Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Fasting -- A Discipline of Detachment


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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