found was astounding.
He visited a lab where they
genetically engineered mice to have low levels of a growth hormone called
insulin-like growth factor one (IGF1).
These mice lived 40% longer than mice of the same age, species and sex
in the lab who did not have low levels of IGF1.
They got this idea from a tribe in Ecuador who have very low levels of
IGF1 and although they have very unhealthy lifestyles and are overweight, they
are virtually immune to diabetes and cancer.
Our bodies are normally in
“go-go” mode driven by IGF1 to divide cells, but when IGF1 levels drop our
cells shift into a different mode. Our
body slows production of new cells and starts repairing existing cells. DNA damage is more likely to get fixed. That’s why the mice and villagers are
protected from age-related diseases.
Mike Mosley set out to find out how we can drop our levels of glucose,
cholesterol and IGF1 also. He visited
labs and universities all over the country and found out many things. Protein affects how much IGF1 our bodies
produce. When we eat a lot of protein
our cells get locked into “go-go” mode.
Our cells grow so fast our bodies have no time to repair old cells and
are more susceptible to disease.
So how do you reduce your
IGF1? Studies of calorie restrictors
(people that only eat 1200 calories per day, every day) suggest that eating
less helps but it is not enough. There
is a better way, researchers found – fasting.
Mosley fasted for 4 days and 3 nights in conjunction with a university
study and his blood sugar dropped dramatically and his IGF1 level was cut in
half. But in order to keep the low levels he must fast that way once every
other month and switch to a lower protein diet in order to keep the low levels.
For Mike Mosley it was too
painful for him to fast that long so he looked for another way. What he found from several different ongoing
studies was alternate day fasting (ADF).
This is one fast day followed by one feed day. The fast day is restricted to 600 healthy
calories and the feed day has no restrictions at all. This type of fasting may help delay the onset
of diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, and memory loss. Mice on the restricted fasting diet retained
their normal memory much longer than regular mice. Sporadic bouts of hunger in the fasting mice
actually trigger new neurons to grow.
“Fasting stresses your gray matter the way exercise stresses your
muscles.” ADF has better effects on the
brain than does a lower amount of daily calorie restriction.
For Mosley, he and the
researchers settled on a 5/2 diet which is five days of normal eating followed
by 2 days of fasting each week where you get 500 healthy calories per day. After just five weeks, Mosley had a major
reduction in IDF1 levels, cholesterol and glucose and a way of living that he
felt he could sustain. When I heard this
it floored me because I thought about how the Pharisees, who followed the
letter of the law and traditions handed down for generations, fasted twice a
week!
Our God is so good that He made
our bodies and spirits to actually flourish when we do something He spiritually
designed us to do. I don’t fully
understand spiritually how fasting works, but only know from experience and
other testimony that it gives an intense hunger and thirst for God and causes
all worldly things to fall away compared to knowing Him. The physical changes that happen in our
bodies when fasting are just a bonus.
How has this understanding increased
you interest in fasting as a discipline of detachment?
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Prayer: Reflecting specifically on this
devotional, write out a prayer to God.
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